Chair Force Engineer

DIRECT to Triumph

2011-09-17T08:14:00.000-07:00

NASA was grabbing headlines this past week with plans to build the most powerful rocket to ever lift off the earth. The Space Launch System is expected to be operational by 2017, with an Orion capsule riding atop an 8.4-meter core stage and flanked by two 5-segment solid rocket boosters. A later variant will have an upper-stage to place massive payloads up to 130 tons into orbit. At least that's what happens if all goes according to plan.

Pieces of shuttle hardware live again; Space Launch System reuses the barrel sections and domes from the External Tank (larger propellant feed lines will be necessary for the heavy-lift variant.) The main propulsion system comes from the shuttle orbiters, including the Space Shuttle Main Engines. Three will be mounted on a diagonal for the crew-launch variant, and five will be mounted in an "X" for the heavy-lifter. Spare engines from the shuttle will be used on early missions, but Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne will redesign the nozzle and other components to make the engines cheaper to produce and throw away on future flights. And for initial flights, the rocket will use 5-segment SRB's developed for the original Ares program.

A significant part of the Space Launch System announcement is that it's a declaration of victory for the DIRECT team. Since the end of 2006, DIRECT has been agitating for a return to a shuttle-based system as the Ares rockets underwent a death-spiral of requirements creep and weight growth. It was the first proposal I'm aware of that used a flexible system to mount engines to the core stage, using an appropriate number of engines for the mission. They popularized the concept of using the heavy-lifter, sans upper stage, to launch a manned capsule. By the time of DIRECT 3.0 in May 2009, the team had embraced the use of expendable SSME's to get maximum performance out of the propellants stored in the core stage. Aside from one aspect, the rocket proposed for SLS is DIRECT.

The biggest difference is in the solid rocket boosters. Back in 2006, the DIRECT team wanted to use the stock 4-segment SRB's from the shuttle. The idea made sense back then, when NASA had barely begun their development. But the 5-segment stretched SRB got a significant portion of NASA spending during Project Constellation, to the point where it wouldn't be much more expensive to make the switch now that most of the development costs have been sunk. So SLS is using the 5-segment solids on initial missions, with rocket vendors free to develop alternative boosters for future variants of the rocket. The shuttle tankage at the core of SLS has been stretched to accommodate the attach points for the longer boosters.

Will SLS be built? I'd give that prospect a 50-50 shot. The program will receive a development budget of $3 billion per year for the next several years, fitting into the budget wedge once occupied by the Space Shuttle program. In earlier times that would not have been a problem for the federal government, but these are now times of austerity. And if SpaceX will have their 53-ton launcher flying by 2014-5, it will be hard for NASA to justify their 74-ton launcher by 2017. If Congress does keep SLS alive, the ulterior motive will be providing a stimulus to the tech industry to keep good jobs in Florida, Alabama and other states that figured heavily into the Space Shuttle program.

The tragedy of Project Constellation is that SLS is virtually the same as the original Ares V rocket, specified by the ESAS report in summer and fall 2005. Great sums of money have been spent and little real progress was made in developing the rocket's core or its ground facilities. The death spiral started in early 2006 when NASA adopted RS-68 engines for the core of Ares V. RS-68 was cheaper to produce and throw away than SSME, but it burned fuel less efficiently. Unwilling to sacrifice the monster rocket's performance, NASA widened the tank to 10 meters diameter. This meant a major redesign of the Mobile Launch Pad, the need for new crawler-transporters, and possibly even changes to the crawlerway and hardstand at the launch site to shore it up. The entire rocket was so heavy that NASA needed a sixth RS-68 under the core. And nestled between the plumes of two SRB's, the RS-68's were being exposed to far greater temperatures than their ablative-cooled nozzles could handle. Ares could either switch back to SSME, or pay for a new regeneratively-cooled nozzle on the RS-68. Such was the state of the program before it was euthanized in February 2010.

Did the DIRECT guys do any breakthrough, original engineering analysis to show why their idea was better? No. They simply kept in touch with the engineers within NASA who knew that Ares V was doomed to fail as long as the program continued marching towards unachievable payload masses and without regard for development budgets and schedules. The final SLS design probably owes much more to NASA engineers saying "You know what? Our original Ares V design wasn't so bad, and it could have worked if management didn't start messing with it." But in the spirit of maintaining an independent sanity check, the DIRECT team should be proud of keeping a viable idea alive and within the view of policymakers, while NASA kept chasing an ever-growing Ares V down a rabbit hole.

$pace Launch $ystem

2011-08-24T17:16:00.000-07:00

The Ares family of NASA rockets isn't dead. It lives to fight another day under new names. Ares I has already been reborn as "Liberty," a private ATK-Astrium joint venture. The Ares V heavy-lifter on the other hand, is now the Space Launch System.

As currently envisioned, Space Launch System resembles the original Ares V design from the ESAS report in summer and fall of 2005. The core rocket is the same diameter as the shuttle's external tank, and the core engines are based on the Space Shuttle Main Engines. Obviously, NASA's design engineers must have revisited the assumptions that were made when they switched Ares V to a new, wider-diameter core and less-efficient (but cheaper) RS-68 engines.

The advantages of reusing shuttle-heritage boosters, core engines and propellant tanks aren't as obvious as one might expect. Most of the components are being placed under very different aerodynamic and mechanical loads compared to what they saw under the shuttle program, so the testing will need to be repeated. Reusing shuttle manufacturing tools and launch facilities will result in some cost savings, but the development costs will be similar to what should be expected for an all-new heavy-lift rocket.

In fact, a recent report by Booz Allen Hamilton (hat tip: Hobbyspace) questions NASA's accounting for what SLS is really going to cost. It cites NASA's optimistic estimates for future cost savings. Without seeing this report, I can speculate that it's referring to the costs associated with using expendable versions of the shuttle main engine on every flight.

Besides the costs, it's foolishly optimistic to beleive NASA's estimate of an SLS test launch by 2016. Consider that the Saturn V was approved in January 1962, but didn't make a test flight until November 1967. So a well-funded heavy-lift program should expect to take at least 5 1/2 years from the moment it receives authority to proceed. But we shouldn't expect development to proceed at such a breakneck pace as Project Apollo (during an era when NASA registered at over 1% of the federal budget.) Unless Congress shovels large sums of development & test money at SLS, the schedule will likely slip by several years.

Complicating the situation is the wrangling over side-mount boosters for SLS. The baseline calls for the five-segment SRB's that have been largely developed by ATK. NASA administrator Charlie Bolden wants to open up a competition to build new boosters for SLS. Such a competition would likely produce a better-performing, better-value booster for the taxpayers--or at least serve as a check against cost growth on the ATK boosters. But opening up the booster trade-space adds to the SLS schedule.

The SLS budget and schedule will be an important issue for NASA over the next few years, but it will likely be overcome by events. SpaceX will fly its Falcon Heavy by 2014, perhaps 2015 given the inevitable schedule slips in complex development programs. While Falcon Heavy does not have the heavy-lift capabilities of SLS (50 metric tonnes versus 130 mT,) it doesn't need them if on-orbit assembly and propellant transfer become accepted means of sending humans on deep-space missions. In 2015 or 2016, Falcon heavy will be flying while SLS will still be a year or more from its first test. For a budget-conscious Congress, SLS will make a ripe target for cancellation and cost savings.

Air Force Research Linux

2011-08-13T22:56:00.001-07:00

One of the best selling points for the Linux operating system is its small footprint in your computer's RAM, hard drive, and overall system requirements. Linux distros like Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux (the latter no longer updated) have been tailored to run on very old PC's (Pentium 3 for the former, Pentium 1 for the latter) and capable of residing entirely in RAM. Running a lightweight Linux can keep older PC's relevant for most people's internet needs.

But a new and surprising player is jumping into the lightweight Linux game--the US Department of Defense. Developed by Air Force Research Laboratory, Lightweight Portable Security (LPS) is a Linux distro that resides completely in RAM, with no option of mounting the hard drive or writing to it. The logic behind LPS is that malware cannot be written to DoD computer systems since the hard drive cannot be engaged.

The "lightweight" part of the name is a bit of a misnomer. LPS requires 512 megs of RAM for the basic OS, and 1 gig of RAM for the deluxe version which includes the OpenOffice.org productivity suite. And the deluxe version did seem a bit slower than Puppy Linux when it booted.

But in spite of being not-so- "lightweight," LPS does have a great feature going for it. LPS can auto-detect a broad range of hardware and automatically load the appropriate drivers. I would even say that LPS is better than the "heavyweight" Linux distros in this regard. Of all the distros I've tried, only LPS instantly recognized my laptop's internal wireless adapter. Then again, not all the drivers are very well-written; my laptop's touchpad acts very flaky in Firefox.

With the key features and drawbacks to LPS in mind, who is the target user? The LPS website mentions booting it from a flash memory device, even though that storage method is banned on all DoD network computers. It would instead seem that LPS is a means for DoD personnel to check e-mail and do limited work from home or while on business travel.

Overall, using LPS has been a fun experience. If I ever needed to check my business webmail from the computer in the hotel lobby, LPS would be the way to do it. For people who want a real lightweight Linux I would recommend downloading Puppy Linux, installing it to the hard drive of their aging PC, and downloading the extra goodies that LPS deluxe boasts, like OpenOffice.org. All flaws aside, LPS is definitely worth a download. All it takes is a few minutes to download and a single recordable CD to surf the web, LPS-style.

Death of the World's Fastest Airplane*

2011-08-12T15:26:00.000-07:00

The Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA) launched the second and last of its HTV-2 hypersonic test vehicles yesterday, in what some media outlets have labeled "the world's fastest airplane." It's true that the HTV-2 skirted the atmosphere at Mach 20 once separated from its Minotaur IV booster rocket, so it might be the world's fastest unpowered glider. But the same could be said about the space shuttle. Like the shuttle, HTV-2 maneuvered while in a hypersonic glide, partly to bleed off excess airspeed.

Disappointingly, HTV-2's flight ended about 10 minutes short of what was expected. After 20 minutes, DARPA reported that they had lost telemetry. The most likely scenario? Somewhere during gliding flight, the vehicle disintegrated. Even after 30 years of shuttle flights and countless other rocket-plane programs before that, controlled hypersonic flight is still difficult. Unlike a ballistic vehicle like a space capsule, a winged vehicle has to maintain active control during flight. The aerodynamic stresses at such extreme speeds are high, and the unbelievable heating of the aircraft's structure causes it to lose much of its inherent strength. Even a small deviation from a safe flight attitude can destroy the aircraft. This is what happened as space shuttle Columbia began to encounter increased drag on its damaged left wing, with the orbiter's thrusters trying in vain to correct the unexpected yaw until they could no longer prevent the shuttle from breaking apart. DARPA will probably reach a similar (albeit more detailed) conclusion after analyzing all of their telemetry from the mission.

Several years ago, HTV-2 was supposed to be a stepping stone to what the defense department called "FALCON," or Force Application & Launch from Continental US. The idea was to strike a time-sensitive target so rapidly that there would be no way to avoid the attack. But existing ballistic missiles weren't acceptable because they would startle Russia or China into thinking we were launching the nuclear ICBM's. FALCON aimed to create hypersonic gliders and eventually a hypersonic bomber to meet the goals of rapid global strike. Apparently a straight-up launch of the glider on a converted ICBM (like Minotaur IV) would not give the other nuclear powers a false alarm. But now the idea appears to be dead, for lack of results and funding.

The basic idea of a hypersonic glider has been studied exhaustively since the 1950's. As the whims of the military and political leadership change, the FALCON concept may get a fresh look.

An Atlas-Kinda Day

2011-08-05T17:34:00.000-07:00

For the Atlas V launch vehicle program, today was a big day. The first major development was the successful launch of the Juno space probe which will study the planet Jupiter. When I heard that Juno was being launched into space, I first had to wonder whether Michael Cera would be lonely back on earth. But all kidding aside, Juno will study our solar system's largest planet in the 2016-17 time frame and hopefully tell us more about the formation of a planet that we've come to think of as a failed star. In some ways the probe is a "consolation prize" for the failed Jupiter Icy moons Orbiter, which would have used a nuclear reactor to power its ion engines. The science mission is very different, though, and the moons of Jupiter will sadly need to wait before their secrets open up to us.

The other exciting Atlas-related development was Boeing's decision to fly its CST-100 manned spacecraft on Atlas V rockets. It's interesting to note that they will be using an Atlas V 412--four-meter diameter fairing, one solid rocket booster, and two engines on the upper stage. This configuration increases the thrust margins for manned spaceflight, which is especially important when the rocket is flying the shallower trajectories which allow for successful crew escape. Having one SRB does create a small increase in the probability of first stage failure, but that's mitigated by the crew escape system that will be present while the SRB is burning. Also interesting is the two-engine upper stage. As far as I know, this is the first Atlas V payload to request two upper stage engines. The addend engine does give the astronauts some extra redundancy if one fails, although the RL-10 eries engines on the Centaur upper stages have been pretty reliable (dating all the way back to 1962.)

When manned flights of CST-100 and Atlas V start in 2015, it will be interesting to see how Boeing selects its crew of two astronauts (or "test pilots," as Boeing calls them.) They will likely choose from former astronauts who have gone to work for the Boeing company. (And there's at least one cosmonaut who works for Boeing, IIRC.) I'm certain that "astronaut" would be an interesting job listing to find on Monster.com.) It remains to be seen on when the operators of privately-owned manned spacecraft start to hire new astronauts with no previous spaceflight experience. There's no reason to think that NASA's rigorous requirements will be eased for the private astronauts.

War of the Operating Systems (Part 2)

2011-08-01T22:12:00.000-07:00

Success! This blog is being updated from my 2001-vintage Power Mac G4 again, but this time running Xubuntu 6.10. If you still "bitterly cling" to PowerPC Macintosh hardware, it's becoming increasingly rare to find a suitable Linux distribution. Most of the major distros (Ubuntu, Debian and openSUSE come to mind) have either dropped support for PowerPC, or support it erratically from release to release. And when they do offer PPC support, the distro often takes up a full DVD--little use to owners of systems that were built before DVD's came standard with most computers.

My first attempt at PPC Linux was Debian 6.0.1, but it didn't seem to support the ATI Advanced Graphics Port video display in my system. (I found it funny that the Debian installer didn't even quiz me to select my video card from a list of choices.)

After two attempts and staring at a screen that was a garbled, frozen mess of black and gray, I looked into the other Linux distributions. Xubuntu 6.10 (from back in 2006) was the last Xubuntu release I could find that supported PowerPC. And it conveniently fit on a single CD. Besides, the Xfce lightweight desktop seemed to be a good fit for a system that currently has only 256 MB of RAM. The install process was a little bit slower than I expected, but in the end I got a working system with a clean (albeit simple) interface and very little lag. And I didn't need to resort to anything crazy like buying a new DVD drive to install in a system that cost me all of $30 to purchase.

Even with the Xfce desktop environment, Linux on the PowerMac seems sluggish in comparison to MorphOS. Maybe the situation would have been different if Linux was written from the ground-up to run on PowerPC as MorphOS was. But I'll still probably use this system almost exclusively for Linux, since Linux has a pretty good selection of software written for it. Eventually I intend to host a website from this system.

On a side note, I've also attempted using one last OS: Dragonfly BSD. It's a fork of FreeBSD with some ideas taken from the old Commodore Amiga's OS. And I say "attempted" using it, because the disk images I've burned all appear to be corrupt. Perhaps someday it will be worth a try, as the BSD family has a very strong base of users who swear by its stability and its usefulness in applications such as web servers.

Now that I've succeeded in getting Linux on the old PowerMac, I don't intend to end my flirtation with non-Windows, non-Mac operating systems. I do hope to revisit the subject in a future post with a more detailed comaprison, and perhaps some commentary on newer Linux distributions.

War of the Operating Systems (Part 1)

2011-07-31T00:52:00.000-07:00

Back when I was young and starting to use computers on a daily basis, I read a lot of computer pundits who bashed Microsoft Windows. Naturally, I began to parrot their point of view. It seemed logical; after all, Windows 95 crashed all the time whenever I needed to use it. During my teenage years I began my search for a different operating system that would cost less than Windows, still support my hardware, avoid the annoying crashes that I saw under Windows 95, and offer up all the applications that I needed to play games, type documents, surf the internet, and all of the other things I used my computer for.

My early attempts to use Linux (particularly Red hat and Caldera) quickly ended with my frustration as they didn't support my hardware. Perhaps with a bit of tweaking I could have gotten them to work, but at that age I didn't have the time or expertise.

By the time I gave up on Linux, Microsoft was finally getting its act together. After Windows 98 cynically attempted to force Internet Explorer on everybody, Microsoft started anew with Windows 2000 and XP. They were built from the ground up as 32-bit OS'es, not a kludge of 32-bit Windows plus 16-bit DOS. And Microsoft supported them vigorously with service packs and other handy features to repair corrupted systems. So until Windows Vista was released ("defecated" might be a more appropriate term for the turd-ish Vista,) I regained a lot of respect for what Microsoft was doing. Windows might not be the most stable OS, but it installed properly 99% of the time and supported a mind-boggling number of hardware configurations. Not to mention that all of the most popular software titles were written for it.

But a lot had changed in the Linux world since the last time I tried it, too. Corporations like Novell and Oracle had invested serious money into making Linux a viable OS for desktop computers. (Not to mention the revolution called Ubuntu, launched by space tourist Mark Shuttleworth in 2004.) So I've dabbled with Linux lately and succeeded in getting OpenSUSE 11 to work on a 2006-vintage PC.

But I wasn't content to stop at Windows in my desire to tinker. I bought a used Power Mac G4 so I could try MorphOS, a lightweight OS for Power PC computers that's compatible with the old Commodore Amiga. The MorphOS team wisely chose to develop their OS for a limited set of hardware that had been mass-produced; namely, Macintosh computers with G4 processors. I have installed and used MorphOS, and it's worked reliably every time for me. And MorphOS doesn't suffer from slowdown, even on a system with only 256 MB ram and a 13 GB hard drive. (In fact, I'm typing this blog post on my MorphOS machine right now.) The biggest drawback is that very few popular software titles have been ported to MorphOS, and I'm not compelled to pay over $100 to unlock the full version of MorphOS until programs like OpenOffice and GIMP are available.

I still want this old Power Mac to run Linux in a dual-boot setup with MorphOS. I tried installing Debian Linux 6 today and it failed miserably on this machine. So plan B is to try OpenSUSE 11.1 (OpenSUSE ended Power PC support after that release.) And plan C is to try Yellow Dog Linux, a Power PC distribution that was best known for supporting Sony's PlayStation 3 (until Sony castrated its game system by removing Linux support.) My goal is to host a website on this system, to prove that old computers can still be useful.

Part 2 of "War of the Operating Systems" will cover my quest to get Linux running on this ancient Mac, as well as exciting developments on the Linux front for Intel-based PC's. Stay tuned!

End of an Era

2011-07-21T16:02:00.000-07:00

After 135 missions and 30 years, the space shuttle program finally comes to a close. Atlantis is safely home, and no more crews will take the risk of flying in the world's most complex machine, which too often showed Americans how fragile it could be.

For the last three decades, the space shuttle has given America a manned presence in space. That in itself should be applauded as a remarkable achievement, as only Russia and China have a similar capability. Yet if that was the only goal of the shuttle program, the vehicle would be horribly inefficient for the task. NASA could have just as easily kept the Apollo spacecraft and Saturn IB launcher in production, launched a few crews per year, and maintained the prestige of the nation. So why the shuttle?

After NASA had succeeded in landing humans on the moon, they realized that they couldn't keep on throwing used rocket stages into the ocean forever. It was getting too expensive. The space shuttle (approved by President Nixon just as Apollo 17 was preparing to leave the moon forever,) became NASA's post-Apollo goal. They promised to fly the shuttle every two weeks, and spaceflight would become routine.

Well, such is the delusion of hubris. The shuttle averaged 4.5 flights per year (or 5.4 flights per year, ignoring the five years that the shuttle was grounded following the losses of Challenger & Columbia and their crews.) As a maintenance-hungry spacecraft that required a standing army of thousands, the shuttle realized little (if any) cost-savings over the old throwaway rockets and capsules. Certainly there existed better approaches to building a spacecraft besides the throwaway external tank, solid rocket boosters, and heavy winged orbiter (which got really hot on re-entry and needed a very fragile heat-shield to return from orbit.)

And yet the shuttle had its redeeming values. Unlike the expendable Apollo-Saturn system, the shuttle was a platform for construction in space. The tools and techniques had never been attempted before, and they were all learned during the course of the shuttle program. The early missions often focused on retrieving and repairing satellites in space, with repairing the Hubble Space Telescope finally becoming a frequent objective for shuttle missions. In the second half of the shuttle's life, it became a platform for servicing the Mir and International Space Stations. The standing armies who made the shuttle work over the last several decades should feel great pride in knowing that they laid the foundations for building future settlements in space.

Beyond the shuttle's value in building our future in space, it represents a force that's far more powerful and beneficial to society. It's akin to Christopher Nolan's vision of "Batman." The Caped Crusader is more than just the sum of his parts as industrialist Bruce Wayne and vigilante-hero Batman. While Batman fights the crime that plagues Gotham City, his power is multiplied by everybody he inspires to take up his mantle and defend Gotham. The shuttle has been a powerful symbol of what people can achieve by mastering science and mathematics.

When I was in kindergarten, our class learned about the space shuttle in preparation for Discovery's first return-to-flight mission. (Yes, I'm dating myself now.) It seemed really neat. I begged my dad to take me to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, where we saw The Dream is Alive on the OmniMax. The following summer we built the Revell 1/144 scale Space Shuttle together. Most importantly, the shuttle was the initial spark that lit my fascination with studying science in grade school. It was a tangible goal that a lot of children could rally behind. And some friends I went to college with were actually able to live out that dream and work on the shuttle program.

In spite of all my fond memories, I'm not sad to see the shuttle retired. It served its purpose, and now it can move aside to make way for safer and more cost-effective methods of manned spaceflight. As Harvey Dent says in The Dark Knight, "Batman knows he's not going to be doing this forever." Every symbol steps aside to make room for its heirs. In a few years time, the SpaceX Dragon-Falcon system will be inspiring the next generation of children to study science and math in school. Yet with a wistful wave it's appropriate to wish the orbiters goodbye, and extend thanks to everybody who kept them flying for so long.

The Final Countdown

2011-07-08T16:41:00.001-07:00

History was made today as the space shuttle Atlantis made the final launch of the Space Shuttle program. For a little while, the skies over central Florida will seem a little bit gloomier.

For anybody who hasn't seen a shuttle launch in person, it's truly a sight to behold. The shuttle stack can be seen from miles away as a brilliant fireball riding on two mighty pillars of dense smoke that changes color and swirls as it stagnates. After the SRB's are jettisoned, the shuttle is high enough where the three main engines are very hard to see with the unaided eye. The spent SRB's are big enough and low enough to track as they begin a majestic arc over into a nose-first attitude, headed for parachute deployment and ocean splashdown.

I was forunate enough to see shuttle launches for about 18 months prior to the Columbia disaster. It even motivated me to cram myself into a tiny Pontiac Grand Am for the 90-minute ride to Titusville, FL (the closest publicly-accessible place to view a launch) to see STS-113. And when Columbia made her final launch, I was fortuitiously in the right place to see her streaking through the sky, unaware that she had already been mortally wounded by a piece of foam from her external tank.

Shortly before I left Daytona, I witnessed an Atlas V rocket launching on another, unmanned space mission. It was pretty neat too, with its kerosene-burning engines standing in contrast to the clear blue sky. But it could never compare to the sight of those smoke-belching SRB's in terms of sheer spectacle, drama and power. American astronauts will soon return to space in Dragon capsules on Falcon rockets, but the wonder of watching anything as mighty and awe-inspiring as a genuine shuttle is likely gone forever.

The Star in the Night Sky Made by Men

2011-07-06T18:45:00.000-07:00

Last night, I stepped onto the sidewalk around 8:50 PM committed to a brisk run. My old bones definitely needed a bit of excercise.

My neighbors had other ideas.

A throng of people from several households had massed in the street. Jaws dropped to the ground and fingers pointed into the sky.

"It's the space station!" one of them shouted. That was enough to get me to stop in my tracks and crane my neck into the partly-clouded dusk sky.

Sure enough, a bright light streaked at pretty high speed, from the northwest to the southeast. As one neighbor shouted out how the space station was passing behind a cloud (an odd statement to me, given how high the space station is above the clouds,) I resisted the urge to shout out the station's altitude and orbital inclination to make myself seem pedantic.

It's a remarkable feat of engineering that humans can build such a large craft in outer space, of the right size and reflectivity to be seen from earth. As the space shuttle program comes to an end over the next two weeks, the space station stands as testament to the shuttle's full potential for assembly in space. When I began my jog away from the mob, I was reassured that ordinary Americans still payed attention to space exploration in the news, and it could excite them enough to check it out on a lazy Tuesday night. There is much hope for America's future in space.

Building a Better BUFF

2011-05-24T16:51:00.000-07:00

Perhaps no airplane personifies the US Air Force like the B-52 Stratofortress. The mighty bomber, powered by eight engines, immediately became one of the most fearsome combat aircraft ever built when it first flew in 1952. Over the next ten years, 744 "BUFFs" were built. They have seved with distinction ever since as a symbol of the Cold War, in addition to their heavy use over Vietnam, Iraq, Kosovo & Afghanistan.

By the late 60's, defense planners saw the end of the road for the B-52, fearing that it would be unable to penetrate Soviet defenses. The B-1 was designed as a faster replacement with a heavier payload, designed for low-altitude penetration underneath the Soviet radars. A series of delays, mostly political, ensured that the B-1 would not go into service until 1986. By that time, even the B-1 had become vulnerable to the most advanced radars, and the B-2 Stealth Bomber was necessary.

Yet the B-52 still found a way to soldier on. A solid airframe with room for newer avionics was adapted to carry more sophisticated weapons that could strike from a safe distance. This was demonstrated to great effect when B-52G bombers launched cruise missles on the first night of Operation Desert Storm in January 1991. By the time of the September 11 attacks, B-52's had been equipped with satellite-guided JDAM bombs. For the first time, the Cold Warrior was able to drop small munitions on the front lines to support US and allied ground forces.

The military news & commentary site StrategyPage makes the interesting observation that the B-52 is the cheapest of the heavy bombers for performing airstrikes over Afghanistan. But one has to ask what can ever replace the BUFF once the airframes (the youngest are nearly 50 years old!) finally wear out. The Air Force will need a long-range aircraft, simple to maintain (i.e., no need for stealth or supersonic performance) with cavernous bomb bays to store large amounts of ordinance.

During the 1980's, Boeing actually responded to this need by proposing a modified 747 jumbo jet. The plane would be capable of carrying at least 70 cruise missiles internally. A decade later, Boeing studied a modified B-52 with its eight TF-33 engines replaced by four RB211 engines from old 757 airliners. The Air Force controversially shot the proposal down, arguing that the cost of installing the new engines didn't outweigh the reduced fuel & maintenance costs over the life of the B-52. (The open question was how long the Air Force intended to keep the B-52.)

While the Air Force continues to study the Next Generation Bomber and look towards stealthy flying wings that can fly without a human pilot, a modified long-range airliner (Boeing's 777 and 787, nd Airbus's A340 come to mind) would also be a prudent course of action. Today's airliners would probably be limited to carrying weapons internally, with little ground clearnace to carry them on underwing pylons. But they would have the range and endurance to loiter over their targets for half a day or more, and put bombs on targets of opportunity that arise. In future counter-insurgency wars similar to Afghanistan, speed and stealth are worthless in undefended airspace. A soldier in the field wants his air support planes to have persistence and precision in patrolling an area and dropping weapons on the enemy. The B-52 has been perfect for this mission, and a modified airliner may be the most economical way to keep this capability after the BUFF flies into the sunset.

Give Me Liberty, or Give Me The Shaft!

2011-05-17T14:43:00.000-07:00

The idea of using a large solid rocket for the first stage of a human-rated crew launcher presents a lot of technical problems, so I was not surprised when NASA stopped development of the Ares I rocket. Supporters of Project Constellation were saddened at the time, but Ares I surprisingly isn't dead. Its principal contractor, ATK, is keeping "The Shaft" alive as a privately-funded venture (without even the benefit of NASA CCDEV money) called "Liberty." The true believers in Ares I now have a chance to put their money where their mouth is and bring the design to life.

I'm embarassed to say that I've been catching up on a lot of the NewSpace developments just now after several months away from the space industry, so the Liberty launcher took me by surprise. Undoubtedly, some of the Ares I vibration issues still need to be addressed in the form of an upper-stage isolation system, the parachute-mounted dampers, or the active d-strut system. Crew survivability in the event that the first stage explodes (either due to design defects or destruction by range safety) will still be almost nil. But other Ares I problems seem to have a solution in the new Liberty configuration.

One of the longest-lead items in "The Shaft's" schedule was J-2X, an all-new upper stage engine with similar performance to the old Apollo J-2. The teaming of ATK with EADS-Astrium gets around this problem thanks to the Vulcain 2 engine. Originally used on the Ariane 5 first stage, the Vulcain engines have been remarkable engines very similar to the J-2 in terms of performance. They were a natural choice to replace the J-2X; after all, Volvo Aero produced the innovative nozzles for both engines. The remaining challenge is whether the Vulcain engines can be adapted to ignite on the second stage, far away from the required ground support equipment they've relied on during the Ariane days. Presumably Astrium will be replacing Boeing as prime contractor for the Liberty's first stage as well.

My biggest questions about Liberty deal with the infrastructure to support the vehicle. Apparently ATK is going to leverage the shuttle infrastructure as much as possible, using the aging Mobile Launch Pads & Crawlers. Presumably the Liberty would be assembled in the Vehicle Assembly Building and launch from LC-39. The inherent contradiction is that these facilities were never designed for minimizing the amount of labor during the launch processing phase of the mission. If Liberty has any commercial prospects, the facilities may become an achilles heel in the face of strong competition from SpaceX, the Boeing-ULA team & others.

Admittedly, I've never been a big fan of Ares I. Perhaps it's a Challenger-inspired phobia of solid rockets, but Ares I always seemed like it would take too long to develop, cost too much to fly, and pose too much of a safety risk to the astronauts who flew onboard. But ATK now has the chance to prove me wrong. At least they will have to rely on their own money to make it work, instead of keeping "business as usual" going solely at the taxpayers' expense.

The New Mercury-Atlas

2011-04-25T15:27:00.000-07:00

When I saw this story on SpaceFlightNow.com, my eyes were immediately drawn to the graphic of the Boeing CST-100 space capsule on top of the Atlas V rocket. While previous artwork from United Launch Alliance showed a generic capsule on top of the Atlas, this is the first illustration of the complete CST-100 + Atlas V 401 stack. Apparently this is an unmanned cargo configuration due to the missing Launch Escape Tower (unless Boeing has some ideas similar to SpaceX for crew escape.)

There's no elegant way to mount a capsule to the skinny Atlas V rocket and its even-skinnier Centaur upper stage (as long as the Centaur isn't wearing its 5-meter fairing for large payloads.) So Boeing went with a short and wide tapered section between the CST-100 service module and the Centaur upper stage. By eyeballing the picture, it appears that the CST-100's diameter is around 4 meters--pretty close to the 3.8 meter diameter of the Atlas V. This would put the CST-100 in a similar size-class as the Apollo spacecraft. It should be able to carry three astronauts in comfort on long missions, or 5-6 for emergency rescue missions from the ISS.

I was reflecting on the early orbital spaceflights which used the Mercury spacecraft and Atlas booster. Since Boeing owns the manufacturer of Mercury (McDonnell Aircraft) and wants to use the Atlas booster, why not just rename the CST the Mercury? If nothing else, enthusiasts for manned spaceflight can be very nostalgic.

An End to Escape Towers?

2011-04-19T14:57:00.000-07:00

Since the earliest days of human-rated space capsules, it's always been a challenge to safely tear the capsule away from a launcher that was exploding or boosting off-course. The system devised by the great NASA engineer Max Faget was a tower equipped with a powerful solid rocket that would attach to the front of the capsule. Escape towers debuted during Project Mercury and were reused for the Apollo & Soyuz spacecraft (still used today by the latter!)

During the pad & early launch phase, the escape tower is a heavy but effective method to pull a capsule and crew to safety. The engines on the capsule's service module or the other rocket stages lack the thrust or the response time to act in situations where the capsule needs to accelerate from a standstill to escape its booster, or where it needs to boost downrange and reorient itself into an attitude where the heat shield bears the brunt of the aerodynamic heating before the capsule can deploy its parachutes and land.

After the early portion of ascent (usually around or shortly after stage II ignition,) an escape tower is no longer needed. The service module or upper stages can get the capsule safely downrange, or even all the way to orbit. The abort mode is determined by the phase of the launch where the failure occurs. During Soyuz 18a, the bad separation of stage 2 & 3 led to an abort using the service module engine. Soyuz T-10 used the escape tower after the rocket caught fire on the launch pad prior to launch. One space shuttle mission even aborted to orbit after a main engine shut down early.

Engineers have recognized the limitations of launch escape towers, particularly how they are quite heavy for a piece of equipment that is only useful for less than two minutes during ascent. Gemini capsules got around this using ejection seats, but only because the aerozine-nitrogen tetroxide fireball of an exploding Titan rocket would be more contained than the boosters of Mercury. Former NASA administrator mike Griffin promoted his Max Launch Abort System, a shroud which housed four solid rockets and fit over the capsule. Now SpaceX will demonstrate a new launch escape system under a $75 million contract with NASA. The escape rockets would be completely contained within the Dragon capsule. It could very well work, but it does bring two concerns to mind. For starters, the mass of the escape rockets would make it all the way to orbit. And the use of multiple escape rockets reduces the system's reliability when compared with the single-rocket designs of the past. But it will be interesting to see if SpaceX can come up with an effective solution to this old problem.

Polar Express

2011-04-18T15:17:00.000-07:00

One of the most surprising aspects about the recent Falcon heavy announcement was SpaceX's decision to make Vandenberg Air Force Base the initial launch site for their new heavy-lift rocket. The selection of Vandenberg indicates that Falcon Heavy will be launching to the south and south-southwest, putting payloads into retrograde and highly-inclined orbits like the ever-useful sun-synchronous orbit.

Highly-inclined orbits have many advantages, particularly for sensor missions. They can observe a large fraction of the earth's surface due to the wide range of latitudes they travel. Sun-synchronous orbits provide constant coverage by passing over the same point on the earth's surface at the same time every day.

Most satellites that have been launched into highly-inclined orbits have been military in nature. So it stands to reason that the Pentagon may have some uses in mind for the Falcon Heavy. In the past, the Pentagon has expressed little interest in rockets bigger than the Titan IV (which replaced the shuttle's military mission) or Delta IV Heavy. The only proposed payload requiring a bigger rocket was the Zenith Star space laser.

I have always viewed Falcon Heavy as a launcher to support manned spaceflight, able to lift components and propellant for space stations, or for spacecraft designed for flight beyond earth's orbit. Yet those payloads are best assembled in low-inclination orbits and launched to the east from Cape Canaveral. This puts the spacecraft in an inclination that will not requiring the burning of too much propellant as it departs on a plane connecting the earth with the intended destination (moon, Mars, asteroid or other celestial body.)

Thus far, no human has ever launched into a near-polar orbit. Originally the space shuttle was supposed to fly some missions from the "cursed" SLC-6 launch pad at Vandenberg, a plan that was cancelled after Challenger was lost. The Vandenberg missions necessitated the shuttle's big wings, so the orbiter would have enough range to glide cross-track back to its California landing site after one orbit. (After all, the earth processes roughly 45 degrees after one orbit period for a shuttle in low earth orbit.) Because the Van Allen radiation belts emanate from an axis passing near the earth's poles, the astronauts would be exposed to a much higher radiation dose than on missions with lower inclinations. For winged spacecraft like the shuttle, the near-polar trajectories greatly limit launch aborts similar to the Trans-Atlantic Abort for easterly launches, which would allow a shuttle to land downrange (no luck landing a shuttle in Antarctica!) This is less of a problem for capsule-type spacecraft, which can set down anywhere in the ocean as long as a recovery ship is within a reasonable distance.

So what does this mean for Falcon Heavy's potential payloads? At this point it's more of a mystery than the Falcon Heavy upper stage or the first-stage crossfeed system (which will be the subject of an upcoming post.)

Blast From the Past

2011-04-09T07:49:00.000-07:00

As a child of the 80's, I have fond memories of an older generation of computers. It started with my first Nintendo Entertainment System in 1989. I learned the basics of BASIC programming on a second-hand Commodore 64. Old computers and retro games utterly fascinate me. So I reacted with utter joy when I saw that Commodore computers are back on the market. Well, sort of.

The original Commodore Business Machines was liquidated in 1994, owing to the company's inability to properly market their innovative Amiga line of computers. While the Amiga brand name and intellectual property have changed hands numerous times since then, Commodore's trademark apparently belongs now to Commodore USA. (This should make for an interesting courtroom battle with the current owners of the Amiga brand, Hyperion Entertainment.)

Commodore USA has contracted with CyberNet to produce PC's that are completely contained within the keyboard. The flagship model is their new Commodore 64, in a case designed to match those distinctive beige cases and black keys of so long ago. Commodore offers other all-in-one PC's based on existing Cybernet computers are available now; the Commodore 64 has already sold out.

The chips inside the keyboards have no lineage to the Commodores of yore (while a small but dedicated group tries to keep the Amiga platform alive on Power PC hardware.) While these new Commodores have PC hardware inside, they can run the classic Commodore software using emulators once Commodore USA finishes its "Commodore OS." If I were a betting man, I'd say that "Commodore OS" was based on the open-source port of the Amiga OS to the Intel architecture.

I'm very interested in buying a new Commodore, but the $595 price tag for the Commodore 64 without monitor seems a bit steep. After all, it only has an Atom CPU (although the NVidia ION graphics chipset puts it head-and-shoulders over netbooks with otherwise similar specs.) The "classic" Commodore keyboard design wasn't that great to begin with, and it led to terrible wrist strain during periods of extended typing. But if Commodore USA brings back the more ergonomic Commodore 64C or Commodore 128 I'd probably place a pre-order the instant they were available.

Building a Bigger Falcon

2011-04-06T17:06:00.000-07:00

When Elon Musk speaks, the space community listens. Once-skeptical industry observers have to take his bold vision for the future of space travel seriously after the successful launches of Falcon I, Falcon 9, and most recently the Dragon spacecraft. With little hyperbole he's now predicting that his SpaceX team will launch Falcon Heavy, the world's largest current launch vehicle, by 2013.

If "Falcon Heavy" sounds familiar, that's because it is. The original Falcon 9 plan called for a "Falcon 9 Heavy" that would consist of three first stages in a parallel cluster with an upper stage on top. Each 1st stage booster would have nine Merlin engines, for a total of 27 engines igniting at liftoff. The mere thought of 27 engines is usually enough to give a mission assurance engineer nightmares. It draws comparisons to the Soviet N1 moon rocket, which was doomed by the complexity of its 30 first stage engines. But Falcon Heavy should be different. For starters, the N1's engines were designed and built by the inexperienced Kuznetsov design bureau. SpaceX also has the benefit of holding its rockets down after engine ignition to assess their performance before releasing it for flight.

The difference between the current Falcon Heavy design and previous plans for Falcon 9 Heavy are in the size of the payload. Falcon 9 Heavy would have competed with the current Delta IV Heavy, which currently flies about once or twice per year. But Elon Musk predicts that Falcon Heavy will now lift payloads twice as large as planned, roughly 50 tons. Among all American-made launchers, only the Saturn V and Shuttle were mightier. Why the change? I suspect it had a lot to do with the Augustine Commission's findings from 2009 that a larger launcher was needed for missions beyond earth orbit, especially Jeff Greason's belief that 50 tons was the upper limit for a single payload element. (After all, this was the approximate mass of the fully-fuelled Apollo spacecraft and Lunar Module.) This larger payload will likely be made possible after SpaceX develops its hydrogen-burning upper-stage. Stretching the first stage propellant tanks is also a possibility.

What would you do with a rocket that big? Elon Musk wants to send a manned Dragon spacecraft around the moon and back. For the wealthiest adventure seekers, shooting the moon would be the ultimate ride. Falcon Heavy would also be a key element in any effort to send humans to an asteroid, as President Obama has proposed. But in my eyes, a vehicle like Falcon Heavy opens the solar system to just about anywhere once in-space assembly and propellant transfer are perfected.

Giving it another try

2011-03-29T15:12:00.000-07:00

Once-regular readers of this blog have probably noticed that things have been pretty silent for the last ten months. Truth be told, I've been completely separated from the world of engineering for the last year and a half. Between my current job and my non-involvement in the world of technological progress, I can't say I've had much to say.

The situation is changing this Monday, as I start a new job in the defense and space industry. It will require the skills I learned in engineering school and in the US Air Force. My time away from this industry has helped me to see things from a different perspective, letting me appreciate the pay and intellectual camaraderie that are often part of technical work.

In the days ahead I will make more frequent posts when I have some perspective to share on the technology issues of the day. Hopefully I can inspire a few people to see the ramifications of technology from a new perspective as they try to form intelligent, informed opinions of their world.

The Case Against Nuclear Power from the Right

2011-03-16T21:47:00.000-07:00

Over the decades, the debate over nuclear power could be framed in somewhat simple terms. "Corporate polluters" on the right wanted to destroy the environment with nuclear power, while "Luddite environmentalist hippies" on the left were standing in the way of science and progress. My use of those terms is sarcastic of course, but such is the banality of debate in America where opposing viewpoints are belittled in such simple terms.

In more recent times, environmentalist opposition to nuclear power has softened due to fears about carbon dioxide's role in global climate change. While many environmentalists still put their faith in solar and wind power, the more pragmatic proponents of Anthropomorphic Global Warming have seen the drawbacks of "clean energy" and begrudgingly put their faith in nuclear power as a bridge technology until something better (such as fusion) comes along. But if the left can rethink its stereotypical opposition to nuclear power, can the right rethink its unflinching support?

During the height of the Atomic Age in the 1950's, the American public was sold on the idea that nuclear power would be "too cheap to meter." At the most basic level of nuclear physics, the proponents of nuclear power were correct; a tiny amount of uranium fuel could produce far more power than an equivalent amount of coal or natural gas.

As nuclear power progressed from the experimental stage to operational nuclear plants, it became clear that "too cheap to meter" would not survive a head-on collision with reality. While the fuel costs would be comparatively low when compared with fossil energy, the deadly radiation made it necessary to spend a lot of time, money and bureaucracy to ensure the safety of the power plant. These measures made the startup costs of nuclear power astronomical. Nuclear power only became commercially viable thanks to guaranteed loans and laws to limit the insurance liability for nuclear accidents. For free-market libertarians, nuclear power became a corporate welfare queen that could not survive in a free market (although the energy sector is not a free market and operates under heavy government regulation.) While some of the bureaucracy could likely be trimmed to get plants licensed and built faster, some of it is also necessary to ensure the safety of the plants once they go into service.

Can nuclear power compete on an equal footing with fossil fuels? Does nuclear's lack of carbon emissions compensate for any economic disadvantages? These are all some of the complex issues swirling at the center of an unsettled debate on the economics of nuclear power. There is no doubt that even if environmental catastrophe is avoided at Japan's Fukushima plant, the economic impact will be measured in the billions of dollars.

Admittedly I have a fascination with nuclear power. I am extremely proud of the decades of work my father has accomplished in support of nuclear power. I was excited enough about graduate studies in nuclear engineering that I took a 200-level course on the topic before rethinking the direction of my career. Yet the staggering startup costs and the cost (and risk) associated with potential failure are enough to make me question whether taming the power of fission is really worth it.

Meltdown

2011-03-14T13:02:00.000-07:00

I had planned on spending this update reflecting on the retirement of Space Shuttle Discovery, but the ongoing meltdown of three nuclear reactors at Japan's Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant deserves a bit more attention. As the crisis unfolds, it's worth asking if anything more can be done to limit this disaster's effects, and whether a similar situation could occur within the United States (where 23 GE-built reactors of similar design are operating today.)

The Fukushima Disaster can undeniably be linked to Friday's tsunami, which may have killed as many as 10,000 people as it buffeted the Japanese mainland. While the reactors "scrammed" (shut down) as planned when the earthquake was first detected, the loss of power to the plant's coolant pumps led to their overheating and the eventual melting of fuel rods within the reactors. Fukushima is not typical of the way most nuclear plants behave during earthquakes; American nuclear plants have withstood earthquakes before without overheating. Diesel generators are supposed to drive the coolant systems until the reactor can be brought back online. It's likely that Fukushima's diesel generators were damaged by the tsunami. By this point it's almost certain that none of those three reactors will return to service, since the Fukushima plant officials have resorted to the desperate measure of pumping highly-corrosive seawater into the reactors to cool them.

The larger question is whether it's ever possible to completely disaster-proof a nuclear power plant. The anti-nuclear activists would say that it's not, and argue that there's no acceptable risk level when dealing with the small probability that a disaster such as Fukushima could happen.

"Acceptable risk" is important when considering the consequences of disaster, however unlikely they may be. This past spring & summer's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico certainly made me reconsider whether our society should accept the remote risks of offshore drilling after seeing the consequences the spill created for the Gulf Coast. Will there be consequences after the Fukushima disaster? It's hard to say because of conflicting experts who have taken their message to the airwaves since this disaster started to unfold. Opponents of nuclear power argue that molten nuclear fuel, fission byproducts and other core materials will eat through the reactor's containment vessel and escape into the environment. Supporters of nuclear power generally believe that the molten materials will be contained, and any gases released will be largely harmless as they were during the Three Mile Island meltdown of 1979.

Just as the nuclear power industry appeared to be headed towards rebirth and growth around the world, the natural disaster of the tsunami is forcing policymakers to reconsider its views on nuclear power. I have no doubt that short-term measures will be taken to protect the diesel generators of many nuclear power plants in areas where there is risk of earthquake, tsunami and other natural disasters. There may also be new designs for venting the hydrogen gas which exploded and partially destroyed the outer containment buildings of the #1 & 3 reactors. If nuclear power is not stalled as a result of this accident, we may see a renewed push for safer reactor designs that rely on helium coolant and pebble-like fuel elements.

As America and other nations continue to debate the role of nuclear power, it's important to take measured reactions to the disaster at Fukushima. With any technology there are risks we have to accept when it fails. Nuclear power is an important "bridge technology" between the coal-fired plants we've relied on for too long, and a faraway future of nuclear fusion. Practically-speaking, we will need to accept and minimize nuclear power's risks to meet our nation's energy needs well into the future.

FOr great analysis of what's going on at Fukushima, check out the Nullius in Verba blog. Good stuff!

Five Years

2010-12-08T15:29:00.000-08:00

Back in the summer of 2005, the exciting developments in the field of space exploration inspired me to start blogging about them. Those were very heady days; America was going back to the moon, and numerous starry-eyed NewSpace firms had plans to put the common man into orbit around the earth.

There were two big announcements from that period which really turned the industry on its ear. The first was Orion and Ares I, a capsule and launch vehicle which would be developed and operated by NASA as part of its efforts to staff the International Space Station and return humans to the moon. The other was SpaceX's announcement of Falcon 9, a launch vehicle capable of placing a manned capsule in orbit.

Today, SpaceX made good on an incredibly bold promise that was five years in the making. After a successful launch of the first Falcon 9 in June, SpaceX launched a second Falcon 9 with an unmanned version of its Dragon capsule, and safely returned that capsule from earth orbit to an ocean splashdown. As SpaceX founder Elon Musk put it, if the capsule were manned, the passengers would have had a fun ride.

There are few remaining obstacles in the way of commercial space voyages for anybody who is able to put up the money to afford them. Once SpaceX can demonstrate proximity operations and docking with the International Space Station, the door has truly been opened to the commercial utilization of the final frontier.

As far as the other announcement goes, the Ares I is now a part of space history, the interesting ideas that produced flashy viewgraphs and some hardware but never quite made it to space. Over the long run, Ares I proved to be a largely-new solid first stage and liquid-fueled second stage which would take too long to develop, cost too much money to get to flight status, and consume even more money over its operational life. For better or worse, Ares I was designed to protect the status quo of NASA's industrial base. As a political animal, it fell victim to the change in administrations. The same can't be said of clean-sheet, privately-funded efforts like SpaceX and Dragon.

Right now I'm enjoying a stiff drink in honor of SpaceX. Today will rank amongst events like the flights of SpaceShipOne as the pivotal events which enabled humans to colonize the heavens.

Just Say "No" to Netbooks

2010-05-05T19:24:00.000-07:00

It's been said that netbooks have been the fastest-growing segment of the computer market over the past two years. They also enjoy the ignominious claim to the lowest customer satisfaction rating of any class of computers. I have finally been able to experience a netbook over an extended trial period, and I'm glad to say that I haven't wasted money on one.

I recently borrowed a Dell Inspiron Mini 1010 from a friend, with the intention of buying it if I liked it. This friend had originally purchased the netbook but quickly replaced it with a 13" MacBook. Now I'm starting to understand why. it's decent for checking e-mail, but it's very easy to make typos on such a tiny keyboard. The screen is so short that you find yourself scrolling through even the shortest of webpages. But whenever you go to scroll, you realize that the touchpad is so tiny that it's virtually useless. Your index finger and thumb are virtually touching each other as you attempt to click and drag.

I think a lot of the erogonomics issues that cripple netbooks result from the PC market's switch from 4:3 to 16:9 widescreen monitors. If netbooks kept the same width but reverted back to the old aspect ratio, we'd get taller netbooks that showed more of our favorite websites and had more room for a functional touchpad.

Given a choice between the netbook and the enormous Dell Inspiron 5150 that I'm currently using, I've stuck with the older "sumo laptop" based on its superior ergonomics. (This is in spite of the Inspiron 5150's reputation for being one of the least-reliable computers ever created.)

Once I happen to stumble upon niceties such as "a full time job" and "a salary that covers my rent and food allowance," I will probably make like my friend and buy a 13" notebook, probably one from HP or Toshiba. I'm starting to think that 13" is the lower limit for how small and lightweight you can make a practical notebook PC. When it comes to netbooks, you'll be dropping $250 or more on a barely-functional PC that's not suited for scrolling or typing lengthy documents.

Thoughts from an Unemployed Engineer (Part 1)

2010-04-20T20:50:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to understand why so many corporate headhunters will contact a job-seeking engineer about a position requiring skills that are listed nowhere in their resume. This has happened to me a few times over the past year or so as I've been looking for work. I am not the kind of person who would spin a fable about my so-called abilities, only to be exposed as a phony when it came time to start working with the particular employer.

I am an aerospace engineer, yet I get contacted to do hardware and software engineering work that I am totally unqualified to perform. For that matter, my basic familiarity with MatLab somehow gets spun into an ability to work with SimuLink by the recruiters. All of these illusory teases of a job only serve to make the job hunt more frustrating and ultimately futile.

For that matter, the aerospace industry seems to only show interest in me when it comes to doing engineering tasks similar to what I performed in the Air Force. Truth be told, if I actually enjoyed what I was doing in the Air Force, I would have stayed in. But I got out because I needed a change. It just seems like the industry is only interested in people who can deliver a vital skill out-of-the-box with no additional training required.

I really wish that some recruiter would look at the things I learned in college and say, "You know what? This guy really kicked ass doing structural analysis and aerodynamics classes. Why don't we train him up to do one of those things?" I would give anything for the opportunity to make a fresh start in this industry.

The aerospace industry used to give second chances to people; after all, the people most culpable for the two shuttle disasters got to stay in the industry (even if they were reassigned from their previous positions.)

The economy is tough right now; maybe there is hope that the jobs situation will get better once business picks up. But it's hard to keep your head high when you're still battling the shadows from bad jobs of the past, with no glimmer of recognition for one's strengths and past accomplishments.

Rescue Me

2010-04-16T21:43:00.000-07:00

The Orion spacecraft, in some form, will survive as a Crew Rescue Vehicle for the International Space Station. The new CRV program may prove to be little more than a NASA make-work program, as the need for a CRV is low. I see two scenarios where CRV might be used. The first is an incident such as the Mir fire of 1996 or Mir-Progress collision of 1997 which makes ISS uninhabitable. The other is a medical emergency that forces the evacuation of a crewmember from the ISS.

The success of a CRV is dependent on how quickly it can evacuate a crew from the ISS back to earth. Time may be working against the CRV. In the case of a capsule like Soyuz, a recovery crew needs to be dispatched to the targeted landing zone to recover the crew and capsule in helicopters. A good question (which I don't have an answer for right now) is whether the Russians currently keep a recovery force on standby at all times in the event that ISS was evacuated on short notice. It would certainly be necessary if anytime-evacuation of ISS was required.

The method of landing also impacts the speed in which a sick crewmember could receive medical attention. The runway landing approach used by X-38 would get the crew close to a hospital immediately after the CRV was landed and safed. On the other hand, an ocean splashdown would require a long time to mobilize (depending on the recovery ships that were chosen.) Conceivably one of the recovery ships would be a US Navy vessel outfitted with medical facilities. The Soyuz-style land recovery would require administration of first-aid aboard the helicopter while the crewmember was flown to a hospital.

The sick crewmember scenario is not the best one for a CRV, because it presupposes that 1) the illness or injury is grave enough to force evacuation, yet does not require immediate treatment, and 2) the entire crew should be evacuated because one member is in grave condition. A capsule of Orion's size would be a waste in this scenario. A better approach would evacuate the sick crewmember and two other astronauts in the capsule that they originally arrived in (either Soyuz, Dragon, or another commercial alternative.) A second capsule would be available to the remaining three crew as they continued their mission.

The best case for using an Orion lifeboat is a space station failure that allows for enough time to evacuate the crew to a CRV. I suspect that most mission-ending failures at the space station would be catastrophic and quick, resulting in the loss of all crew. But assuming a scenario like rapid loss of electrical power or life support systems, it is nice to have a backup spacecraft that could undock and even operate as a free-flyer for a short period of time before returning to earth. Again, the difficulty lies in arguing that developing a large six-man spacecraft is necessary when two three-man spacecraft will already be docked to the ISS.

In resurrected form, Orion still begs questions of which launcher will carry it into orbit. In a stripped form that will only fly to ISS and back (and assuming the size is not reduced,) it will likely be light enough to launch on a Delta IV Heavy. Shrinking the diameter might make it compatible with the existing Atlas V variants. By launching with no crew aboard, the traditional arguments about "human rating" requirements are void.

Preventing the Giant Sucking Sound

2010-03-15T08:32:00.000-07:00

When Congress passed the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993, Ross Perot famously predicted a "giant sucking sound" as American jobs went south of the border. While Mr. Perot's accuracy is debatable, I thought the phrase was apropos for the predicted job losses expected at Cape Canaveral, Johnson Space Center, Michoud Assembly Facility and elsewhere when the Space Shuttle program winds down.

The Obama Administration's support for private entities as a replacement for the space shuttle does not mean that the total number of space-related jobs is going down. If anything, it may increase during the next five to ten years. The challenge is twofold: maintain the industry skills base and knowledge base until the successor vehicles are mature, and ensure that shuttle program workers who are below retirement age can quickly be placed into new space-related careers.

The need for any nation to recognize its technical workforce as a strategic asset is essential. Their skills must be retained for the nation's competitiveness and survival. Even Saddam Hussein found projects that could keep his nuclear scientists employed when he put his nuclear weapons program into hibernation. Every nation strives to find productive applications for its technical workforce, although creating "make work" positions is sometimes a necessary evil. With proper planning, it may be possible to find productive applications for the shuttle workforce instead of keeping them on the NASA payroll to perform work that is not useful once the shuttle is retired.

I'm empathetic to the problems faced by an unemployed technical workforce. I, for one, an am unemployed engineer. Many of my friends from college are currently working on the shuttle program. Nobody wants to relocate their families in search of work which may not last for the rest of that person's career. The goal is to estimate the number of newspace jobs that are predicted in central Florida, Houston and elsewhere, and match the existing workforce members with jobs fitting their skillsets.

I don't know what currently exists for helping members of the shuttle workforce to find employment, but NASA really needs a "Shuttle Transition Office" that has a high priority within the agency. Such an office would work closely with SpaceX, ULA, Sierra Nevada Corp, Bigelow Aerospace and everybody else in the newspace arena to encourage maximum reuse of existing shuttle facilities (the Vehicle Assembly Building at the cape and Michould Assembly Facility come to mind,) and maximum use of shuttle program employees in NewSpace programs.

Recent estimates of 23,000 job losses from Central Florida from the shuttle shutdown are shocking. They're enough to scare up congressional support for the expensive and impractical Ares-Orion system, if for no other reason than preventing a massive exodus of skilled workers than the swing state of Florida. Retiring the shuttle is far more drastic than phasing a particular type of airplane out of the Air Force inventory, since the Air Force rarely retires a plane without a replacement. It's more akin to the Air Force saying that they won't be flying any more bombers. The need for the unique skills required to fly the shuttle isn't going away; it's merely splitting between a number or corporate entities. With a solid plan and steadfast execution, the painful transition from the Shuttle to Dragon, DreamChaser and Orion-Lite will be far less costly in terms of job losses and stressful relocations for the families of America's exemplary shuttle workforce.

Blast From the Past

2010-03-13T22:49:00.001-08:00

One of my new favorite hobbies is playing emulated video games on my PC. The blocky 8-bit graphics are crude yet nostalgic. Some of the game designs were so well thought-out that the games are still classic and addictive.

One of my stops down memory lane was Space Shuttle Project by Absolute Entertainment. That's right, there was a Nintendo game based on the space shuttle program. And it was probably enough to excite a nerdy, space-loving eight-year-old like myself during those days. The grainy voices of mission control featured in the game were pretty neat for their day. The gameplay itself is somewhat tedious; the player must execute a sequence of tasks using the control pad (I'm using a Playstation controller, which plugs into my PC's USB port through an adapter.) A keen memory really helps in this game. Having the instruction manual would also help, since the control scheme for each task is different.

For science-minded boys playing the game, I'm sure it was pretty educational about the major events in the shuttle flight sequence, the propellant loading operation, and the satellite deployment mission. It also includes bitterly funny moments; when the player runs out of chances during the launch sequence, he/she gets a newspaper which says "Shuttle Launch Aborted; Crew Ejectes (sic) Safely." I guess it's not okay to tell kids that the astronauts are doomed in the event of a major anomaly between liftoff and the point where a transatlantic abort is possible. After all, this game was produced just five years after the Challenger disaster, and it was important to reassure kids about America's vibrant future in space.

Space Shuttle Project didn't get very popular, and few (if any) console games of this sort were produced again (There is a Space Camp game for Wii, but it looks like shovelware upon first glance.) Luckily, people who are serious space enthusiasts can still play along with Orbiter on their home PC's.

Carbon Cycle

2010-02-23T19:55:00.000-08:00

The new NASA budget calls for development of a new hydrocarbon engine, similar to or greater in thrust than the existing RD-180, as part of its “Heavy Lift Research” effort. Instantly I’m reminded of RS-84, the large hydrocarbon engine that NASA had funded from 2002-2004 as part of its Space Launch Initiative. After the Vision for Space Exploration was announced, RS-84 lost its funding as it didn’t fit into the lunar return mission. The great opportunity it once presented was wasted, but the industry will pick up where it last left off.

The new engine won’t be exactly the same as RS-84; the old effort aimed at producing a reusable engine in the class of the F-1 that powered the Saturn V. The new engine is targeted at roughly half the thrust.

At the heart of a new hydrocarbon engine will be the complex machinery required for the staged combustion cycle. Past US hydrocarbon (kerosene) engines have used the gas generator cycle; even the F-1 and new Merlin 1e have only produced around 304 seconds of vacuum specific impulse. The Russians, on the other hand, developed staged combustion cycles for the RD-170 family of engines (of which the RD-180 is a member.) This more efficient burning process raises the vacuum Isp to 330 seconds or more. The challenge in perfecting this combustion cycle for hydrocarbon engines is avoiding the “coking” of carbon deposits along engine components where it interferes with operation. Coking is less of a concern for single-use engines than with reusable ones like RS-84, but it still must be mitigated to ensure the engine works reliably during boost.

The history of launch vehicles only validates hydrocarbon engines as a great asset for booster engines. While hydrogen/oxygen propellants have higher specific impulse, the low density of hydrogen means larger, draggier propellant tanks and engines that generally produce lest thrust than their hydrocarbon counterparts. This thrust is extremely important during the first stage of the mission because the rocket is at its heaviest. The thrust needs to be slightly greater than its weight at this point so the vehicle can boost straight up. Thrust becomes less important (relatively speaking) once the vehicle is above the densest layers of the atmosphere and pitches over for the rest of the ascent.

The Space Shuttle used high-thrust solid rocket boosters to overcome the deficiencies of its hydrogen-fueled main propulsion system. Solid rockets can generate large amounts of thrust and have very high density, but their specific impulse is very poor. Hydrocarbon engines seem to "split the difference" between the two extremes of hydrogen and solids. A launcher with a hydrocarbon first stage can clear the launch tower and loft its hydrogen-burning upper stages to an altitude where there's little atmospheric drag, before burning out and falling away.

Since the days of Apollo, the US has largely ceded its lead with hydrocarbon engines. Aside from incremental improvements to the Atlas I/II and Delta main engines, the only significant development has been the Kestrel and Merlin engines developed by SpaceX. The propulsion directorate of Air Force Research laboratory has been working on a powerhead for a kerosene-burning, staged combustion engine for several years; sadly, this effort hasn't been funded at a level that will lead to a flightworthy engine in the near term. The new NASA program will likely build a replacement for the Russian-produced RD-180. America's reliance on Russia for this vital component of the EELV program is a national security vulnerability that will hopefully be corrected in the next decade.

The requirement for an RD-180 sized engine seems to mesh with the heavy-lift options discussed by the Augustine Panel. Jeff Greason's assertion that a heavy lifter should be designed around a 50 tonne payload is borne out by the "Atlas V Phase 2" studies. (Of course, new propellant tanks and new engines means it's not really an Atlas V anymore.) A triple-core vehicle with boosters wider than 5 meters can meet the Greason-defined heavy-lift requirement. Its single-core derivative could launch a 20 tonne payload like the former Orion capsule. Each booster core would require two RD-180 class engines, for six in total on the heavy lifter. NASA had also looked into a bigger, three-stage heavy-lifter based on shuttle ET tooling. Such a rocket would be similar to the Saturn V in performance (possibly even greater) while using only seven RD-180 class engines on its first stage.

I'd expect both Pratt & Whitney-Rocketdyne and SpaceX to compete for NASA funding on the new engine. PWR likely has some knowledge of the RD-180 that can be applied for the new engine. SpaceX has been working on a "Big Falcon Engine" for several years. (I had even suggested at one point in the past that BFE should be designed as a replacement for the RD-180 and for the nine-engine cluster on the Falcon 9.) Whether the new effort will be collaborative or competitive seems unsettled. Also vague at this point is whether the effort will focus on kerosene propellants, or if alternatives like propane and methane are under consideration. (Hank Hill would get excited about the former prospect.) Methane would seem to be better suited for upper-stages and earth-escape stages; it's similar to hydrogen in many ways aside from its higher boiling point.) The involvement of SpaceX begs the question of whether a new engine development program is necessary if SpaceX was going to develop one anyways.

The RS-84 program might have been the best element of the Space Launch Initiative program. It was certainly a step in the right direction, and it ended prematurely after NASA started sacrificing technology development in favor of a single-minded focus on the lunar destination. Hopefully this new effort will receive a much higher funding level and an aggressive schedule. We're back to square one in this effort, but this gives the industry a chance to fix past mistakes and get US booster development on the right track.

The Space Program We Can Afford

2010-02-15T22:15:00.001-08:00

Reactions to the "Obama Space Plan" across the industry have been extremely polarized indeed. The debate has drawn in odd defenders of the president and some even stranger opponents. When Newt Gingrich is defending an Obama policy from the attacks of Charles Krauthammer, you know the world has been turned on its ear.

My brief take on the new space policy is that it's the only option our nation can possibly afford at this time. Every day I fret that America is going broke, and sliding into a debt oblivion before anybody realizes it's too late to claw our way back from the brink. Can we really afford "Apollo on Steroids" right now? We certainly can't give the former Constellation program the extra $3 billion per year that it needs simply to meet its baseline schedule. So what we get instead is no system to replace the shuttle when it's retired, an ISS extension to 2020 or later, continued American flights on Soyuz, and a "heavy lift research program."

The reliance on commercial spacecraft is one based in convenience and necessity. It's the most controversial aspect of the new policy and the linchpin of any future plans to travel down the "flexible path." I'm trying to temper my enthusiasm for a commercial spaceflight industry with a realistic outlook on the ability of these companies to deliver a safe and reliable manned spacecraft program. SpaceX and Boeing likely have the experience and knowledge to pull it off, although their schedules are anybody's guess. The other vendors I'm more skeptical towards.

Supporters of the new space policy are asking the White House to set some concrete goals. I'm reminded of Newt Gingrich's idea from the early 90's to create massive cash prizes for private firms who could successfully put a human on the Moon or Mars. Maybe such a scheme could work after one of the aforementioned firms can successfully launched a manned spaceflight mission. But I'm skeptical that the money even exists to create such prizes.

Rather than a NASA that has concrete exploration goals, I predict that the new space policy will make NASA less and less relevant towards achieving national goals in space. Example: The Bigelow vision is space tourism, utilizing space hotels and eventually outposts on the moon. Exploration beyond earth will eventually happen, but it will support commercial goals rather than nationalist ones. NASA will continue to lead in the fields of robotic exploration and pathfinding research & development, but it's hard to see NASA sending humans beyond earth orbit once it surrenders its manned spaceflight capability.

The most befuddling aspect of the new policy, in my eyes, is the need for heavy-lift "research." Wasn't the industry doing heavy-lift research in the 50's and 60's that lead to the Saturn V? If the nation needs heavy-lift, we don't need additional research to do it. A NASA-operated heavy-lifter could even use leftover shuttle SRB's, ET's and main engines for an early demo flight. But until we get more specifics on the new space policy, I'm not confident that's in the cards.

When President Bush first announced his Vision for Space Exploration in January 2004, I originally thought it was a fitting tribute to the fallen astronauts of Columbia. If NASA is putting its astronauts in harm's way, it should do so in support of bold objectives rather than the routine science missions of the space shuttle. But the affordable "marathon, not a sprint" that President Bush called for eventually turned into "Apollo on Steroids." It just wasn't possible to give the Constellation program the massive up-front development budget it needed while still operating the shuttle and space station. (I had been told by a congressional staffer that VP Dick Cheney's staff wanted to retire the shuttles after the Columbia disaster and not return-to-flight until the Crew Exploration Vehicle was ready. Maybe that approach could have saved "Apollo on Steroids.")

Sometimes I think that this new, commercial path is a more fitting tribute to the crews of our lost space shuttles. People will buy their way into space, rather than being selected by NASA to take their chances on a vehicle that was designed by committee. At least the shuttle's days are ending, much to the amazement of virtually everybody who's followed the program since it first flew (they would have expected it to be replaced with a better system much sooner than 2010.)

So do I think the new space program is a good thing, or a bad thing? It's both, and it's neither. It's an acknowledgment that the US Government as a whole is running on empty, and the future is in the hands of the private sector. The plan has even odds of spectacular success or embarrassing failure. That's why SpaceX, Boeing/Bigelow and the others deserve the moral support of the nation. Their success ensures prestige and continued technical competitiveness for the United States. Their failure effectively cedes control of the spacefaring future to Russia and China.

Project Azorian: More Questions than Answers

2010-02-14T00:35:00.000-08:00

Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, the CIA has finally admitted the existence of Project Azorian. This was probably the most audacious covert operation during the entire Cold War; at least a small section of the sunken Soviet submarine K-129 was secretly raised from the ocean floor in 1974 by a specially-built salvage ship, the Glomar Explorer.

Up to this point, the operation had been known in the popular press as "Jennifer," rather than "Azorian." When I heard the official name, I immediately thought of the USS Scorpion which sank near the Azores in May 1968. For years, author and naval nuclear engineer Kenneth Sewell has promoted the theory that Scorpion was sunk by the Soviets in retaliation for the loss of K-129, which was blamed on the Americans.

As I've grown older, I've grown far more skeptical of conspiracy theories. When it comes to the case of the USS Scorpion, I think that Stephen Johnson paints a compelling case in his book Silent Steel that Scorpion suffered an undetermined mechanical problem that forced the boat to rapidly sink below crush depth. The Soviets didn't have a good shot at locating Scorpion, let alone sinking her. But the "Azorian" name plants some seeds of doubt in my mind. Maybe the CIA saw themselves as "avenging" the 99 souls lost with Scorpion by retrieving K-129 from the Ocean floor. Who knows? But I have no doubt that Kenneth Sewell will claim this as one more piece of evidence for a larger conspiracy, and sell yet another book on the subject to prove his point.

Contract for America's Tanker

2010-02-10T20:21:00.000-08:00

Northrop-Grumman is crying "foul" with the Air Force's plans for putting "KC-X," its new tanker aircraft, on contract. The tanker waters have been muddied for years; a deal to lease Boeing 767's was scuttled in 2003 after the Air Force's top procurement official, Darleen Druyun, was caught negotiating for an executive position at Boeing (in blatant defiance of Federal Acquisition Regulations.) Two years ago, the Air Force announced that the Airbus / Northrop-Grumman A330 would become the KC-45 tanker; the plan was dropped again after a successful protest by Boeing.

The seeds of doubt have already been planted about the legitimacy of the third attempt at buying new Air Force tanker planes. For starters, Northrop-Grumman objects to the use of a fixed-cost contract for the aircraft's development. Under the fixed-cost contract, the contractor promises that their development budget will come in at a certain cost. If the contractor exceeds the promised amount, they eat the difference. Fixed-cost contracts are great for the taxpayer, but they put the contractor at great risk. They are largely worthless for major development programs, because it's so difficult to accurately predict the costs for a system that's never been built before. They are best suited for buying additional lots of systems that have already been developed, like munitions and existing fighter jets.

Northrop-Grumman has some history on their side regarding fixed-cost contracts. In 1988, Northrop objected to the fixed-cost contract for developing the stealthy A-12 attack plane. The company withdrew from the contest, and the contract was awarded to the less-experienced team from General Dynamics. GD couldn't meet the plane's ambitious weight and schedule goals, and the contract was terminated in 1991. (Personally, I blame the Navy rather than GD for the program's termination. Between the contractual problems and the Navy's extremely aggressive schedule, it was impossible to see the program succeeding unless the Navy relaxed its requirements.)

DoD also uses "cost plus fixed fee" contracts, which usually guarantee that the contractor will be reimbursed for all work and still make a profit. Unfortauntely, these contracts also enable contractors to game the system. They often propose nonviable but inexpensive solutions so they can win the contract. After the program is secure, the contractor replaces the nonviable systems with more expensive (albeit viable ones) at expense to the taxpayer. There is little incentive for cost control, and contractors who give honest estimates of cost at the onset of the program are usually downselected.

The last type of contract is the award-fee contract, where a percentage of the contract value is awarded based on the government's subjective assessment of the contractor's performance. Of the three contract types, this is usually my favorite for covering development contracts. Yet the award fee is also far from perfect. The government rarely gives the contractors serious penalties for delays or hardware that fails to meet specifications. Awarding less than 95% of an award fee is seen as an insult by the contractors, even if they earned their low scores through poor performance. The award fee contract has merit, but only if the government people are willing to give it teeth.

As far as the KC-X contract is concerned, I am not losing any sleep over the use of a fixed-cost development contract. The tanker variants of both the Boeing 767 and Airbus A330 have already been developed in variants for allied air forces. They are a well-defined quantity. The biggest unknown is the difficulties of the politically-motivated transition of Airbus production from Toulouse, France to Alabama.

Northrop-Grumman does have a legitimate concern that the tanker contract will be awarded based on lowest cost per plane, rather than best value to the taxpayer. The Boeing 767's advantage is that it's not too much bigger than the KC-135's that are being replaced. The A330 is a much bigger airplane that is closer in size to a KC-10. It's also a more expensive airplane to build. I am more sympathetic than many of my peers to the A330 because of my affection for the KC-10 (a very reliable airplane that offloads a lot of fuel to many thirsty jets per mission.) A sound economic argument could be made for buying the A330 on the basis of its cost to refuel a given number of airplanes (using fewer A330's than 767's to refuel the same-sized fighter formation.)

It sometimes seems like the best (and most politically-sound) solution would be a split buy between the two airplanes (at added cost to the logistics chain, which would need to maintain two types of aircraft.) I just hope the Air Force gets it right this time. They can't afford another expensive mistake like the last two attempts at a tanker contract.

A Capsule of Knowledge

2010-02-05T12:58:00.000-08:00

Rob Coppinger has an excellent piece about the demise of the Orion spacecraft, complete with pics of the Boeing/Bigelow spacecraft that's being dubbed "Orion-Lite." (Ironically, the cancellation comes just a week after a good friend suggested I should apply for a LockMart job in Denver working on Orion.) He makes a lot of good points about the distinctons between a capsule designed for missions to low-earth orbit versus a lunar-capable capsule. A beefier heatshield, more consumables and radiation shielding, and bigger parachutes are just some of the differences which necessitate a nontrivial redesign for a "Block II" spacecraft that can return from the moon.

But is it necessary to lug the capsule and reentry systems with you on voyages to the moon, Mars or asteroids? Some of Mr. Coppinger's commenters make this point as well. The parachute deployment pyros and heat shields might not hold up well when exposed to the cold vacuum and intense radiation of the space environment for extended-duration missions. If we follow some of Buzz Aldrin's old advice, we'd be flying reusable "cycler" spacecraft to Mars. Such a cycler would presumably aerobrake into orbit around Earth, where a capsule could be launched from Earth to recover the crew. A similar strategy could be followed for a lunar transportation architecture.

The jury is still out on how you'd recover a crew at the end of a round-trip Mars mission. Would they aerobrake into orbit around earth and spend a quarantine at a space station before being allowed to return to Earth? Or is it possible to spread out the deceleration forces from re-entry so that the stresses would not kill a crew that had been weakened by 900 days of minimal gravity? Boeing's 1968 IMIS proposal for sending humans to Mars posited a biconic "Earth Entry Module" to give astronauts a low-G, lifting re-entry. Other plans have ended with retrieval from the space station.

In many ways, Orion was a design tailored for the lunar mission. It was heavier than necessary for space station missions, yet probably not robust enough for a trip to Mars and back without some major modifications. I don't lose too much sleep about its cancellation, and I hope that its commercially-designed replacements benefit from Orion "lessons learned." Regardless, the traditional paradigm of "carry all your reentry systems with you" has its limitations, and it should be rigorously challenged as America feels its way along the "flexible path."

New Directions

2010-02-01T21:58:00.000-08:00

I don't have much to say about the new NASA budget projections, aside from noting the bitter irony that they were released on the 7th anniversary of the Columbia disaster. The advantage of "Flexible Path" is a strong incentive for private enterprise to flourish in manned spaceflight; the consequence of its failure is no American manned spaceflight capability. The destinations of "Flexible Path" are equally susceptible to the vagaries of national will, the federal budget, and the capabilities of the private sector.

The new budget doesn't assure that the moon is lost; that was in the cards years ago with the mismatch between "Apollo on Steroids" and a shuttle-sized budget. Apollo thrived because of its front-loaded development budget; Mike Griffin gambled that he could either stretch that development out while still flying the Shuttle, or that Congress would give NASA a budget increase in the neighborhood of 20%. In the end, Congress kept the budget flat, and the timetable for a lunar landing kept getting pushed back to around the same time frame as an appearance in the World Series by the Chicago Cubs.

My hopes lie with the optimistic and upbeat people at firms like SpaceX who are now entrusted with America's future in space. Remember the adage of "Do good work" that drove the space industry during those heady days of Project Mercury. America is back to square one yet again, and her future rests on the shoulders of her industry. The nationalism-driven era of manned spaceflight is drawing to a close. The future has just begun.

Flight of the Raptor-ski

2010-01-29T12:14:00.001-08:00

Russia's new fifth-generation fighter jet, currently known as PAK-FA, made its first flight yesterday. The Russian media is already billing the plane as a competitor to the F-22.

NATO has already given the plane the reporting name of "FIREFOX," parodying the Russian super-fighter from the Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. (Under the NATO reporting system, all Russian & Chinese fighters get names that start with the letter F.) But the plane's similarities to the F-22 Raptor are enough for me to give it the nickname "Raptor-ski."

The plane's angular appearance and aft-set diamond wing make comparisons to the F-22 easy, at least initially. Unlike it's American counterpart, PAK-FA has tiny vertical stabilizers that move as a single unit for yawing. The size of the vertical stabilizers tells me that thrust-vectoring engine nozzles are essential for yaw stability (and likely for pitch stability too, based on the tiny horizontal stabilizers.) The Russian aerospace industry has been focusing on thrust vectoring for over 15 years as an upgrade to the Su-27 Flanker (Su-35 in its upgraded form.)

But a great airframe alone does not guarantee a great fighter aircraft. Even maneuverability does not guarantee success in flight regimes other than visual-range, close-in dogfighting. If PAK-FA is the Superman of fighter jets, then the F-22 Raptor is Batman covered in armor and packing a lump of Kryptonite. The F-22 is so far ahead of other fighters in the realms of avionics, stealthiness and supercruise that it's scary. Can Russia's Sukhoi design bureau compete with Lockheed-Martin's unrivaled experience in designing stealthy planes? PAK-FA may benefit from the downed F-117 wreckage recovered from Serbia, but the F-22 is still a generation ahead. The only way PAK-FA can compete in the avionics realm is if a Russian mole delivered the plans for the F-22 radar set to the motherland. (It's not unheard of. The same thing happened with the F-18 radar during the MiG-29 program.)

Another impediment to the PAK-FA is a protracted development schedule. The Su-34, a two-seat fighter-bomber based on the Su-27, had a very lengthy development in spite of being a fairly straightforward modification of the Su-27 airframe. (Again, avionics makes the big difference in fighter development and cost; the Su-34 program was no different.) It will be years before Russia fields a squadron of PAK-FA's.

What happens if a PAK-FA "Raptor-ski" gets in a battle with an F-22 Raptor? Using the plane's superior radar and stealthiness, the Raptor pilot fires missiles and takes out the PAK-FA before the Russian pilot knows there's an F-22 around. All the agility in the world won't help if you can't even see the other fighter (although it does aid in shaking off missiles.) The long-range intercept scenario is the reason why the F-14 Tomcat was the only American plane that Russian pilots truly feared. The Tomcat's AWG-9 radar and Phoenix missile system was amazing for its day and still sends shudders down the spines of fighter jocks. It could detect and engage six bogeys at the same time at a range far longer than other fighters could. A similar logic applies with the F-22 today, with the addition of stealth to prevent the fighter from being spotted by its adversaries until it was too late.

Back to Mars, the Battlestar Galactica Way

2010-01-14T20:45:00.001-08:00

Courtesy of Scott Lowther, I recently checked out a recent study of an "austere mission to Mars" conducted by personnel at JPL and The Aerospace Corporation. Space fanatics should definitely check it out.

Studies of human missions to Mars always fascinate me, even if many of them are incredibly impractical. A few years back I took a look at a similar study to the current "austere" study that was conducted by SpaceWorks Engineering. Both studies made use of multiple Ares rockets to assemble the spacecraft, in an approach that Bob Zubrin derisively calls "Battlestar Galactica."

While JPL+Aerospace Corp (and previously SpaceWorks Engineering) spun their study as evidence that a human mission to Mars is feasible, I take a very different view. A manned Mars mission is feasible but expensive, lengthy and impractical without adopting nuclear propulsion (either nuclear-thermal or nuclear-electric) and in-situ resource utilization. The development pricetag for this "austere" four-crew mission is fairly low compared to the SpaceWorks estimate at around $75 billion for an all-US program, and $63 billion for an international one. Each mission would require twelve Ares V launches to assemble, plus one Ares I for crew launch. (Compare this to the nuclear-thermal Boeing IMIS plan from 1968, which used six uprated Saturn V's plus two Saturn 1B's for crewed launches.)

The austere study uses some innovative approaches to solving the mission's technical challenges. Crew habitation on-orbit is similar to the ISS "Zvezda" module. The Mars Orbit Insertion module performs a relatively short burn at Mars arrival to put the spacecrafdt into a highly elliptical orbit, which is circularized by aerobraking. (This seems to be a compromise between a fuel-intensive capture into circular orbit, and a risky orbit insertion that purely involves aerobraking.) The Mars landers rely on rockets only to decelerate and land on the Red Planet, with no assistance from parachutes (which is probably for the best, given the reduced effectiveness of parachutes in Mars's thin atmosphere.) One concern of mine regards the Orion heat shield. With its heat shield exposed to the extreme heat and cold of space on a multi-year mission, I wonder how well Orion would hold up during re-entry.

Like Scott Lowther, I'm also disappointed at the way PowerPoint has killed the lavish aviation art we used to see from the big aerospace companies. The "scale" model in the presentation is hokey, bordering on ridiculous. It's clearly a bash of the Revell Mir Space Station kit with a toy Saturn V. There's no excuse why the model builder couldn't have used the much more realistic (and widely available) Revell-Monogram Saturn V kit for the model. And apparently we're to ignore the scale of the CEV, since the Apollo command module was used to represent the much bigger Orion CEV.

A Nerd's All-Time Favorite Christmas Gift

2009-12-24T11:19:00.000-08:00

This Christmas Eve I wanted to reflect on the best Christmas gift I've ever received, because it's one that my nerdier readers will draw common cause with. While action figures had a shiny newness and appeal that always brought me excitement on Christmas morning, they were never fascinating enough to hold my interest much longer after Christmas. Instead, my all-time favorite Christmas gift was the Nintendo Entertainment System that my brother and I received exactly 20 years ago today.

Neither of us had asked for a Nintendo, but the gift wasn't unexpected. After all, one of my favorite cartoons from the time was The Super Mario Brothers Super Show, starring the late Captain Lou Albano. I vividly remember opening the box and watching my father set the system up. He got us started on the pack-in game (Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt/World Class Track Meet) and the dreadfully-frustrating Ghostbusters. I was immediately impressed by the vivid colors and 8-bit "orchestra" of synthesized sound. (Kids must have been so much easier to impress back in 1989.) I always wanted to kill the laughing dog from Duck Hunt, but the stupid game would never let me. From that point on, I was a Nintendo junkie (in spite of my conversion to Playstation by 1996.) But the NES was one of the most thoughtful and most enduring Christmas gifts I have ever received.

Nintendo's introduction of the NES with a limited launch for Christmas 1985 was nothing short of a stroke of genius. They launched the system against staggering odds precluding their success. The video game industry was dying, thanks to a flood of powerful, low-cost computers (especially the Commodore 64,) a glut of unimpressive games (epitomized by E.T. and Pac-Man on Atari 2600) and oversized, unreliable game systems like Atari 5200. Nintendo took a two-pronged approach: the NES would be designed to resemble a VCR and other commercial electronics instad of a video-game "toy," while the R.O.B. robot peripheral would position the NES as a toy that didn't have to compete toe-to-toe with Atari. I really can't say which of these factors drove the masses back to video games in the form of NES, but the schizophrenic approach worked.

As the NES rose to dominate the video games market, Nintendo started practicing some anti-competitive business tactics whose benefit to their market share was questionable in the long run. Since a deluge of bad games brought on the video game crash of 1983, Nintendo limited the number of games each game publisher could release per year, and Nintendo manufactured all officially-licensed cartridges in-house. Game publishers were barred from porting their NES games to other systems for two years after their NES releases, which hurt upstart console manufacturers like Sega. (Sega eventually overcame this hurdle with an impressive lineup of games that were developed in-house for their Genesis console.) Nintendo eventually eased up when it noticed the success of the upstart Sega Genesis, which was a marked improvement over the outdated NES. It finally motivated the video games giant to produce the Super NES as a competitor to the "edgier" Genesis console.

Nonetheless, video games will always be an important part of my childhood and even my adulthood. Last night I gave my girlfriend a Nintendo Wii, rekindling some of the memories I had of the magical Christmas of NES. Wii is no powerhouse compared to competing video game systems, but its motion sensitive control makes it a completely different (and very immersive) gaming experience. For good measure, I asked her to play Super Mario Bros. on Wii's Virtual Console for old times sake. Needless to say, I'm almost as bad at Mario games as I was 20 years ago. But the challenge and fun that were perfected on NES are timeless and constant.

Flight of the Plastic Airplane

2009-12-15T10:35:00.000-08:00

I just finished watching the video from the Boeing 787 first flight. The takeoff of an airliner is a mundane sight, yet it's such a beautiful moment for everybody (including friends of mine from college) who poured themselves into the program. The elegant airplane with its caverous engine nacelles and dihedraled wings soared from the runway on a short jaunt to test the major systems, hopefully ushering in a new era of air travel.

I often joked that the 787 would never fly, since this test flight had been delayed for over two years. Today I eat my words. While the 787 doesn't break any bold new ground in terms of what airliners are supposed to look like (especially when compared to the radically-sleek 787 concept art that was released in 2004 when the program launched,) it's a drastic departure from a materials standpoint. No commercial airliner has ever flown with such a high percentage of its airframe made from composite materials. For this reason, it's been affectionately dubbed "the plastic airplane." (It's just a nickname, and not a false comparison between composites and plastics.) The extra two years were necessary to ensure this moment would be a success for such a revolutionary bird. When a disgruntled Boeing engineer went public in September 2007 claiming the plane's composite fuselage would shatter during a belly landing, it made me stop to think of the ingenuity that was required to solve the problem. (I dismissed the engineer's claims, since the FAA would never certify the plane if they were true.)

Here's to hoping for a bold new future of composite airframe structures and lower fuel consumption per seat-mile. Thank you, Boeing 787 team, for getting us closer to that dream.

Thoughts About Rocket Reliability

2009-12-11T15:06:00.000-08:00

Much has been written in great detail about the reliability of launch vehicles. In the case of the Space Shuttle, the Loss-of-Mission probability of 1:100,000 (promoted by NASA management prior to the loss of Challenger) has turned into an empirical probability that greater than one-in-65 shuttle missions would result in loss of crew and vehicle.

Theoretical and empirical probabilities are two very different animals, especially when it comes to launch vehicle failure rates. Elon Musk had once boasted something along the lines of "Falcon I would be the most reliable rocket vehicle ever produced." On paper, he was correct. There were only two stages, one of which was powered by a simple, pressure-fed and radiatively-cooled engine. When adding up all of the probabilities of different failure modes, the vehicle has an extremely low probability for loss-of-mission. But there are so many factors to consider when identifying failure modes. When the consultants at Aerospace Corporation computed the odds of Falcon I failure, did they look at things like corroded nuts on the first stage, sloshing in the second stage, or unexpected transients with the upgraded Merlin engine? The last of these three problems (which doomed the first three Falcon missions, respectively) was certainly neglected in the analysis of the original Falcon configuration.

Failure probabilities rarely take into account the factor of human error. In the case of Challenger, the failure probability quoted by NASA management never took into account the lack of data about SRB joint behavior in extremely cold weather conditions. In Challenger's instance, managers on the NASA and SRB contractor side exercised criminal stupidity in violating established flight rules. Should risk assessments take the probability of criminal stupidity into account?

Ares I is supposed to be "Safe, Simple and Soon." ATK can justify their slogan by pointing to the booster's solid-fuel first stage. As at least one shuttle astronaut has said, "Once the SRB's light, you know you're going somewhere." SRB's have very reliable ignition systems. The probability of a single SRB failing at ignition are very low, hence the claims from ATK and NASA (which will certainly be inflated when compred to the empirical data that will come from a real, flying Ares I) that this is the safest manned launch vehicle.

Yet the reliability of Ares I's ignition system is not necessarily a boon when compared to other launchers. SpaceX's Falcon series holds down the booster for a short period of time after engine ignition to verify the health of the engines. The booster is only released after SpaceX's launch team is certain that the vehicle is healthy. Even the shuttle has a similar hold-down, igniting the liquid engines first and verifying their health before lighting the SRB's which provide the thrust for liftoff. But once the SRB's ignited, there's no way the team at the Cape could have held Challenger back for some kind of health check to establish the integrity of the SRB joint seals.

In the case of Falcon 9, the nine engines may seem to multiply the probability of a failure ruining your launch day. Yet the step of verifying engine health on the pad reduces the probability of a fatal engine failure early in ascent. As the vehicle climbs and burns off fuel, it can afford to lose engines and still have enough thrust to achieve orbit. The system is akin to an airliner testing its engines on the ground, yet it can afford an engine failure during the cruise portion of the flight.

Flight International's Rob Coppinger reports that Atlas V was deemed unsafe for manned spaceflight during the Orbital Space plane program, at least in its variant with three SRB's attached to the first stage. Politically, there may be good reasons for disqualifying Atlas V (the Russian-produced main engine.) From a safety perspective, the addition of SRB's does create more failure modes and increase the statistical probability of launch failure. (It would seem that NASA rejects the idea of one liquid engine plus three solids as unsafe, even though the shuttle's three liquid engines and two solids are perfectly fine.) But that's not to say the entire Atlas V family is inherently unsafe. Statistically speaking, the simplest Atlas (the 401 variant, with one first stage engine and one second stage engine) is the safest; it wasn't considered for the OSP program because the SRB's were necessary to lift OSP's mass. For a smaller capsule, Atlas V may meet stringient safety requirements.

The big idea is that there's a vast different between wildly optimistic estimates of reliability (based on mathematical equations that often neglect major failure modes) and empirical failure rates that are established once a vehicle has flown. I remain optimistic about the human-rating potential for Delta and Atlas because both vehicles have flight histories without a failure that ended in loss of mission. (There was the Delta IV Heavy partial failure and the Atlas V partial failure that resulted in lower orbits for their payloads, but nothing that would have killed a crew.) Falcon I seems to be on the right track for a reliable launch record now that the problems have been ironed out. Falcon 9 can hopefully reuse the flight-tested Falcon I hardware and establish a similar reliability.

Ares I creates tremendous unknowns from a reliability standpoint. Due to the size of the explosion after range safety destroys the vehicle, any kind of first stage failure (even a control failure) should be regarded as unsurvivable for the crew. (I may revise my judement on this matter once more detailed, independent analysis of the problem is complete.) Virtually none of the Ares I hardware has any empirical probability data that comes from flight history, in spite of the smoke and mirrors act known as "Ares I-X." Hopefully the Ares guys know what they're doing, but my gut tells me that Ares, like Shuttle, will be a tragic disappointment once the vehicle's safety is truly known.

Mike Griffin, Saturn I, and the Potemkin Rocket

2009-10-28T11:43:00.001-07:00

After three years of anticipation, the "Potemkin Rocket" known as Ares I-X has launched. The flight appears to have been nominal. While Ares I-X was a low-fidelity test of a bad rocket design, the test's fundamental flaws should not detract in any way from the Ares I-X program personnel who devoted the last three years of their life to making this test a success. While I strongly believe that Ares I-X should have waited until the 5-segment SRB was available, Ares I-X still taught NASA personnel much about ground handling operations and ocean recovery for the Ares rockets. Perhaps the thrust oscillation questions will look a little bit more clear after the test, in spite of the SRB that was used for the launch being so different from the final SRB.

Ares I-X also serves as a backhanded endorsement of Michael Griffin's approach to Project Constellation. Ares got a foot in the door before Norm Augustine's panel could have the final word. For members of Congress who don't comprehand how much more work beyond Ares I-X is necessary before the real Ares I is ready, the visual of Ares I-X lifting off is evidence that the program is on track. Indeed, mebers of Congress are already spinning the Augustine Report as evidence that Ares is being well-executed, even though the committee largely ignored that question (and largely endorsed the idea of commercial spacecraft for low earth orbit missions, with Ares V Lite for deep space exploration.) Somewhere, Mike Griffin is smiling with glee. Not just because Ares I-X succeeded, but because the political winds growing across the Potomac will keep his Shaft Rocket airborne for the forseeable future.

When I think of Ares I-X, I start to think of the original Block I Saturn I rockets. (This is as flattering to Ares I-X as it is insulting to the Saturn I.) The four Block I flights flew with no fins, a dummy upper stage, a shortened first stage and less powerful first stage engines than the later Block II Saturn I and Saturn IB. It would be possible to look at the original Saturn I's and say they contributed nothing to the final man-rated Saturn IB. But that misses the point entirely. After the successes of the first Saturn I's, it was fairly easy to tweak the H-1 engines and stretch the propellant tanks. Even the redesign of the tail fairing wasn't the biggest challenge in the Saturn I evolution. Block I retired the risk on the first stage; Block II tackled the challenge of the new liquid hydrogen upper stage. Saturn IB went a step further by testing the new upper stage engine that would also take men to the moon. But Ares I-X didn't accomplish any major risk reduction, since the only hardware commonality is the SRB case segment design.

The Ares I-X test doesn't tell us much about the ultimate success of the Ares I program. But because the test did succeed, we know that the riddle and challenge of Ares will carry on.

Controlling the Platform

2009-10-23T15:47:00.000-07:00

For once in my life, I'm actually excited about upgrading to the new version of the Microsoft Windows operating system. After the major embarrassment of Windows Vista (which could never shake the somewhat-true perception that it was bloated and slow) comes a refined, streamlined Windows that breathes new life into computers from the 2003-2004 time period. I'll probably take advantage of the upgrade after I stick more RAM in my custom tower PC. I'll even forgive Microsoft for the fact that the new OS carries the confusing name "Windows 7" when it should be "Windows NT 6.1."

At the same time, the Mac fans are using the new Windows rollout to justify the fact that they've had a rock-solid OS for years. The Mac OS X family is based on BSD UNIX and benefits from the fact that few virus-writers want to spend their time attacking systems that only 11% of the population use.

If Mac OS is so great, why doesn't Apple release it for everybody to run on their PC's? It's theoretically possible, since the Mac platform migrated to Intel CPU's back in 2006. But Mac OS for Intel-based systems still requires Apple's firmware on your motherboard in order to run. Apple is primarily in the business of selling hardware, not software (Microsoft's business model is the exact opposite.) In Apple's view, having a good OS helps to sell hardware. (Intel's thinking isn't very different, as every Windows upgrade helps Intel to sell the more powerful hardware that the new Windows requires.)

With the brief exception of the mid-90's Mac clones, Apple has maintained exclusive control of the Macintosh platform. Is that a good business model for the PC industry? The conventional wisdom is that the openness of the Intel-Microsoft architecture has been good for the PC industry as a whole. But it may not be good for the individual PC manufacturers. Case in point is IBM, who pioneered the architecture we're familiar with today. "Big Blue" was beaten to the punch when Compaq introduced the first 386-based PC in 1986, and eventually quit the home PC business when it sold out to Lenovo.

It's debatable if IBM could have maintained its position as a market leader if it had adopted the 386 CPU earlier (which it didn't, because Intel refused to let IBM produce its own 386 chips under license.) But that point marked IBM's slide from being an innovator into being an also-ran. From that point on, it was clear that Intel, not IBM, would dictate the future of personal computing.

One of my favorite PC "what if" scenarios is the Commodore Amiga. When the Amiga platform was launched in 1985, it was easily the most advanced personal computer available, capable of pre-emptive multitasking and stunning color graphics with as little as 256 kilobytes of RAM. It was even priced competitively (nearly half the cost of the inferior Macintosh models of the day.) Yet Amiga never caught on like the PC or Mac. It was partly due to Commodore's reputation for producing low-cost computers aimed at the children's video game market, and partly due to an inept marketing department. But it's debatable whether Amiga clones could have saved Commodore from its 1994 bankruptcy. While Commodore could have made money selling its Amiga OS to owners of Amiga clones, Commodore was always in the business of selling computer hardware. Amiga clone computers would have likely taken away sales from Commodore.

It's been said that the Macintosh platform currently controls 11% of the personal computer market. Different flavors of Windows control nearly 90%, and Linux has around 1%. (I don't know if that figure comes from recent sales numbers, or surveys of individuals to see what computers they use at home.) While that might not sound good for Apple, it's pretty remarkable to think that the Apple hardware has an 11% market share. Just think of how many other PC makers dominate the market--Dell, HP, Gateway and Toshiba, just to name a few. I'd be interested to look at the total sales volume for the PC vendors to see where Apple stacks up. It's clear that the company is doing very well for itself.

All things considered, Apple's exclusive control over the Mac platform is good for the company. And regardless of whether your computer runs Mac OS or Windows or even Linux, it's likely that Intel is laughing all the way to the bank.

The World's Largest Stick of Dynamite

2009-10-20T18:52:00.000-07:00

Just when it seemed like the history books had been closed on the Challenger disaster, I came across a review of Truth, Lies & O-Rings, an interesting look at the faulty decision-making leading up to launch. (hat tip to Clark Lindsey's Hobbyspace.) The reviewer makes an interesting point about the dangers inherent in ground handling of solid rockets. Many of the inherent disadvantages of SRBs have been long-discussed, such as the inability to shut them down during abort situations. But handling and storing the motors carries all the potential dangers of riding on them. For that reason, SRB stacking operations are classified as “hazardous operations,” and all non-essential personnel are banned from the Vehicle Assembly Building. The procedure is similar for stacking the stages of other solid-fuel launch vehicles. In spite of all the precautions and built-in safety mechanisms, the potential always exists for a catastrophic solid-fuel detonation, as occurred with Brazil’s orbital launch vehicle.

While I tend to think that the risk is overstated (the industry has been dealing with large solid rockets since the 1940’s,) it can never be entirely eliminated. For this reason, Jeff Bell predicted that the SRB would be deleted from the shuttle-derived launch vehicles under development by NASA. Many “space boosters” are dismissive of Jeff Bell, viewing him as a cynic whose arguments aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. I’ll concede that his predictions often come with fatal flaws, but he does make a lot of solid arguments and presents plenty of pertinent facts. In the case of the aforementioned prediction, Jeff Bell’s fatal flaw is assuming that NASA would choose a safe, clean-sheet launcher design over one that protects the shuttle’s entrenched workforce and contractors.

The ground-handling of large solid rockets (and even the individual segments) was an issue that should have been re-examined when Ares I was designed to be "safe, simple and soon." While NASA personnel have done an admirable job in handling the SRB's up to this point, it's sobering to know that just one mistake could cost a lot of lives and pull the plug on the nation's manned space program. The Ares 5-segment SRB will be the world's largest stick of dynamite, and that risk should never be lost on anybody who works in the space business.

The Other Engine

2009-09-25T23:19:00.000-07:00

Whenever I check my gmail account, I see these odd adds from General Electric telling me that I should petition my congressman to continue funding for their F136 turbofan engine. While appeals to the public rarely have the desired effect in defense acquisition, it does raise an interesting point. The F136 program is an unprecedented development in military aviation acquisition: it's the first time that a major weapons system (the F-35 Lightning II) has been authorized with two separate engines before the first flight.

General Electric makes its argument based on their experience producing the F110 replacement engine for the F-14 Tomcat and F-16 Fighting Falcon. Yet the F110 was the product of unique circumstances that are not present in the development of today's F-35 fighter jet and its F135 engine, produced by Pratt & Whitney.

The F110 story actually begins before 1964, when Pratt & Whitney produced the first low-bypass turbofan engine for supersonic fighter aircraft. The TF30 was eventually fitted to the F-111 supersonic medium bomber, F-14 Tomcat (a carrier-based fighter,) and the A-7 subsonic light bomber. All three of these aircraft suffered from engine reliability problems. The F-111's problems were least severe, and the aircraft still flies (in the Royal Australian Air Force) with its original engines. The A-7's performance with the TF30 was so poor that Allison Engines produced a license-built version of the Rolls-Royce Spey to replace it during future production models of the A-7. For the Tomcat, which suffered most from compressor stalls, a replacement engine would have to wait until the late 80's.

The situation was not much better when Pratt & Whitney designed the F100, a fighter turbofan that was well ahead of its time when it first powered the F-15 Eagle in 1972. The engine's reliability problems were less pronounced in a twin-engined aircraft like the F-15, but they became much more critical when the engine was used in the single-engine F-16.

General Electric came to the rescue with a derivative of the F101 turbofan designed for the B-1 supersonic bomber. With some modifications, the F101 was adapted into the F110 fighter engine. The new engine became the powerplant of choice for future F-14 and F-16 production, and was retrofitted to older F-14's. Interestingly, both the F100 and F110 will power South Korea's version of the Strike Eagle (F-15K.)

Having an alternative engine waiting in the wings was a great blessing to both the F-14 and F-16. General Electric reasons that they will be the savior for the F-35 program too. The problem for GE is that the two situations are very different. The TF30 and F100 were designed when supersonic turbofans were still in their infancy. By contrast, the F135 baseline engine for the F-35 draws on mature propulsion technologies developed for the F119 engine in the F-22 Raptor. The chance of F135 becoming a dud like the TF30 or F100 are far slimmer. While the F136 ensures two engine vendors for the F-35, it's a very expensive option for the defense department to retain. It seems like an expensive bailout of GE to keep two major fighter engine manufacturers in business, more than anything else.

Turn on the lite

2009-09-18T11:16:00.000-07:00

One curious recommendation of the Augustine Commission is their preference for "Ares V Lite," a proposed heavy-lift rocket which would fill the gap between Ares I and Ares V and be capable of launching the manned Orion spacecraft. When compared to the baseline Ares V, the "Lite" version can only lift 140 tonnes to the reference orbit instead of 160 tonnes. Bear in mind that even the "Lite" rocket has more performance than the legendary Saturn V.

With so little information in the public about Ares V Lite, it begs the question of that makes this new rocket so "Lite" when compared to Ares V? Because the Ares V baseline had switched to a 5.5-segment SRB (with a dummy spacer, to allow for an even longer core,) my guess is that "Ares V Lite" will use 5-segment SRB's similar to the one tested by ATK last week.

It's also possible that the "Lite" core stage is shorter, with the SRB attach points moved further aft on the SRB. This is necessary so the SRB cross-member can pass between the LOX and hydrogen tanks through the intertank structure.

The upper stage probably didn't shrink by much, because the propulsion requirements for escaping low earth orbit are similar (depending on whether Altair and Orion have changed in mass.) The biggest change is whether the upper stage is still expected to accelerate from Mach 12 to orbit, or if the staging velocity has changed. My recommendation to the Ares team is to invest any mass savings from the total system into systems which will reduce the upper stage's on-orbit boil-off, allowing it to loiter for a longer period of time.

My biggest question to the Ares V team is about the number and type of core engines. The baseline Ares V had six RS-68B engines. But if heating from the SRB's is an issue for the core engines, this is all subject to change. A regen-cooled RS-68R, or expendible engines based on the Space Shuttle Main Engine, might be better suited to surviving the thermal environment. They would also improve the overall performance of the rocket, at the expense of reduced thrust. Switching to regen-cooled engines results in a smaller core stage (either shorter or narrower, depending on the whims of the team at NASA-Marshall) carrying less fuel. Depending on how much lighter the core stage gets, the reduced thrust of expendible SSME's might not be an issue.

Ares V Lite might be moot if NASA doesn't see the $3B/yr budget increase requested by Augustine 2.0. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see what Marshall cooked up, and whether it could live up to its performance estimates.

The Shape of Things to Come

2009-09-10T00:16:00.000-07:00

A lot of Constellation critics (particularly those who have singled out the Orion spacecraft) have questioned why we're going back to the Apollo shape for the capsule which will return astronauts to earth when the mission ends. Why not go back to the Soyuz shape? For that matter, can't we examine the shape of the Mercury/Gemini capsules, or come up with something new?

While some might attribute the Orion shape to romancing the past, there's one very good explanation for the reason why Orion looks like Apollo. It's because NASA and the industry have an extensive database of thermal and aerodynamic data on the Apollo shape, based off the capsule's performance during the Apollo program. Most importantly, this includes data from re-entries at lunar flyby and lunar return velocities.

Could the Soyuz shape make for a good lunar spacecraft? The answer is yes, if history serves as a guide. Soyuz-derived capsules flew around the moon during the Zond program, which was supposed to put a Soviet Cosmonaut around the moon before its cancellation. At one point, the Soviets looked into an upscaled, reusable version of Soyuz. Named Zarya, the new capsule would have fit within the 15 tonne estimate for a multi-man capsule equipped for low earth orbit missions. But one possible drawback to the Soyuz "headlamp" shape for future American capsules is whether American agencies and engineering firms could access the full database of thermal and aerodynamic data that the Russians have accumulated over the years. Without full unfettered access, there will be a significant hurdle to reusing the Soyuz shape.

The last viable option is the shape pioneered on Mercury and used again for Gemini. A favorite of the armchair engineers is the proposed Big Gemini, which seems to meet most of the Orion requirements and weighs in under 16 tonnes. While American firms have access to the data generated on these missions and during the development of these capsules, there's no real-world data for how these capsules behave when returning from lunar trajectories at the velocities these trajectories dictate. Perhaps McDonnell did this analysis during the 60's, but nothing beats real flight-test data. Additionally, I'd be interested to see how Big G compared to Apollo in terms of crew volume available to each astronaut. While Apollo was cramped, it was still quite an improvement over Gemini where each astronaut was prettymuch confined to a seat for up to two weeks.

Interestingly, it would appear that the SpaceX Dragon stays true to the basic geometry of the Gemini spacecraft. I don't have exact figures to see if the cone angle on Dragon is the same as on Mercury/Gemini, but they both capture the "tall cone" profile. Dragon also corrects a big problem that I saw with Big G: the awkward docking system. Since Dragon is designed from the ground up and doesn't incorporate any Gemini legacy systems, it is free to contain a docking tunnel in the "nose" of the spacecraft. Big G would have required an additional set of aft windows for docking, and introduces the risk that hot plasma could enter through the heat shield hatch during re-entry.

One last shape worth considering was developed during the CORONA program. Again, this would need to be subjected to rigorous analysis before it was ready for a lunar flight program.

It's not so easy to qualify a new shape for a re-entry capsule, especially if it's going to be returning from the moon. Re-inventing the Apollo capsule might not be the optimal solution, but it's fast one that gives the space program a proven result.

Orion Revisited

2009-09-03T22:52:00.000-07:00

Let's assume for a minute that the post-Augustine national space policy emphasizes the commercial development of a human spacecraft to replace the space shuttle. Obviously SpaceX has the inside track with Dragon, which might be capable of manned flight by 2012. But where would this leave Orion in the grand scheme of things? It might continue at a reduced funding level as a backup to the commercial capsules, but some strategic decisions by Lockheed Martin (and perhaps Bigelow Aerospace) might put Orion back on track to thrive in the commercial space market.

Unlike it's intended Ares I booster, the Orion spacecraft is a generally sound idea. It's rooted in mature technologies and design concepts that would assure safe human return from the moon. (A biconic design might be better for returns from Mars, but there's a lot of controversy about which shape is best for the Mars return vehicle, and how far off that objective really is.)

Orion's problems up to this point have stemmed from NASA's shifting requirements. Until Ares I flies (if that happens at all,) the booster's performance (and Orion's mass budget) are uncertain. The original Orion specifications called for a maximum of six passengers, the ability to operate autonomously in lunar orbit, enough consumables to support four humans during a lunar round trip, and landings on terra firma. The new Orion specifications are for a four-passenger capsule that will likely maintain a pilot while in lunar orbit, and will land in the ocean at the mission's conclusion. Even the capsule's diameter changed, shrinking from 5.5 to 5.0 meters early in the design cycle.

Orion's mass budget always seemed optimistic in my view. The Apollo capsule, designed for a maximum crew of five and sized to a 3.9 meter diameter, weighed in around 30 tonnes in its lunar variant (although the earth-orbit missions loaded less propellant and consumables, weighing in under 15 tonnes.) The mass target for Orion was under 23 tonnes, even though it was sized for 5 meters diameter. Mass savings can be attributed to less propellant (Orion doesn't perform a lunar orbit insertion burn) and using solar panels instead of fuel cells.

Maybe these mass savings offset the added mass of the larger capsule when comparing Orion to Apollo. It's hard to say from my "Monday Morning Quarterback" chair. But it does seem safe, based off the Apollo experience, that a 5-passenger capsule with lunar-capable heat shield would weigh in just under 15 tonnes when configured for missions to the space station. Previous NASA estimates for comparable capsules, conducted during Mars design reference mission studies, came up with a mass under 10 tonnes. This lines up pretty well with SpaceX's estimates for the mass of a fully-loaded Dragon.

With all that being said, LockMart's work on Orion up to this point is far from a waste. If nothing else, LockMart should press on with its own money to get a commercial version of Orion flying (if the commercial capsule option comes to fruition.) Bigelow Aerospace has already proposed "Orion Lite" to launch on an EELV by 2013, but it's unclear if this idea has any official support from Lockheed Martin. And it's clear that for Orion to be commercially-competitive, it will need to fly in a "lite" version without all of the lunar frills.

A commercial Orion would need to keep its mass low, to fit on existing commercial launchers. Even if the capsule was scaled back to Apollo's 3.9 meter diameter, this may still be a tough order. After all, the "Zero Base Exercise" from the 2007 time frame cut Orion back to dangerously low redundancies in critical systems. Redundancy was only restored if extra performance squeezed out of Ares I freed up the mass budget to put it back in.

At the same time, a commercial variant of Orion would be free from NASA's fickle whims and requirements creep. There's no reason not to touch down on dry land. Soyuz has been doing it for over 40 years, thanks to six braking rockets in the capsule's heat shield. Orion could also move to two rows of seating and add more paying passengers (something currently banned under NASA's human-rating requirements, although it's featured in commercial capsule designs like Dragon.)

In short, commercializing Orion would give Lockheed Martin a head-start in the race for commercial orbital spaceflight and make for an interesting race between Orion and Dragon. But Orion would need to go on a massive diet, and the commercial Orion would be a very different beast compared to today's Orion designs. Ultimately it's in America's best interest to have at least two commercial capsules in operation, and it would be exciting to see Orion continue on in this fashion.

Unexecutable

2009-08-24T15:48:00.000-07:00

The biggest conclusion from Augustine 2.0 can be boiled down to one word, an unfortunately common one in the world of big-budget acquisition programs:

Unexecutable.

In short, we can't get there (the moon) from here. The "program of record," (i.e., Ares I&V, Orion & Altair,) can't be accomplished on the existing budget.

Of course there will be a political dimension to all of the fingerpointing that results from this conclusion. Critics on the left will blame Bush for not giving his vision an adequate budget. Critics on the right will accuse Obama of "throwing in the towel" in some non-existent moon race with China when he likely tells NASA they'll have to survive on their existing budget.

Plenty of fingers will point towards Mike Griffin and the people who worked directly for him, for pitching an unsustainable architecture. There's no doubt that ESAS was needlessly expensive, and plenty of cheaper alternatives existed. But Griffin's critics can't say with any certainty if their alternatives could have been fit within the existing budget. ESAS was colossally unaffordable, while something like DIRECT or EELV might have been marginally unaffordable. In the end, we're still not going to the moon anytime soon.

The one area where there's no excuse for either Mike Griffin or Sean O'Keefe is the gap between shuttle and Orion. The historical example of Apollo should have convinced both NASA administrators that capsule development would be a seven-year effort. If a contract for Orion were awarded in late 2004 (a reasonable amount of time after President Bush's January 2004 speech setting a goal of 2011-2014 for Orion,) we might have a manned capsule by 2011. Even with the Orion contract being awarded in 2006, first manned flight by 2013 would have still been realistic--if the capsule's requirements weren't continually shifting with each setback in the development of the Ares launcher. If the capsule people had a stable set of requirements they were working towards (i.e., the established performance of the Delta IV Heavy,) we wouldn't be seeing the gross schedule slips we've seen in Orion's Initial Operational Capability date up to this point.

Every time I talk to my friends within the aerospace industry, I hear the same set of doubts about why we're "wasting money" by paying NASA to launch humans into space. There's a growing sense among the public that there are diminishing benefits on earth for all the money the taxpayers spend on space activities. I'm certain that many people who used to support NASA are growing increasingly dismayed by the "competency gap." The agency has lost the ability to duplicate so many of its past triumphs.

Maybe the solution to all of NASA's ills is to hurl more money at its problems. But if the agency can't demonstrate why it can be trusted as a good steward of taxpayer funds, and why it's still relevant in the face of private-sector space programs, does it deserve the extra bucks?

Capsule-snatchers

2009-08-21T13:07:00.000-07:00

The fun in a James Bond movie lies in the way it can take the classic James Bond formula and put a fresh twist on it. Example: in most Bond movies, Agent 007 saves the world and gets the girl by the end. In 1965's Thunderball, James Bond and the girl are seemingly stranded in a raft in the middle of the ocean after a climactic battle aboard a yacht. Never fear, as Agent 007 always has a gadget from Q-branch to come to the rescue. In this case, he inflates a balloon tethered to himself and his damsel. On cue, a modified B-17 swoops in and snares the hero and heroine using a cable-catcher on the aircraft's nose.

What does this escapist Bond-fantasy have to do with spaceflight? Well, it's a flashy way of demonstrating the technique of midair recovery for spacecraft. After much trial-and-error, it was perfected for snatching re-entering film canisters, descending under parachute. Mid-air recovery is one thing for tiny film capsules. It's quite another matter to attempt it with a manned capsule, or a recoverable engine module. Yet Bigelow Aerospace wants to try the former, and United Launch Alliance is proposing the latter.

In principle it's not difficult, but it creates challenges for the aircraft involved. In the case of large objects descending under parachute, the suspended load mustn't be carried too far off-center, or it will create a situation where the aircraft is fighting a steep bank. It also creates an asymmetric drag force, greatly impeding the aircraft's top speed and adding pitch and yaw tendencies. The aircraft selected for the mission will need to be capable of flying with the payload mass of the object being captured. Even still, the aircrew will notice an immediate loss in altitude and airspeed when the capture is made, as well as a downward pitching moment.

The size of the aircraft making the grab is important. Just as airplanes like the C-119 were unaffected by catching tiny film canisters, a larger airplane will be required to snag larger capsules. I can't give some kind of first-order guess as to which airplanes would be suitable for the midair recovery mission, but the Bigelow trade study will definitely give us an answer.

While avoiding a water landing is desirable, it's still a necessary contingency to plan for. In the event of an abort from existing launch sites, the spacecraft will splash down in coastal waters. A flotilla will still remain on standby, even if midair recovery is the preferred option. If a flotilla is required for launch aborts, it's worth keeping around in case midair recovery fails.

Midair recovery for booster engines is a good idea, because exposure to saltwater could be fatal to any attempts at engine re-use. It's certainly worthy of study for manned capsules, because it spares the astronauts the possibility of being exposed to frigid Atlantic waters which could potentially sink the capsule before the astronauts could be rescued. But the launch abort issue ensures that the recovery flotilla isn't going away anytime soon.

Cool the engines

2009-08-18T15:50:00.000-07:00

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, already busy upgrading its proven RS-68 engine on the Delta IV, may get even busier depending on which direction the Augustine Committee and the president decide to go with Project Constellation.

The current evolutionary roadmap for RS-68 goes to RS-68A, funded by DoD to improve performance for the Delta IV Heavy and eventually the entire Delta IV fleet. By upgrading the turbopumps for higher flowrates, PWR will put more injectors into the thrust chamber of RS-68A to improve thrust and specific impluse (raising from 409 sec to 414 sec in vacuum.)

NASA's current roadmap relied on a further upgrade of RS-68, the RS-68B model, for the Ares V super-booster. The NASA-funded upgrade would increase the engine's redundancy in certain systems (required by the current man-rating rules, and a focal point of the Delta IV crew-launch studies) and reducing the amount of gas that collects at the launch pad prior to ignition.

Yet the findings of the DIRECT team prior to unveiling DIRECT 3.0 may put a wrench in NASA's plans. Their studies (and apparently NASA's internal studies confirm this) indicate the current RS-68 engines will not survive the extreme heating environment nestled between two SRB's. The baseline RS-68 is ablatively cooled, and apparently only a regeneratively-cooled engine can tough it out. The DIRECT team settled for throwing away SSME's as their core engine, believing that this was more cost-effective than developing the proposed "regen" RS-68R. But as I've argued in my previous post, SSME's that are designed for low production costs will be very different from the baseline SSME.

A regen nozzle for RS-68 is simple in concept. Keep the inner mold line the same (to preserve the expansion ratio,) and manufacture the nozzle from thinner stock (since the extra thickness won't be needed for ablating away during ascent.) Mill some cooling channels into the outer nozzle, then braze a thin cooling jacket over the top. Ironically, I'd suspect that the baseline RS-68 shows slight improvement in Isp the longer it burns, because the expansion ratio increases as more material is burned off the inner surface of the nozzle. RS-68R will not experience the same effect.

The turbopumps need to be analyzed to ensure they can pump enough cryogenically-chilled propellant through the coolant channels. RS-68 already employs regen cooling in the combustion chamber, so adding it to the nozzle shouldn't be a huge challenge. Still, this may require a further upgrade beyond what's planned for RS-68A's turbopumps. Previous studies of RS-68R, with the same expansion ratio as the current RS-68, show an Isp improvement from 409 sec. to 419 sec.

RS-68R is definitely a step in the right direction for improving the engine's mass, durability and performance. Still, it falls short of the SSME's 453 second Isp. A longer, wider nozzle would improve specific impulse, at the expense of lower thrust. Regardless of whether RS-68R's nozzle ever reached the expansion ratio of the SSME, I'd never expect to duplicate SSME's specific impulse. After all, SSME makes use of the more complex staged combustion cycle, and has a much higher chamber pressure. Still, it's not unreasonable to expect an Isp around 430 seconds for RS-68R if the nozzle is redesigned to a higher expension ratio. This is an estimate for how the proposed Space Transportation Main Engine would have performed; it would have used an expansion ratio somewhere between RS-68 and SSME, had a chamber pressure between those two extremes, and used RS-68's gas generator cycle.

At the end of the day, NASA-Marshall will have some big decisions to make, and the trades should be backed up by something more substantial and detailed than a 60-day study. Will it be more cost-effective to develop expendible SSME or RS-68R? And if RS-68R is cheaper to develop, procure on a unit basis, or both, will those cost-savings be offset by the engine's lower efficiency when comapred to expendible SSME? The last metric can be quantified with the additional number of launches that will be required to put the same payload mass in space.

Shuttle-Derived Devil's Advocate

2009-08-11T21:18:00.000-07:00

The Augustine Commission, appointed by the president to chart the future of NASA manned spaceflight, is looking at a variety of missions and boosters for the future direction of Project Constellation. One dark-horse concept that's gotten a lot of attention lately is a side-mount shuttle-derived rocket, which I think of as "Son of Shuttle-C." It's definitely an improvement over the existing Ares designs in terms of its development costs and schedule. But much like the rush to Ares, in which issues like thrust oscillation and air-starting SSME's were swept under the rug, it would be helpful to look at all of the challenges that will face the team developing the new rocket.

It's important to distinguish the new concept from the original Shuttle-C proposal. instead of flying the shuttle orbiter, Shuttle-C made use of a "cargo element" which looked much like an orbiter stripped of its cockpit, wings and tail. But the new design utilizes a much larger payload fairing, nearly as wide as the external tank. With a much wider cross section, the new rocket will be a "draggier" design than the existing shuttle or Shuttle-C.

Another thorny issue will be the separation between the new rocket's fairing and external tank. The fairing is supposed to jettison during ascent, with the exception of the aft thrust structure and the connected structure which supports the payload. There should be some concern about achieving a clean break when the fairing jettisons, although it shouldn't be much more dicey than when the SRB's are cast off. In the block I version of the new rocket, the thrust structure and payload structure would separate in the same fashion as the shuttle orbiter. I would guess that the payload would eject parallel to the vehicle's yaw axis, similar to the way the shuttle deploys its payloads.

The separation issue gets riskier on the block II rocket, where a live upper stage is carried inside the fairing. The upper stage ignites suborbitally at a speed just under Mach 17. I would be very concerned about recontact between the upper stage and either the payload structure or the ET.

The "Son of Shuttle-C" promises low development costs for as long as we have spare Space Shuttle Main Engines to throw away when the orbiters are retired. But the new challenge is creating a version of the SSME which can be economically thrown away after every mission. While promoted as an upgrade of the SSME, it's really an extensive new development (moreso than developing the RS-68A from the existing RS-68.)

There already was an expendible Space Shuttle Engine: it was called RD-0120, and it was developed by the Soviets for their own shuttle system. It pioneered the "channel wall" nozzle concept which would drive the production cost of SSME down if it were adopted. But do the Russians still have the tooling and industrial knowledge to build more RD-0120's? Is it practical and politically feasible to buy RD-0120's from Russia? The answer to both questions is probably "no." But it would be worth consulting with them when designing a new SSME nozzle. RD-0120 achieved a similar specific impulse to the SSME, but it required a higher expension ratio nozzle and produced less thrust.

A channel-wall nozzle, designed to the same expansion ratio as the existing SSME, can’t be developed overnight, although Wayne Hale has stated that the idea has been given some consideration in the past. Channel-wall nozzles are far easier and cheaper to manufacture than the existing shuttle nozzles, which use thousands of tiny tubes welded together to form the nozzle wall. Instead, the coolant channels are milled into a solid piece of metal, with a thin sheet of brazed over the top of the channels to seal them off.

Current Shuttle PM John Shannon also stated that the turbopumps would have to be redesigned for making a cheaper, throwaway SSME. Again, this isn’t a trivial modification. I have to wonder aloud whether it might be possible to substitute the expendable turbopumps from the RS-68 (which are designed for higher flow rates than those on SSME.)

When it comes to "Son of Shuttle-C," I don't think it's a bad idea, if your goal is to preserve the "Central Florida Economic Stimulus" that the shuttle program provides. But it will not be a trouble-free or inexpensive development; as long as NASA and the taxpayers keep that in mind, it should result in a workable launch vehicle. Everybody should be warned that an expendible SSME will be a very different beast from the current SSME, and developing the new engine may force the taxpayers to look back on the program with bitter feelings about what was supposed to be a quick and economical program to close the post-shuttle gap.

Abort, retry... fail?

2009-07-29T17:17:00.000-07:00

In response to my earlier post about man-rating the side-mount shuttle-derived rocket, NASA is dead-serious about putting humans on its side-mount heavy-lift launcher. Thanks to NASA Watch, we can now take a look at the agency's analysis of the side-mount abort situation. An initial study of the problem reveals no show-stoppers. As the days go by, side-mount is looking like a better alternative to Ares (assuming we are forced to accept a NASA-designed, NASA-operated launcher.)

At the same time, analysis of Ares aborts by the Air Force's 45th Space Wing at Cape Canaveral has led many engineers to believe this is a show-stopping issue for Ares I. I’m not ready to throw in the towel on Ares without more detailed analysis of the abort problem, but it's a vivid illustration of why solid rocket boosters pose such a challenge for manned launches.

Most Ares critics are focusing on a catastrophic failure of the Ares SRB which would immolate the Orion spacecraft in a cloud of burning fragments. Solid rocket boosters rarely blow up, but they create spectacular explosions and tragic results when they do. Two Titans suffered SRB explosions in recent memory: one in 1986 and another in 1993. The explosion of Brazil's VLS-1 solid rocket on the launchpad in 2003 killed 21 people and dealt the Brazilian space program a major setback.

The Challenger disaster was not the result of a catastrophic failure, but a similar O-ring burnthrough would still give Ares I’s guidance system fits as it struggles to keep the vehicle on course while being torqued by the hot blowtorch escaping from the failed joint. The most likely scenario for the Ares abort system would be escaping the cloud of hot fragments created if the range safety office had to destroy an off-course Ares. Range safety would probably have the luxury of a few seconds between the time when the capsule’s escape motors fire before sending the destruct command to the booster. Depending on how powerful the abort motor was and how much time they allowed, it’s possible for the Ares escape system to get the capsule high enough and downrange far enough to avoid the hot shrapnel that would doom the crew. Then again, this requirement would already add to the massive rocket which would allow Orion to out-run a thrusting Ares.

Much could be learned from the Challenger disaster in terms of how long range safety could wait before triggering the destruct sequence, and how big the debris cloud would become during the period of time Orion would be passing through its abort and descent sequence. Range safety waited what seemed like a long amount of time between the main vehicle breakup and the ground-commanded destruction of the SRB’s. I can't say if the crew module was subjected to an extreme thermal environment before slamming into the ocean. But this may be irrelevant, since the SRB's were quite some distance removed from the crew module before the SRB's were destroyed.

Taken together, all of the challenges going into the design of the Ares abort system demonstrate the compound problems created by the solid rocket first stage. The escape systems on Mercury, Apollo and Soyuz were far less challenging to design and test. They anticipated a shutdown of the liquid-fuel engines on the booster before the escape rocket fired. On a solid rocket, the only premature shutdowns are the ones caused by catastrophic failure. If there’s a need to abort, the astronauts had better hope their escape rocket can get them out of there in a hurry.

From the Earth to the Moolah

2009-07-16T19:48:00.000-07:00

For everybody contemplating the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landings, I recommend heartily this retrospective by Ronald Bailey. In a world where "No Bucks" means "No Buck Rogers," Project Apollo was a grandiose feat, but one that could not be justified with sustained funding levels. "Flags and footprints" served the important geopolitical goal of demonstrating that a free society could be technologically superior to a totalitarian one. Once that goal was met, neither scientific curiosity nor heroic adventure could justify the expenses of further human lunar missions.

As a simple math equation, the Moon represents a goal to which the nation sinks its funds. Out of the moon come tangible and intangible benefits like scientific discovery, inspiration, and consumer spinoffs of space-related technologies. But even when taken together, these benefits of lunar exploration are hard-pressed to qualify as a return on investment on the funds that are spent on human lunar missions.

The answer to a sustained human lunar program is a capitalist approach in which profit is the primary motivation. Perhaps tourism or Helium-3 mining will motivate humans to return to the moon to stay. NASA may have paved the way, but firms like SpaceX and United Launch Alliance will be there to stay. We may not see the financial motivations for lunar exploration develop in my lifetime (and I stand a good chance of making it past 2040.) But all good things happen when the time is right, and when society is mature enough to handle their consequences.

There will always exist the cold warriors whose motivations behind Project Constellation mirror those of the Apollo cold warriors in racing the Soviets. This time the specter of Communist China is the new boogeyman. In spite of a methodically-paced human spaceflight plan and the lack of lunar hardware development, many people see imminent lunar ambitions behind China's current manned space efforts. Perhaps China will land a human on the moon during my lifetime. But any Chinese lunar effort that fails to learn Apollo's lessons is doomed to the same fate. If the Chinese Politboro no longer sees an overriding political goal in lunar exploration, they'll quickly view a human lunar program as a money pit from which they'll inevitably flee.

You aren't going to stick people on that thing, are you?

2009-07-11T07:26:00.000-07:00

During the Augustine Commission hearings, the side-mount, shuttle-derived vehicle has emerged as a surprising dark horse. Compared to Ares and even DIRECT, a side-mount can be developed quicker and cheaper than its shuttle-flavored competitors. It also does the most complete job of preserving more of the STS workforce within the first few years after the orbiters retire.

The most startling aspect of the side-mount SDV presentation is the option to mount a crew capsule and escape system. Because the crew capsule would be located laterally to the external tank, most observers feel it would not be a great improvement over the shuttle when it comes to launch aborts. Precise guidance and thrust-vectoring would be required in the escape system to pull the capsule away from the ET, even if the abort was triggered while the ET was structurally intact. In a Challenger-like situation where the ET rapidly disintegrates, there may be little or no chance of protecting the capsule from ET-produced shrapnel.

Another abort scenario worth considering is the shuttle's Return to Launch Site maneuver. The shuttle stack would flip end-over-end and fire the engines in the opposite direction to cancel out the forward velocity and head home. The orbiter would then separate and glide in for a landing. On a side-mount crew launcher, the capsule doesn't have the same cross-range as the shuttle orbiter. Hopefully the escape tower would be able to pull it away from the stack and set it down somewhere in the Atlantic ocean for recovery. The bigger question is the point at which the escape tower is going to be jettisoned for a side-mount crew launcher. Will the service module engine have the thrust and steering necessary to pull free from the ET during late-boost aborts?

The side-mount SDV has been given extensive study since the days before the first shuttle launch, and it remains a valid approach for transporting large unmanned payloads to space. But is it suitable as a crew launcher? It's probably no less safe than the existing shuttle, but it would still give me a high pucker-factor if I was an astronaut. The cynic in me suspects that NASA doesn't take the side-mount crew launcher seriously, but is pitching it as a means of undermining the rationale for EELV or DIRECT. After all, DIRECT may be a more difficult and expensive development than a side-mount SDV, but it's much more suitable for manned aborts during all phases of flight.

The approach I favored during the early days of Project Constellation was a Delta IV crew launcher and side-mount SDV for unmanned cargo. It's the cheapest crew launcher paired with the cheapest heavy lifter design. I would not be surprised if the Augustine Commission seriously considers this combination.

Shuttle-Derived Fratricide

2009-06-12T21:23:00.000-07:00

Rocketman, in his uniquely-unforgettable style, is taking a look at the race to replace Ares I. He thinks the writing is on the wall for the current Ares I, but continues to hint at a return to the original "Shaft" from the ESAS report using a stock SRB and an air-start Space Shuttle Main Engine on stage 2. At the same time, he thinks that the proponents of Ares, DIRECT and Shuttle-C are taking aim at each other, with the taxpayers getting caught in the crossfire.

After reading the presentation on DIRECT 3.0 from the International Space Development Conference, I can't help but agree with Rocketman. I must first congratulate the DIRECT team for pulling out all the stops to present their concept as a more sensible alternative to NASA’s technically-challenged and budgetarily-bloated plans for Ares I & V. The presentation is incredibly slick, and it’s the best apples-to-apples comparison between the two plans to date.

But near the end of the slides is an unnecessary slap in the face of Shuttle-C, trying to fend off competition from the easiest shuttle-derived option of all. I find their arguments to be a bit of a strawman, because even the most ardent Shuttle-C supporters do not see Shuttle-C as a crew launcher (they often leave that task to EELV’s.) And there’s no reason that Shuttle-C couldn’t be adapted to the clean-pad concept that DIRECT touts for their vehicle.

I have to confess some sympathy towards Shuttle-C or a similar design (perhaps using stock RS-68's instead of SSME's.) It would be the cheapest shuttle-derived rocket of all, at least from a development budget standpoint. But it doesn't offer a lot of room for future evolution, and it inherits the same inefficiencies that are ingrained into any shuttle-derived rocket.

Is the re-opening of the launcher debate good for the taxpayers? To some point I'd agree, because Ares I is a very expensive and a very behind-schedule vehicle that offers little benefit over the Delta IV Heavy (which has already been paid for.) The debate we're expecting from the Augustine Commission is one which should have been taken to the public in 2005. But there's also the risk posed by getting mired in continual debate and wasting taxpayer dollars on a succession of aborted development projects like Shuttle II, X-33, Space Launch Initiative, and Orbital Space Plane.

For both Shuttle-C and DIRECT, time is not on their side. The infrastructure of the shuttle program, particularly at the Michoud plant where the ET's are built, is being dismanted as the blue-ribbon panels busily debate. Unless the dismantling is halted, the panel may be left with no other choice than to put its rubber-stamp on "Plan Griffin." I would still argue for Delta IV Heavy as the fastest, cheapest and lowest-risk method for getting Orion into space. To retain the shuttle workforce, LC-39 could be converted for EELV use. One pad would go to the Delta crew launcher, while the other would be reserved for a future EELV variant capable of 55-tonne payloads (as per the Northrop-Grumman Crew Exploration & Refinement study of 2004.)

The Augustine Commission absolutely has to get this right. NASA has lost a lot of credibility with its string of past failures in developing manned launch systems, and it's hard to see how the agency can sustain a manned spaceflight program after another embarassing cancellation. It's not too late to change ships and abandon Ares, but the successor system cannot afford to be cancelled during its development.

Hubble Disposal Revisited

2009-05-25T09:35:00.000-07:00

With the crew of shuttle Atlantis having completed the last servicing mission on the venerable space telescope, I've revisited the question of what happens to the large Hubble spacecraft when its mission finally ends in a few years. A piece of space debris the size of post-shutdown Hubble poses an increased risk to people on earth during an uncontrolled re-entry.

The original Hubble disposal plan called for a shuttle mission to retrieve it and send it back to earth. But the winding down of the shuttle program ensured that Hubble would out-last the spacecraft that delivered her to orbit in 1990. Besides, the risk to astronauts in order to deliver Hubble to a museum on earth really can't be justified for most people.

Back when Sean O'Keefe supported a robotic servicing mission to Hubble, the addition of a deorbit stage was considered. At least a deorbit motor would permit Hubble to control its re-entry and minimize the risk to people on the ground. The deorbit motor was also considered for the current mission before being dropped. Instead, the STS-125 astronauts added the Soft Capture Mechanism, which should allow future spacecraft to pay Hubble a visit. A deorbit stage could also be launched, although it would require some form of terminal propulsion and gudance to safely dock with Hubble.

It's always possible that a future Orion spacecraft could dock with Hubble, re-boost it, and perform maintenance. But Orion is ill-suited for the task at hand. It has no payload bay for delivering spare parts to Hubble, and there's no arm to reposition spacewalking astronauts who would repair Hubble.

The long-term Hubble situation reminds me much of the fate of Skylab. While the first American space station was boosted into a higher orbit in hopes that it would still be around when the Space Shuttle first flew, it ended up re-entering and breaking apart over the Australian outback two years before the first Space Shuttle mission. Hopefully NASA will have an executable plan to safely deorbit Hubble at the end of it's life, unlike Skylab. And if anybody's holding out hope for Orion giving Hubble another reprieve, I think they'll be sorely mistaken.

Amateurs talk rocket tactics, professionals talk rocket logistics

2009-05-19T21:28:00.000-07:00

The DIRECT rebuttal to NASA’s analysis of their concept includes some very telling observations of NASA’s mentality in creating and defending the existing infrastructure. Perhaps the most telling NASA observation comes on slide 64:

-More detail on Launch Infrastructure than on vehicle design.

--This is a design that is sized by infrastructure as they note in their paper.

--However to date Launch Infrastructure is not on the critical path of Ares-V or Ares-I

To which DIRECT responds by saying:

-The fact that the infrastructure is not being considered by Ares is one of the reasons why that architecture costs as much as it does.

--Cost of all supporting systems, not just infrastructure must be one of the many factors considered as part of the critical path.

All I can say in response is “Wow.” Are we to believe that ESAS was designed with little or no consideration of what the supporting infrastructure would cost? It would certainly explain why we’re stuck with the unaffordable Ares I and Ares V.

Further NASA statements such as “Ares I + Ares V uses 15 SRB segments, while two Jupiter 232’s use 16 segments” also reveal an incredibly simplistic approach to cost estimation. Such simple methods might be appropriate for pre-algebra students. Professional cost estimators ought to know better. That's why cost estimation is so difficult; there may literally be thousands of dependent and independent variables that make up the true cost of the system over its lifetime. Saving a few million in rocket hardware may have bigger reprocussions with development dollars, standing army costs, and infrastructure costs. It’s best summed up on Slide 26, where Jupiter’s higher launch costs (measured in tens of millions per launch) are offset by the savings of billions in development costs.

The DIRECT rebuttal also points out a problem the EELV advocates have encountered. In estimating upper stage masses, NASA has become excessively reliant on software tools like INTROS, which give fairly high estimates for upper stage dry masses. When INTROS cannot match the values for real, flight-proven hardware (like the EELV upper stages,) it might be time to revise the INTROS code. If nothing else, NASA’s impartial estimators should defer to the real values of flight hardware when the numbers conflict with the computer estimates.

All-in-all, DIRECT appears to be a more affordable architecture for a shuttle-derived lunar transportation system. I say this as somebody who earned a BS in Aerospace Engineering and actually did some serious study of solid-rocket internal ballistics during senior design class, giving me a first-order feel for how lengthy a new SRB development program will be for ATK and NASA.

With that being said, DIRECT still faces an uphill battle against “the unknown unknowns.” How well will the Centaur balloon-tank structure scale up to the larger diameter of the Jupiter rockets? What new guidance and rendezvous techniques and docking systems are required to mate the Earth Departure Stage to the Altair-Orion stack once on-orbit? What other previously-unknown problems, such as SRB heating of the core engines, will affect DIRECT once development begins?

At this point, a swap of Ares for DIRECT will result in little net gain from a schedule or technical risk perspective. While Ares proponents might argue that the last four years have seen the design mature, Ares is still years away from flying significant flightworthy hardware. The maturity of Ares today is comparable to where DIRECT’s predecessor, National Launch System (aka New Launch System) was in 1991. The only potential crew launcher with any maturity is Delta IV Heavy. If SpaceX is lucky, Falcon IX will have a successful flight before the Augustine Commission completes its report.

The Heat is On

2009-05-18T17:16:00.000-07:00

If you want some interesting technical reading, do yourself a favor and check out the DIRECT Launcher rebuttal to NASA's review of their concept. I'll go into depth about the review tomorrow, but the most exciting (or shocking, depending on your point of view) development comes on Slide 112 of the presentation:

DIRECT has come to the conclusion that the ablative nozzle of the RS-68A/B will not be sufficiently robust for a cluster application in such close proximity to the exhaust from a pair of SRB’s, and a regeneratively cooled nozzle is necessary to survive this extreme base heating environment.

The takeaway: RS-68 isn't going to cut it for DIRECT or for Ares V without some MAJOR modifications. The DIRECT team believes that a regen nozzle is necessary, and they're advocating the Space Shuttle Main Engine as a replacement. NASA is conducting a trade study between SSME and a regenerative RS-68 for Ares V. This is consistent with reports from earlier this year that SSME was back in the trade space.

We've been down this road before. During the days of ESAS, before the "Ares" name was official, there was Cargo Launch Vehicle (CaLV.) Much like the Jupiter 232 of DIRECT, it used Shuttle-derived tankage and an upper stage. It also used five SSME's on the core. Over the next year, the RS-68 replaced SSME because it would be too expensive to throw away five SSME's per flight. The consequence was a wider, all-new core with more propellant to compensate for the lower specific impulse of the less-efficient RS-68.

NASA faces the choice of switching back to SSME, or trying to create a regen RS-68. Both choices are fraught with many unknowns. How easy will it be to restart SSME production? Can any incremental changes to the SSME result in cost savings? After all, Wayne Hale has said that if the shuttle program continued past 2010, the next upgrade might have been a channel-wall nozzle to replace the thousands of welded coolant tubes in the current SSME nozzle. But a regen nozzle for RS-68 won't be trivial, and it will add to Ares V schedule and development costs. And if NASA is going to pay for a regen nozzle on RS-68, it should also reconsider the expansion ratio of the new nozzle to ensure an optimal balance between thrust level and specific impulse.

When I look at the design problem created by SRB heating of the core engines, I wonder whether "SSME vs. RS-68 Regen" is a false choice. For starters, could an ablative RS-68 be viable if the outer nozzle was thicker and absorbed more heat? For that matter, could RS-68 work if its position on the booster changed? Remember that on the shuttle, the main engines aren't mounted between the two SRB's. A similar arrangment could work on Ares V if the six engines were mounted in two separate pods. If the base of Ares looked like a clock with SRB's mounted at three and nine, one engine pod would mount at twelve and the second pod would attach at six.

Just when it might have seemed like the design of Ares V was set in stone, it's all open for debate again. Perhaps the sixty days of ESAS studies weren't enough to thoroughly review all of the underlying assumptions behind the study. At least the DIRECT guys deserve credit for laying all of their assumptions out in the open. Let's hope that NASA gets it right this time around.

My Military Acquisition Rant

2009-05-05T18:43:00.000-07:00

After a recent chat with a friend who is working on the F-22 program, I've decided that it's time for me to unleash my rant about the biggest problems I've observed with the way that the Pentagon and Congress deal with military acquisition. I make my case from the perspective that I hope we'll get smarter about the way we spend defense dollars, getting a good value for the taxpayer and ensuring that our fighting forces get the weapon systems that they need.

I think the poster-children for all the problems with military acquisition are the Seawolf-class and Virginia-class submarine programs. The Seawolf-class was designed during the 80's as a class of subs that could autonomously track and destroy Soviet ballistic missile subs. When the Soviet Union fell, the Seawolf-class was seen as a relic, and dropped after only three boats were authorized. But there was a problem; namely, how do you replace all the aging Los Angeles-class subs in the US Navy fleet? Rather than building more Seawolf-class boats, the Navy authorized the Virginia-class submarines. In comparison, the Virginia-class was smaller and slower than the Seawolf-class, with fewer torpedo tubes. After a lengthy and costly development program, the Virginia class proved to be only marginally cheaper per boat than the Seawolf-class.

Another case-in-point is the F-22 fighter program. I will be the first to admit that it would have been wise to cancel the F-22 back in 1992 when the Soviet Union dissolved. But that didn't happen, and the F-22 development program slogged on, logging its first flight in 1997 and Initial Operational Capability by late 2005. Now it appears that F-22 production will soon end at 187 airframes. While the F-22 is undoubtedly an expensive plane, much of that can be attributed to its protracted and expensive development. Now that the development costs have been sunk, the marginal cost of each F-22 is a steal compared to what the F-35 will cost early in its production run. By comparison, the F-22 is faster, stealthier, and more maneuverable than the F-35. Even the F-35's touted advantages in attack capabilities are largely moot, because the F-22 can also carry two Joint Direct Attack Munitions internally. The F-35's only advantage is the novel lift fan which allows the Marine Corps' variant to land vertically.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is another example of a program that has pressed on in spite of its questionable value to the taxpayers. It's supposed to replace the Air Force F-16 and A-10, Navy F/A-18 (and the A-6 long-range strike plane, which has been retired for the last 12 years,) and Marine Corps AV-8 Harrier. But is it really necessary to build an all-new fighter possessing "an affordable degree of stealth"? Stealth is overrated after the enemy's air defenses have been wiped out, and it constrains how much ordinance you can carry. The F-16 and F/A-18 are still very capable airplanes, and will remain on-top with avionics upgrades and integration of the newest weapon systems. Even the venerable A-10 is becoming less relevant, with F-15E Strike Eagles performing much of the close air support work in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the Harrier brings some very unique capabilities to the battlefield with its ability to operate from short airstrips and amphibious assault ships, it's worth asking whether the costs of Harrier acquisition and operations were superior compared to using Marine AH-1 Cobra attack choppers to meet the mission requirements.

So the F-22 production will soon end, while troubled programs like Global Hawk are kept on life support. Global Hawk is five years behind schedule, while the Predator series of tactical unmanned aerial vehicles continues pressing on at a remarkable pace. Originally used for recon in the Balkans, the baseline Predator has become a vital weapon for taking out high-value terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The bigger Predator-B was re-christened as the "Reaper," and it's living up to its name in dishing out laser-guided death to Jihad Joe. The new Predator-C introduces stealth and higher speeds to the successful Predator formula. While Global Hawk is more of a strategic intelligence asset than the tactical Predator, its myriad delays have motivated the defense department to find interim solutions that get results.

The big lesson for Congress and the military acquisition bureaucracy is that major development programs may take a decade or more and will require billions of dollars. They should never be undertaken lightly. And once we commit to them, we have a duty to see them through to production and build as many weapon systems from that program as we can to meet our mission requirements. It is a complete waste of taxpayer dollars and a dangerous disservice to our fighting men and women if we go back to the drawing board every time that we balk at the unit cost of a major weapon system.

Orion Takes a Backseat to Nobody

2009-05-02T09:51:00.000-07:00

NASA recently announced that the Orion Spacecraft will be initially limited to a crew of four, even for ISS missions. This is another step backwards from the ESAS Study which called for a crew of six on ISS missions and four on lunar missions.

There is a very clear reason why ESAS had a requirement for six crew to the ISS on Orion. The ISS has a crew of six, and it makes sense for Orion to deliver a full crew compliment to ISS and return them to earth. The alternative, in the post-shuttle era, is to send two Soyuz capsules (or one Dragon, if SpaceX ever sees COTS-D funding.) Apparently NASA is counting on one Orion and one Soyuz being docked at ISS at all times. If the station had to be evacuated in an emergency, NASA will have to hope that both capsules work properly to get the full crew compliment home.

Officially, NASA is justifying the smaller crew because it will eliminate the need for two different seat configurations in Orion. Development costs and mass savings have nothing to do with it. Yet this argument is pretty weak when considering that Apollo supported three crew for lunar missions and five crew in the Skylab Rescue configuration. The difference between 1973 and today is that NASA was willing to seat its astronauts in two rows during the Apollo era. Orion is significantly bigger than Apollo, in part because NASA is unwilling to have astronauts sitting in two rows during a hard landing. Only time and testing will validate this safety fear.

With the growing likelihood that ISS will see a life extension to 2020 or beyond, it doesn't make a lot of sense to take seats out of Orion and prevent it from serving as an ISS lifeboat.

Test like you fly

2009-04-25T10:22:00.000-07:00

In the business of aerospace, the phrase "test as you fly" can never be repeated too often. All hardware should be tested on the ground in as realistic fashion as possible. Flight testing should come as close to the environments where the hardware will be flown. Traditionally, new rocket designs have been tested one stage at a time, using dummy upper stages. Why then would NASA reject this test strategy for Ares I?

Perhaps it's because Project Apollo abandoned incremental testing in favor of all-up testing. Nowhere was this more pronounced than Apollo 4, the first Saturn V flight, which was the first instance when the S-IC and S-II stages had ever flown before. Of course, NASA and its contractors had extensively tested the stages on the ground before, and S-IVB had been tested on Saturn IB launches. Project Apollo is often held up as a model for how a space program should be conducted, but it's really an exception rather than the rule. Apollo was the unique product of its circumstances, and its "crash the schedule" approach should not be viewed as standard industry practice.

The current Ares test schedule calls for Ares I-X this year, a test of a 4-segment SRB with a dummy fifth segment, dummy upper stage, and avionics that don't represent Ares flight avionics. The next step is Ares I-Y in 2012. I-Y will be the first flight of the real Ares I SRB, plus an inert upper stage that, minus the engine, resembles the real Ares I upper stage. Ares I-Y will also test the Orion escape system.

As I've said many times before, Ares I-X has little to no bearing on the Ares I flight hardware and should be terminated. Ares I-Y is a far better test because it does involve Ares flight hardware, but I'm not certain there's much to be gained from flying an engine-less second stage in place of a dummy upper stage.

Recently there's been talk of an "Ares I-X Prime" which would actually test a five-segment SRB with dummy upper stage. Now we're actually getting serious about "testing like we fly." This is what Ares I-X should have looked like all along. The problem with the "Prime" test flight, in my view, is that it's being considered as a replacement for Ares I-Y instead of Ares I-X.

At this point, Ares I-X doesn't really buy NASA anything, aside from positive PR if it works correctly. Ares I-Y isn't doing much more than Ares I-X Prime would do, aside from testing the supper stage structure under flight loads and allowing for the high-altitude abort test. A wiser and more fiscally-responsible strategy would be cancelling both Ares I-X and Ares I-Y, skipping ahead to Ares I-X Prime, and then making Orion 1 (the first in-flight ignition of the upper strage and first on-orbit test of the Orion spacecraft) the last test flight before humans fly on Ares-Orion.

Spiral Development: The Chair Force Engineer Plan for Closing the Gap and Enabling Human Lunar Exploration

2009-04-21T21:36:00.000-07:00

Today's big news for Project Constellation comes in the form of Aerospace Corporation's independent study of using Heavy EELV's to launch the Orion spacecraft. The short of it: there are no problems with black zones, and the launchers can launch Orion with performance to spare. But the costs of doing so won't be trivial, and EELV+Orion won't be operational until 2014 or later. That's not much of an improvement over Ares I.

Right now NASA faces two challenges that are often opposed to each other. The first is fielding a human space launch capability in a minimal amount of time after the shuttle is retired. The second is the political consideration of retaining as many shuttle jobs as possible after the shuttle retires. Ares retains shuttle jobs, but it won't be ready for another six years or more. EELV and COTS-D might be able to shorten the post-shuttle gap, but they don't retain the shuttle workforce.

Since everybody seems to have their own ideas about how Project Constellation should run, I'd like to share mine. My ground rules are simple:
1) Get a manned spacecraft flying to ISS as soon as possible
2) Whenever possible, minimize development costs
3) Take a spiral approach to development, sacrificing the arbitraty 2020 moon landing date in favor of incremental and affordable advancements.

The first step would be halting all work on the Ares launch systems to evaluate which elements are applicable to the spiral development program that I propose, albeit on a longer time schedule than the current NASA plan. Once that's been accomplished, the Chair Force Engineer plan for manned spaceflight can begin in earnest.

1) Fully fund SpaceX's COTS-D effort
This is a no-brainer. Dragon is a simple capsule designed for one mission: deliver humans and cargo to ISS. It's the furthest system along the path that can shorten the gap.

2) Replace the current Space Shuttle system with a block I Shuttle C
Shuttle C shouldn't be hard to develop, as much of the work was completed prior to 1993. Even the leftover engines from the shuttle program can be expended on Shuttle C missions. While Shuttle C would be tasked with delivering cargo to ISS, we have to face reality: it's really there as an interim measure for retaining the shuttle workforce over the long haul while not endangering astronauts on further shuttle missions.

3) Make block upgrades to Shuttle C as the budget permits
The first order of the day is to find a replacement for the finite supply of space shuttle engines. RS-68 is a good canddiate, but it needs upgrades to even come close to SSME performance levels. The new injector plate and turbopumps from RS-68A&B are a good start, but a regeneratively-cooled nozzle would be really nice.

Shuttle C is also expandable in the SRB department. If NASA insists on paying ATK to develop longer SRB's than the current ones used byu the shuttle, they can be integrated with Shuttle C fairly easily.

4) Create a manned capsule capable of returning to earth from lunar trajectories
Perhaps Dragon could be upgraded for lunar missions. Certainly SpaceX has been discussing circumlunar Dragon missions, and I wouldn't rule out a "Block 2" variant with a beefier heat shield and enough consumables for a lunar mission. If Dragon Block 2 doesn't pan out, the Orion spacecraft could be revived using Falcon 9 Heavy or a Heavy EELV as a launcher.

5) Create an Altair lander and other elements of a lunar transit system, designed for launch on Shuttle C.
I'm agnostic on whether rendezvous in earth orbit is superior to rendezvous at an earth-moon Lagrange point. The important thing about my plan is that decisions such as EML vs. LEO are deferred until the budget exists to develop lunar-capable hardware. Certainly both would be possible using Shuttle C, in-space assembly, and on-orbit refueling. It's certain that a competent lunar mission could be staged using a capsule launched on a Heavy EELV, a lander and propulsion stage that are launched unfueled by a Shuttle C, and a load of propellant delivered by a second Shuttle C.

In closing, NASA has gotten itself into a lot of trouble by avoiding the "pay as you go" approach in favor of redoing Apollo on a shuttle-era budget. Unless the agency changes direction very soon, there will be a long gap and a brain drain in central Florida. The solution is the time-honored technique of spiral development. NASA should accelerate Dragon, fly an interim Shuttle C, and upgrade Shuttle C for sustainable operations before devloping lunar hardware in earnest. Such an approach gives policymakers enough options to ensure that the US stays in the manned spaceflight business even if the lunar goal is abandoned or replaced with more ambitious exploration targets.

Shaky Math

2009-04-20T22:17:00.000-07:00

SpaceX is delaying its next Falcon 1 launch because of "dynamic interactions" between the launcher and its RazakSat payload. A lot of commenters are coming down hard on SpaceX or wondering how this issue could have been left to simmer until the very last minute. Having observed a spaceflight program dealing with serious launch vibration issues, it's pretty easy for me to see how this happened.

Every launch vehicle users' manual contains a vibration profile for the launcher across the range of frequencies at which the rocket is expected to vibrate. SpaceX has been publishing users' guides since at least 2005, three years before the vehicle made its first successful flight. Furthermore, the flight configuration is somewhat different from the original one in the first users guides, after the change from a Merlin 1 to a Merlin 1C engine on the first stage.

The most likely scenario is that RazakSat was designed to the old vibe specs that were published for Falcon 1 several years ago (after all, RazakSat wasn't designed, fabricated, and integrated overnight.) It wasn't until all the data came back from the successful September 2008 Falcon launch that the vibe problem was discovered with RazakSat. Perhaps it affected certain structural modes of RazakSat, or maybe the vibe profile was more intense across the spectrum. Either way, it's time to go back to the drawing board.

The vibe problem doesn't require any drastic solutions. By placing a series of Softride isolators between the launcher and the payload separation system, vibrations can be damped down to a survivable level. A coupled loads analysis is absolutely necessary to examine the full launcher-softride-payload stack and determine how the isolators can be tuned for the RazakSat mission. I don't know how much time CSA Engineering would need to solve the RazakSat issue, but it would seem like the quickest possible option for getting the next Falcon 1 successfully off the pad.

Silent Eagle

2009-03-18T21:09:00.000-07:00

Boeing recently unveiled its concept for the “Silent Eagle,” the next model in the F-15 family designed to keep the venerable super-fighter in production for a few years more. In the Silent Eagle design, Boeing is hoping to offer foreign air forces an “affordable” degree of stealth. While the specifics are highly classified, the basic concepts behind designing a stealth aircraft aren’t hard to grasp:

--Introduce as few protuberances or angles as possible in the overall layout.

--Utilize radar-absorbing materials in the aircraft’s structure

--Submerge the engines in a way that protects the compressors from exposure to radar

--Reduce the noise and infra-red signatures produced by the engines through cooling, shielding the nozzles, sound dampening, and other methods.

The F-15 is still a world-class fighter aircraft, especially in the hands of a highly-trained pilot. Continuous avionics upgrades could keep it competitive with super-fighters like the F-22. But the F-22’s distinct advantage is that the airframe was designed to be stealthy from the start. While Boeing has done a few things to the F-15 airframe to reduce its radar return (submerged weapons carriage, an exportable radar-absorbent material coating on the airframe, and outward-canted fins,) it’s still a decidedly non-stealthy airplane.

Friendly foreign air forces have to face the question of whether they need stealthy combat aircraft in their arsenals. In scenarios like Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, stealth was not as vital a factor as it was in Operation Desert Storm because of the enemy’s degraded air defenses. Stealth often becomes a hindrance because internal weapons carriage reduces the overall payload the aircraft can carry.

I’m interested to see if anybody is interested in buying the F-15 “Silent Eagle,” especially with the price of the F-35 rising. The F-35 was designed with an “affordable” degree of stealth in mind, but it’s quickly becoming as expensive as the F-22 (an airplane which is faster, stealthier, more maneuverable, and just a better all-around air-to-air fighter aircraft.) "Silent Eagle" is the poor man's F-35, sacrificing the F-35's level of stealthiness for affordability, superior maneuverability, a higher top speed, a dual crew, and twin-engine reliability.

Japan is likely to be the target of Boeing's "Silent Eagle" marketing. The Japanese already fly F-15's but really want the F-22. With the US Congress prohibiting F-22 exports, Japan will likely settle for the F-35 unless Boeing can make a better offer (i.e., one that includes a higher degree of the plane's production in Japan) with the "Silent Eagle."

A Jem of an administrator?

2009-03-18T19:31:00.000-07:00

The hunt for a NASA administratorgot even messier today, with the nomination of retired Major General Scott Gration to the position of envoy to Sudan. Formerly the rumored front-runner for the job, his position has been taken by astronaut Mae Jemison in the rumor mill's pool of candidates.

I take the Jemison rumor with more than a grain of salt. My personal preference is still for Lester Lyles or Steve Isakowitz, of the people whose names have been floated. But with that being said, I'm interested in the Jemison rumors because I've actually met Dr. Jemison during a lecture and a Q&A session. I came away highly impressed with her intellect, but she definitely struck me as a scientist moreso than a manager or a leader. Maybe it was just the subject of her lecture which blinds me to the possibility of her as an administrator, but she strikes me as somebody who takes a very global view of utilizing human technological prowess to solve social problems and alleviate human suffering. These goals are very admirable, but they're not completely aligned with the NASA mission.

Service as an astronaut does not qualify one to be NASA administrator. At best, it should be viewed neutrally for an administrator candidate. Management acumen is the key here, and that's the reason why I view General Lyles or Steve Isakowitz so highly compared to the other rumored candidates. That might not mean the others are bad managers, it's just that they haven't had the opportunities to demonstrate it on a large scale. With the agency in a precarious position, I'd like to see a proven track record before supporting a candidate.

Meet the new boss?

2009-02-09T17:27:00.000-08:00

Of all the people having been previously mentioned for the position of NASA Administrator, the name of retired Air Force General Lester Lyles gives me the best feeling from my cursory knowledge of his resume. His experience as a commander and director of Launch Vehicle programs, and his experiences as commander of Space & Missile Systems Center and Air Force Materiel Command should be more than adequate experience for a potential NASA Administrator. It doesn’t hurt that a trusted confidante from my office met General Lyles at a convention and came away highly impressed.

It must be stressed that serving as an astronaut or earning an engineering Ph.D. should not substitute for automatic qualifications for the NASA Administrator job. It's not to say that either of these qualities should disqualify a potential candidate, but they have very little to do with what the administrator is tasked with. He or she has to manage a multi-billion dollar agency and "herd the cats" in a massive bureaucracy. Controlling costs and schedule while meeting performance targets is the name of the game.

The two biggest unknowns here are 1) what does the Obama Administration want the NASA Administrator to accomplish, and 2) what approach will the NASA Administrator take towards carrying out that goal? During the second Bush term, the direction was clearly laid out within the Vision for Space Exploration. Mike Griffin’s approach to VSE, known as ESAS, was an unknown at the time Griffin was appointed and confirmed (although one need only look at Griffin’s work from the First Lunar Outpost study and his work with the Planetary Society to see where he was going with ESAS.) Things are far more uncertain this time around. Without a space policy white paper from the White House, it’s very uncertain if the Obama Administration will endorse the general direction of Mike Griffin’s NASA, or if it will “change” towards currently-unknown goals in the exploration of space. It’s always possible that the White House could defer to the next NASA Admin, giving the new boss a lot of leverage over the overall goals of the agency.

Flight of the Griffin

2009-01-27T09:08:00.000-08:00

Last week, Michael Griffin departed his post as NASA administrator to considerable controversy, surrounded by a legacy that will remain tenuous and uncertain for many years to come. Mike Griffin is ESAS, and ESAS is Mike Griffin. The two of them will never be separable, and the success or failure of ESAS will likely mold the verdict that historians deliver on the Griffin administration of the agency.

With that being said, the positive accomplishments of Mike Griffin and his team have often gone neglected. The agency was responsible and courageous in the way it conducted the shuttle program as it returned to flight following the Columbia disaster. Griffin also deserves credit for the way NASA handled the COTS program, or at least for its sponsorship of SpaceX. At this point in time, SpaceX remains America's best hope for closing the spaceflight gap within a reasonable period after the shuttle retires.

At the heart of Mike Griffin's relationship with ESAS and Project Constellation is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the person in the position of "NASA Administrator" is supposed to do. For any management figure, the keys to success are cost, schedule & performance. Specifically, Mike Griffin was tasked with performing the following responsibilities during his 2005-2009 tenure with NASA:
--Keep his agency on-budget in meeting its mission
--Keep his agency on schedule as it meets its goals
--Ensure the agency's performance meets the thresholds & goals that have been set by the national leadership

During his tenure, Mike Griffin's NASA largely abandoned the presidentially-directed 2014 date for getting Orion operational ("operational" being the key term here, although further slips in the Orion schedule are highly likely,) and coalesced around an architecture which requires unplanned budget increases. The result is that the agency's ability to meet its goals, performance, is much less likely.

I would be remiss today if I did not mention Paul Spudis's excellent piece about why Project Apollo was an exception to the rules that traditionally govern national space programs. Apollo's success was due to an unsustainably large development budget. Mike Griffin's challenge, back in 2005, was to figure out how to get back to the moon while operating on a shuttle-sized budget that would only grow to keep pace with inflation. Rather than making cost-control a top priority, he signed on to "Apollo on Steroids" with a shuttle budget. Development would be stretched as long as possible in order to stay within the yearly budgets, which puts the schedule at risk.

If America fails to land a man on the moon by 2020, an argument will be made that if cost was a more serious factor during the ESAS studies, the original program schedule could have been maintained. The counter-argument is that cost-control cannot be used to justify an architecture that does not meet minimum safety requirements. At this point, I believe that NASA can do far more to reduce costs without compromising safety. It begins with a detailed analysis of the baseline mission requirements of how many man-days are required on the lunar surface, and how much volume each crew member requires to make the journey. These requirements are given as Gospel truth in ESAS with little or no justification.

The buck ultimately stopped with him, but Griffin in many ways served as "chief engineer" while forgetting all that is entailed with being an administrator. I would contend that Mike Griffin spent far too much time dictating an architecture to his own employees and then defending it to the world, instead of focusing on letting the engineers develop an architecture which fit within the cost, schedule & performance constraints placed by the nation's leaders. Mike Griffin should have been steering his agency towards meeting its cost, schedule & performance goals. Instead, he took the helm of a stalled Vision for Space Exploration and steered it firmly off-course with his engineers being keel-hauled underneath.

In spite of all the Beltway rumors surrounding the possible choices of the next administrator, I would hope that NASA's next chief comes to the job with experience as a capable manager of successful big-budget programs. His or her success should not be measured by what the changes to the architecture look like, but rather by how much cost and schedule they save the taxpayers.

A Reprieve for SSME?

2009-01-21T17:25:00.000-08:00

Rob Coppinger suggests that the days of the Space Shuttle Main Engine may not be over when the shuttle system is retired in 2010. When the shuttle program ends, there will be a number of engines that have not exceeded their lifetimes. It’s conceivable that a commercial rocket could use them on a single-use basis, although it’s unlikely that anybody would want to sink millions of dollars into developing a rocket if the supply of engines is finite.

Another (remote) possibility is that the SSME’s may find their way back onto the Ares V, as per the original ESAS studies of Summer 2005. The thought of recovering the SSME’s in a fashion similar to that proposed for the Atlas V engines had occurred to me. It’s harder to pull off a recovery of this nature on a cluster of six SSME’s, but it’s certainly worthy of study. It would improve Ares V’s performance to orbit (SSME has higher specific impulse than the RS-68,) but the thrust levels would drop off. The change to a six-engine cluster (versus the five engines on the original Ares V) might help offset that. Conversely, it might allow a switch back to the shuttle-derived 8.4-meter tankage instead of the all-new 10 meter tankage of the current design, and avoid the expense of changing the spacing between the SRB cut-outs on the Mobile Launch Platforms.

On a related note, NASA is looking at other uses of Ares V, especially for science missions. I must admit that the prospect of a massive space telescope, used to spot earth-like worlds around distant stars in our galaxy, is too exciting to ignore. At the same time, it's not realistic to think that Ares science missions will appreciably increase the Ares launch rate and amortize the big booster's massive standing army costs. Big-budget science missions on the scale of Hubble Space Telescope only launch once every few years. The obvious way to double the Ares launch rate is to dump both Ares I and Ares V in favor of two launches of an intermediate-capability rocket. You know, something that looks kinda like Jupiter-232. Or you can further amortize the existing standing army costs for the existing Delta or Atlas rockets by using six EELV's or so per lunar mission. The point is that the inherent fiscal inefficiencies of the Ares system will not be fixed through the addition of an occasional science mission to the manifest. Only a marked reduction in fixed costs or a steep increase in flight rate will make the system more efficient.

Boundary Conditions

2009-01-15T19:20:00.000-08:00

The staff of LaunchSpace wants everybody who cares about the fate of Project Constellation to keep quiet and let the big boys at NASA get on with business of going back to the moon. It's a nice sentiment, if you buy into the belief that NASA is nigh-infallible and that their plan will get us back to the moon with a reasonable amount of time and money.

At the same time, the most visible of the alternatives to Project Constellation is getting exposure in Popular Mechanics and even got a meeting with the Obama transition team. The promoters of DIRECT may see the change in administrations as their best (and perhaps final) chance to salvage Project Constellation from the budget and schedule nightmares that lie ahead.

We have a situation where multiple groups all believe they have the best solution to the challenge of going back to the moon. For what it's worth, twelve industry contractors submitted Crew Exploration & Refinement studies in Fall 2004, and their results were drastically different from either DIRECT or the NASA baseline.

How could fourteen different studies result in fourteen different conclusions about the best way to go back to the moon? The answer can simply be summed up as a difference in assumptions and evaluation criteria for what is truly best. How big of a crew are you sending to the moon? How many days will the mission last? What sites on the lunar surface will be accessible? How much volume does each crew member need in the capsule?

The criteria and assumptions that went into the ESAS study of Summer 2005 have been widely and justifiably criticised. The expendible SSME and air-start SSME which formed the basis of the early Ares designs were unrealistic. It was assumed that the existing Atlas and Delta rockets could not tailor their trajectories to enable aborts during all flight phases. On-orbit assembly and orbital refueling were viewed as highly undesirable, at best. It's enough to make one wonder what other flawed assumptions and judgement criteria went into the study.

While Ross Tierney relied on post-Challenger design studies for his original “DIRECT 1.0” concept, it should be noted that the Jupiter design was independently validated by Stephen Metschan using his FrameWork CT optimization software. FrameWork CT evaluated numerous configurations in a fashion similar to ESAS, but with different ground rules and assumptions. Neither approach is perfect, but I’m inclined to believe that ESAS is heavily flawed based on its low-balling of the cost for the five-segment SRB and other invalid assumptions.

The subjectivity of evaluation criteria is clear from the simple question whether Ares I is safer than Jupiter 120. The answer is conceivably yes, because it has less engines. But Jupiter 120 mitigates this by lighting both RS-68’s on the ground prior to igniting the SRB’s (which have an incredibly reliable ignition system.) Jupiter 120 gives you the confidence that all engines have been tested at liftoff. By contrast, Ares I relies on a staging event in which you hope and pray your second-stage engine ignites. Additionally, Jupiter 120 has more performance, allowing for greater redundancy to be added to the Orion capsule. This is the area where evaluators have to look at the probability of a staging failure on Ares I versus a loss of engines early in the Jupiter 120's ascent, or the probability that extra redundancy in certain capsule systems will allow the crew to survive in an emergency scenario. The analysis of these probabilities, and the weights given to predicted reliability numbers, present plenty of room for the experts to debate until they are blue in the face.

Every design will also possess unintended consequences that must be worked out once it has been chosen. Prediction of these consequences is a reflection of how valid and effective the original design trade was. For Ares I, launch drift and thrust oscillation are the challenges that we’ve bought. Jupiter would certainly have its own challenges, although it’s hard to see them being worse than launch drift or thrust oscillation.

I would like for the next NASA Administrator to call time-out and order a re-evaluation of crew and cargo launch strategies that takes development costs into account with infrastructure and operational costs for the expected duration of Project Constellation (from now until at least 2025.) The agency should look at permutations of all realistic crew launch & cargo launch designs. Examine Ares I, Jupiter 120, Atlas V Heavy, Delta IV Heavy, and Wide-Body Atlas for crew launch. Take a gander at Ares V, Jupiter 232, and a side-mount Shuttle Derived Vehicle similar to Shuttle-C. Take a realistic look at the assumptions which are driving the Orion capsule weight (especially the amount of volume available to each crew member) and the number of man-days the Altair lander is expected to support on the lunar surface.

The Atlas of LC-39

2009-01-12T16:35:00.000-08:00

Sir Sydney Camm famously observed that “All modern aircraft have four dimensions: span, length, height and politics. TSR-2 simply got the first three right.” He was referring to Britain’s stillborn attempt to design a medium jet bomber during the 1960’s, but the same could be said about using Atlas or Delta for space launch during the post-shuttle era. If we accept that NASA must retain government jobs, Atlas & Delta will not be acceptable solutions to the problem of manned space launch after the shuttle retires.

An option I have thought about (and I certainly was not the first) is whether the shuttle’s launch complex could be converted to launch Atlas or Delta rockets while retaining much of the shuttle workforce. Such an option is not economical, from the perspective that it’s not leveraging the infrastructure & personnel investments that United Launch Alliance has already made. But the idea of a NASA-run space launch program is inherently un-economical already.

From a technical perspective, it would not be too difficult to convert the shuttle launch facilities over for Atlas or Delta operations. It was already accomplished once, when the mothballed SLC-6 at Vandenberg was rebuilt from a Titan IIIM pad to a Shuttle pad and to a Delta IV pad. Prior to the conversion for Delta IV, Athena rockets were launched from a specially-designed stand placed over the flame trench for the shuttle SRB. It’s not hard to imagine a single-core Atlas or Delta being supported over an SRB flame-trench at Kennedy Space Center, using a modified version of the current pad’s crew elevator and access tunnel supported from the umbilical tower.

The Atlas V launch pad is designed with the umbilical tower already mounted to the transporter. One would conceivably need to be added to the Mobile Launch Platform if Atlas is flown from LC-39. Delta IV is transported horizontally, so the MLP would need some mechanism to erect the rocket at the launch site. Neither issue is non-trivial. But the alternative of modifying the MLP’s for Ares I also involves significant work.

I can see the Defense Department supporting the idea of establishing separate EELV pads at LC-39. It is always nice to have a backup launch pad in the event that an exploding rocket damages one of the existing launch pads on the east coast (LC-37B or LC-41.) Assuming that Ares V survives the anticipated cuts to Project Constellation, one of the pads at LC-39 will likely be reserved for the new super-rocket. The other launch complex could conceivably be designed for both Atlas and Delta operations, but the Mobile Launch Pads would be drastically different. I would anticipate that only one of the EELV’s will make the cut. My preferred configuration would be a wide-body Atlas with two RD-180 engines on the first stage, but a three-core Heavy EELV would be cheaper from a development perspective.

Recent rumors have indicated that the Obama Administration plans to euthanize Ares I in favor of Atlas, Delta or both. If the rumblings are true, the space community should be warned that the substitution will not be a simple slam-dunk. NASA will have to re-examine its workplace retention issues and its relations with United Launch Alliance. Ultimately NASA will find a way to retain as many existing jobs as possible through re-use of LC-39, regardless of how expensive and unnecessary it may be.

Final Rest

2008-12-30T19:40:00.000-08:00

NASA's release of the Columbia Crew Survival Investigation Report answers the lingering questions in my mind regarding the final moments of the Columbia disaster and what the astronauts must have experienced. Some of the questions arise from morbid curiosity while others are the product of a desire to build better crew survival systems into future spacecraft.

The report paints a picture of a rapidly-snowballing disaster. Control was lost and the orbiter began breaking up less than a minute after Columbia's last radio contact with Mission Control. With the hydraulics lost in the left wing, Columbia pitched into a nose-high attitude prior to ballistic flight and breakup. The crew module depressurized through a fairly small rupture, and the crew would have been unconscious prior to the point where the module completely disintegrated. Depending on how long crew consciousness was maintained, they may have felt the violent tumbling of the crew module as it began a multi-axis rotation after separating from the orbiter.

By concluding this investigation with a lengthy and detailed report, NASA has laid the groundwork for enhancing crew survivability during a re-entry accident. For starters, the parachutes should be rigged to deploy automatically (although, in the shuttle's case, they'd only be used during a subsonic, level glide.) NASA should also quantify the current performance envelope for bailing out while wearing the current ACES suit. Of course, there's no substitute for making the shuttle, Orion, and other spacecraft so safe that the escape system will be irrelevant.

That Other Anniversary

2008-12-14T15:49:00.000-08:00

Every space enthusiast seems to have some way of commemorating July 20th, the anniversary of when humans first walked on the surface of the moon. But few seem to mark that other anniversary: December 14, 1972, when humans last walked on the moon. For all of the jubilation on Apollo's success in landing a man on the moon before the decade was out, there is very little introspection on why Apollo gave us a tease of a space-faring future that has yet to come to fruition.

The success of Apollo can be credited to a well-run program packed with technical and management genius, flush with cash from a cold-war defense buildup. Conversely, the end of Apollo can be attributed to a decline in national will to continue the lunar effort, making it impossible to justify the human risk and national expenditures that were required to continue sending humans to the moon. Even after the risk was reduced and the development costs were sunk, a majority of Americans didn't want to keep cranking out Saturn rockets and launching them to further our understanding of our moon.

As NASA again embarks on the Apollo adventure, the questions of how we will sustain the lunar program have not been adequately addressed. If the cold war wasn't justification enough for a nationally-funded effort at sustained lunar missions, what is? I doubt that the use of NASA as a government jobs program can justify it alone. With regards to keeping people on the government payroll, sustained lunar missions don't have much advantage over, say, a sustained earth-orbital program such as the shuttle.

It's difficult to see Project Constellation sustaining itself beyond a few sortie missions, if it even achieves the lunar goal to begin with. Humans will only sustain a presence on the moon if a profit motive exists to do so. It doesn't matter if we're talking about the United States, Russia, China, or any other spacefaring world power. If the economic justification does not exist, the lunar landings will be an unsustainable stunt. Until a profitable reason to put humans on the moon exists, a sustained human presence on the moon will have to wait.

DynaSoar Extinction

2008-12-09T19:07:00.001-08:00

No single name curdles the blood of space enthusiasts like that of Jeffrey Bell. The University of Hawaii professor and "recovering pro-space activist" often lends a cynical commentary that douses water on the dreams of NASA-lovers and NewSpacers alike. While I can't say that I always agree with Dr. Bell, he crafts a rational argument and often serves to inject a dose of harsh reality into the kool-aid drinkers who deal effective setbacks to space programs by peddling unrealistic fantasies.

In his new piece, Jeffrey Bell strikes back at the “Cult of the DynaSoar,” the aviation enthusiasts who lament the cancellation of the Air Force spaceplane program of the 50’s and 60’s. I will admit that I would probably be labeled as a member of the DynaSoar cult, based on my past polemics about how we needed the X-20, or something like it, to blaze the trail for the operational Space Shuttle. Part of it stems from a desire I share with Dr. Bell, the belief that a small-scale spaceplane demo would have steered decision-makers away from many ill-fated design choices during the Space Shuttle program. Another part of it stemmed from my lack of appreciation for how ineffective the DynaSoar thermal management system was. I didn’t read about the silicon coatings or the liquid hydrogen tank that was essential to keep the cabin cool until Jeff Bell brought attention to them.

Admittedly, DynaSoar was clearly an extreme example of undisciplined requirements creep leading to the death of an acquisition program. Conceived as a suborbital bomber, it evolved through four stages into an orbital spaceplane. The personnel who set goals for the DynaSoar program must have been unaware of the materials science realities of the time. It was a shining example of how a bad acquisition program is run.

If DynaSoar would have served as an example of how not to build a reusable spacecraft, and if the Space Shuttle has served as an example of how not to build a reusable spacecraft, then what approaches are left to try? The shuttle’s thermal protection system is effective but fragile. DynaSoar’s thermal protection system was impractical but robust. But Shuttle and DynaSoar are both examples of what would be called “dense” reentry vehicles. Perhaps the solution is to design a vehicle that carries its propellant tanks to orbit, ensuring that it will have a low wing loading (and low heat loading) when it hits the atmosphere. It would be able to get away with a robust metallic thermal protection system because it would be so “fluffy” that heating would be reduced. That was one of many goals in the X-33 program. And because I brought up X-33, that will undoubtedly be the subject of Jeff Bell’s next polemic.

The Incredible Shrinking Orion

2008-11-29T09:45:00.000-08:00

The NASA transition team is asking the agency to look at several options in order to craft the Obama Administration's space exploration policy. To wit, these options include:
1. Acceleration of Ares & Orion
2. Cancellation of Ares I while retaining Ares V
3. Shrinking Orion to fit on an Atlas V or Delta IV
4. Shrinking Orion to fit on a foreign launcher (H-2A or Ariane 5)
5. Accelerate COTS-D (SpaceX Dragon, perhaps other vehicles)

Before discussing any of these options, it's worth asking the question of how big Orion needs to be in the first place. While the ESAS report cited 22.5 tonnes and a diameter of 5.5 meters (later reduced to 5 meters,) there is no discussion of exactly how much volume a crew needs for a lunar mission, and the diameter seems to be an arbitrary number with zero justification. My preference is to look at historical examples (chiefly, Apollo,) and use that to determine the requirements for the next manned spacecraft.

The Apollo capsule had a diameter of 3.9 meters and afforded a 3-man crew an adequate amount of room for a two-week lunar voyage. That same volume was adequate to deliver a crew of five or six on a shorter trip to Skylab (as studied during the Skylab rescue planning and the shuttle escape study.) For earth-orbit missions, Apollo weighed as little as 14.7 tonnes. For lunar missions, the additional consumables and propellant brought that weight to 30 tonnes. Apollo also required nearly seven years to move from contract award to first manned flight.

In ESAS, NASA dismissed the stock Atlas and Delta on the grounds of crew safety during mission aborts. While those fears were shown to be spurious during the Atlas man-rating study performed by Lockheed Martin, the performance of both rockets leaves much to be desired. NASA should budget no less than 30 tonnes for Orion. While the new spacecraft won't need propellant to perform a lunar-orbit insertion burn, and it trades the mass of fuel cells for lighter solar arrays, the capsule will need to be heavier to accomodate a larger crew, and the spacecraft will have to carry more consumables.

If Orion shrinks to the point where it can fly on an existing launcher, the lunar goal will be deferred or cancelled entirely. Perhaps a two-man Orion would be light enough to launch on an EELV and still be capable of a lunar journey, at the expense of higher crew workload and diminished science return from a lunar sortie.

Most disturbingly, if Orion is limited to earth-orbit missions, it destroys the rationale for Dragon and COTS-D. What incentive will NASA have to buy commercial launches for ISS if Orion does the job? While Bob Bigelow's space hotel plans might give SpaceX some incentive, the real near-term prize is COTS-D. The chicken-and-egg dilemma here is that a COTS-type vehicle must be ready before the Bigelow space hotel can go into operation.

Getting back to the meat of the post, I wanted to take a quick look at the four scenarios being examined by the Obama transition team:

1. Acceleration would be difficult to achieve with the existing Ares and Orion vehicles. It may have to come at the expense of testing, which is rarely a sound strategy (except in the case of all-up testing in Apollo.) Based on the 2006 contract award for Orion and a seven-year development time, we can't expect the capsule to be ready for manned flight any sooner than early 2013. That figure is optimistic, assuming that Orion is at a similar level of completion to where Apollo was in early 1964. An infusion of added cash into Ares and Orion will probably not accelerate the schedule; rather, they will serve to prevent the schedule from slipping further to the right as unanticipated problems rear their ugly heads.

2. This is my favored option, when paired with #5. Ares I will take too long to develop and has no real chance of closing the gap. Ares V and Orion can be kept going as a jobs-retention program. Perhaps NASA can adopt a two-Ares V mission profile, avoiding the tight mass margins currently encountered by the current architecture.

3. Again, I think there's nothing to be gained by stripping Orion down to the point where it can no longer perform a practical, safe lunar mission. The EELV option should be a non-starter.

4. The foreign launchers option is an interesting one, even though it suffers the same flaws as the Atlas/Delta option. It's interesting to note that Ariane 5 was designed with a manned spacecraft (the Hermes spaceplane) in mind. Even if the foreign boosters had the performance required to lift Orion in its current form, I think that "not invented here" and jobs-retention issues will scuttle the idea.

5. As many NewSpacers have pointed out before, the most cost-effective use of manned spaceflight dollars would be cancelling Ares I and using the savings to fund the unfunded COTS-D program. If I were advising the president-elect, this is exactly the advice I'd give him. An accelerated Dragon program gives America the best shot to have a manned spacecraft flying by 2012 or 2013.

I'd also recommend keeping Orion, Altair and Ares V going at a slower schedule and a lower spending profile until "the gap" was closed. At that point, a decision could be made on whether to proceed with manned lunar missions. NASA could retain "Apollo on Steroids" using two Ares V's per mission, or an "Apollo Redux" which would perform a more limited mission with a single Ares V launch.

Air Launch Revisited

2008-11-22T12:24:00.000-08:00

The Selenian Boondocks blog has, since its inception, been one of the best sources for discussion of space transport ideas on the internet. Some of the ideas have been downright inventive, while others have only been shot down after much serious discussion. Nevertheless, it represents the kind of thinking we need to truly solve the problems of making space access routine and affordable. While already a great blog under the meticulous care of Jon Goff and Ken Murphy, Selenian Boondocks just got even better with the addition of John Hare to the team. Hopefully he will dispel the notion of a “Hare-brained” scheme as a bad thing. (Pardon the pun.)

My eye was recently caught by a discussion of an optimized carrier aircraft to serve as the first stage for a reusable launch vehicle. During Jon Goff’s previous air-launch discussions, I came out in favor of using unmodified military cargo planes for air-launching small vehicles with scissor-wings. While I still favor this idea based on tight development budgets, discussion of an optimized mothership has merit if somebody is willing to pay for one.

It should be noted that the most successful mothership in recent memory, the Lockheed Tristar operated by Orbital Sciences, was chosen because it was cheap to obtain second-hand, and because it had fairly tall landing gear which allowed for adequate ground clearance. While the option exists for captive-carry on top of the mothership, it has fallen out of favor because of incidents like the D-21 collision with its Blackbird mothership. While the idea worked for the Enterprise glide testing, it’s probably a much different story if the separation involves igniting a rocket.

John Hare’s idea for a “flying wing” mothership does have some historical basis. One of the Northrop-Grumman concepts for Space Launch Initiative, released in 2002, used a six-engined flying wing as its first stage. A large winged rocket would provide most of the delta-V from subsonic cruise to orbit, and the crew would ride in a small lifting body. The biggest problem with the design is the amount of money required to develop it. The second biggest problem is whether the large winged rocket could accelerate from Mach 0.8 to orbital velocity, especially when burdened with the structural requirements of its own wings and landing gear. Problem three is how you’d get the winged rocket back to base after it’s expended all of its propellants.

One of the big assumptions here is that the mothership need only carry the vehicle to a speed around Mach 0.8. In fact, Boeing twice patented a two-stage system with a supersonic mothership. The 1982 iteration used eight turbojets, while the 1993 version used six. Both designs made use of a Space Shuttle Main Engine for acceleration during climb, prior to staging. The mothership would be nearly 200 feet long. The problem is that multiple studies have shown that subsonic launch is a pretty efficient solution. The challenges of supersonic flight erode the benefits of a higher separation speed. Supersonic launch doesn’t break even with subsonic launch until hitting mach 3 or higher. The Boeing idea isn’t bad if your goal is to ignite a scramjet, but it seems like engineering and budgetary overkill for the space launch problem. The primary benefit of the Boeing patents was their addition to the lore of mythical craft like Aurora and Blackstar.

The challenge of a custom air-launch system is the need to develop both the rocket and the mothership aircraft. Systems that have utilized existing aircraft for motherships have been able to spare themselves the development of one element of the system. But the inverse paradigm has not been attempted: use of a newly-designed mothership aircraft to boost the performance of an existing rocket. Structurally, this may not be feasible due to the changes to bending and other loads encountered by the change to air launch. At the same time, it has been studied before (such as the Crossbow concept) and is worthy of further consideration. Even though the payload boost may be small, it reduces the facilities costs and the weather-related delays that have accompanied traditional ground-launched rockets. Air-launch makes space launches more flexible in terms of launch azimuths, launch sites, and reduced launch delays. The concept's advantages should draw the interest of the Defense Department as a solution to the problems of Operationally-Responsive Space.

The Shuttle Legacy

2008-11-11T11:04:00.000-08:00

When Project Apollo was shut down, the most tragic aspect of it was all of the useful technologies that were lost as tooling was destroyed and experts were reassigned to other programs. The mighty F-1 engine was relegated to museums, ceding the kerosene-engine market to the Russians. The demise of the J-2 engine has led to an expensive development program for the new J-2X that will be used on the Ares launchers. Even the exact formulation and processes for creating the Apollo capsule's ablative heat shield were lost to time, complicating the effort to develop the Orion heat shield.

As the Space Shuttle winds down, it appears that the same mistake is not being repeated, at least not on the same scale. In taking stock of the program's technical accomplishments, many of them are being preserved or leveraged for the Ares and Orion systems. Of the ones being discarded, they have served as lessons for ways that a reusable launch vehicle should not be built.

When NASA transitioned from Saturn to Shuttle, significant propulsion elements had to be re-developed. While Space Shuttle Main Engine owes a lot to the J-2 program, it is a much bigger engine with higher specific impulse and thrust, a more complex staged combustion cycle, and built-in reusability. The solid rockets were a massive undertaking in many ways, eclipsing any solid rocket with flight history up to that point in time.

Some elements of the propulsion system will remain relevant for the Ares generation. The shuttle solid rocket boosters will be leveraged for the boosters on the Ares rockets. While the new boosters are a leap beyond the current SRB, it's not as far of a leap as the original SRB was when compared to its predecessors. Additionally, the shuttle's maneuvering engines are being re-used for Orion. This may be the only element of the shuttle system that is reused with no changes.

For other shuttle developments, they will best serve as lessons learned in the development of equivalent systems. Perhaps the shuttle's most remarkable achievement was its main engines. Nevertheless, the SSME's taught us a lot of the ways not to design an engine for producibility or reliability. The high chamber pressure and staged combustion cycle ensured high performance, but required lots of ground support equipment. Thousands of tiny welded tubes in the nozzle and chamber for cooling? It was state of the art for the 70's, but channel-wall cooling is the preferred method nowadays. The RS-68 benefited from the lessons of SSME, sacrificing specific impulse in favor of producibility. Its gas-generator cycle, lower chamber pressure, and channel-wall chamber with ablative nozzle make for a much cheaper engine. Its only drawbacks when compared to SSME are specific impulse (which can be increased with a redesigned injector and regen-cooled nozzle) and lack of reusability. In fact, a channel-wall nozzle was planned as a shuttle upgrade until the program's 2010 retirement was announced.

At the same time, a lot of the shuttle's pioneering achievements in the field of re-usability are being discarded as dead-ends which taught us how not to build a reusable launcher. Case in point is the shuttle's thermal protection system. While the blankets will likely find use on the cooler surfaces of a future reusable launcher, the other heat shield materials will likely be dismissed. The ceramic tiles still are remarkable, but they form a complex system that is difficult to maintain. Reinforced carbon-carbon had incredible abilities to stand up to high temperatures on the shuttle's nose cap and leading edges, but they were too brittle to reliably ensure safe reentry. A future reusable launcher will likely be a "fluffier" design along the lines of X-33, which can get by using a robust, metallic thermal protection system.

Overall, NASA and the industry are taking a wiser approach to the end of the shuttle program than was taken at the end of Apollo. Many critical technologies are being reused, albeit in expendable rockets. The clear succession from Shuttle to Ares is mainly in the field of propulsion, where breakthroughs during the shuttle's development have reduced the risk for Ares. The enduring challenge from the shuttle program is to learn the correct lessons from the reusability concepts that proved so difficult to implement on the operational shuttle.

Reports of The Stick's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

2008-11-06T20:06:00.000-08:00

The speculation of Rocketman notwithstanding, I don't think that the recent election will have much effect on the development of the Ares I launch vehicle and Orion Spacecraft. Anybody who claims otherwise is broadcasting wishful thinking to the rest of the world.

There are many reasons why I believe that Ares I will continue to plod along. Most prominently, it's a jobs-retention vehicle. The political impacts of shutting down the shuttle facilities and laying off the workforce will make any politician think twice. The political ramifications of Ares cancellation would be felt prominently in Florida, Louisiana and California. While President-Elect Obama was able to win without the support of Louisiana or Florida's Brevard County (home to Kennedy Space Center,) I still doubt that many politicians want to tell thousands of people that they're getting laid off.

While shuttle program extension is talked about, particularly by the GAO, there's no compelling reason for adding any more missions to the current manifest (aside from the possibility of an Alpha Magnetic Sprectrometer mission, STS-134.) I do accept the possibility that unexpected delays will extend the current manifest to 2011 or even 2012. But the shuttle's lack of lifeboat capabilities ensures that it will not fill the gap.

At this point, we have no idea who the new administrator will be, or what his or her whims are. For all we know, the President-Elect might convince Michael Griffin to stay aboard. Much more will be known once the NASA Administrator situation shakes out.

The biggest threat to Ares I comes not from the next president or next administrator, but from Elon Musk and his outstanding team at SpaceX who are working on the Falcon IX rocket and Dragon spacecraft. The American public will be justifiably angry if a private firm like SpaceX can launch a manned, orbital spaceflight on a shorter schedule and smaller budget than NASA received for Ares-Orion. The shock of such an event might be able to overcome Congressional resistance to changing the NASA status-quo. It really doesn't matter to the public or Congress if Orion is a more able spacecraft capable of lunar flight. The spiral-development model should have taken this into account and worked on closing the gap first, worrying about the moon later.

While Ares V, Altair, and lunar hardware are a distant future whose continued funding is verymuch in doubt, it's clear that Orion and Ares I have significant momentum heading into the next administration. At this point, only a Dragon can break The Stick.

Morale Stops Here

2008-10-22T18:07:00.000-07:00

Michael Griffin blames anonymous weblogs, critical of Project Constellation, for harming the morale of NASA engineers. Further, he claims that engineering disagreements between NASA insiders and the weblogs have escalated into personal vendettas. The message of the strawman argument is that bloggers should just shut their mouths and let the big boys get on with the serious business of Project Constellation.

I don't know if Mike Griffin has ever known how it feels to be completely demoralized, but I feel demoralized on a daily basis. I have also seen firsthand the ways that professional disagreements over engineering judgments have turned into passive-aggressive behavior in the workplace. There is no virtue in schadenfreude, and I certainly don't wish those things upon anybody. With that being said, none of my experience can be attributed to anything I've read in a weblog (although there's plenty of intelligent criticism to go around.)

In my years as a critic of Mike Griffin's NASA, I have never intended to criticize the engineers who have been tasked to make this plan a reality. They're doing the best they can with the plan they were handed by their management. The engineering staff at NASA-Marshall and the other NASA centers who are working Project Constellation are putting in long days and making great personal sacrifices in order to ensure the success of the Constellation program.

While my critics may disagree, I have no personal vendetta against Mike Griffin, either. I don't think he's done anything illegal, immoral, or scandalous. I'm convinced that he believes 100% in Project Constellation as he's implemented it. The problem is one of vision, and one of pride. Mike Griffin had his own vision for how to implement the Vision for Space Exploration, and his agency rushed a 60-day study based on multiple flawed assumptions. While the Griffin vision is now the law of the land, many of us are disappointed. We want to believe in things like afforability and sustainability. We haven't seen any evidence that "Apollo on Steroids" will be able to avoid the same fate as its namesake.

NASA's engineers are smart people, and they're plenty capable of making their own value judgements about the programs they work on. They don't need anybody's blog to help them make an educated decision. I want NASA’s engineers to be happy. If working on Ares makes them happy, they should keep plugging away. If they can’t stand the work they’re doing, they should try to get reassigned, or find a job outside of NASA that's more rewarding.

Along similar lines, I have made my own value judgments about the worthless nature of the work I have performed for the US Air Force. This miserable experience has soured me towards the engineering profession, the aerospace industry, and government bureaucracy. Next August I bid the Air Force "good riddance" and look for a non-engineering job that promises a rewarding experience of immediate benefit to humanity.

Over the last few months, I have kept a lid on criticism of the Ares I configuration, which should make Mike Griffin and his engineers happy. Fighting The Shaft is futile, as Ares I has progressed far enough where it will probably survive into the next administration. The argument should not be over whether it should be killed, but on ways to make it as safe as possible. But ending all criticism of the Griffin plan won’t fix the problem of NASA morale.

The morale of engineers is directly tied to the work they are given by their management. If you want to keep engineers happy, give them tasks that are worthy of their efforts. When management fails to do that, they have nobody to blame for poor morale but themselves.

Nova fizzles

2008-10-14T20:16:00.000-07:00

I watched NOVA's "Space Shuttle Disaster" episode on PBS tonight, and I have to say that I was disappointed. It really didn't say anything that hasn't been said before, and it focused more on the cultural and managerial aspects of the disaster, rather than the technical side.

The problem with documentaries of this sort is that it's difficult to come up with something original to say when so many other documentaries have been made, and when the news media has covered so many facets of a highly-visible event like the Columbia disaster. I recall a program on the National Geographic channel from 2005 which covered the Columbia disaster in what I felt was a better treatment than the more recent one from Nova.

I will say that my initial reaction to the foamstrike theory, publicly announced later in the day when the disaster first occurred, was similar to that of many NASA managers. Debris strikes and over-pressures had knocked off tiles on previous shuttle missions, so why would a foamstrike be enough to doom Columbia? It turns out that this was the mother of all foamstrikes, targeting the orbiter's critical and brittle leading edges. NASA is lucky that they have better folks than I to make the life-and-death decisions that affect the crew. Even still, we are reminded that this is serious business with little room for error.

The more morbid parts of my mind focus on what the re-entry must have been like for the slowly-disintegrating orbiter, and for the crew. I wonder how much the accident investigators know about exactly what was going on within the wing structure as the plasma blowtorch intensified. I can only imagine the terror the crew must have felt during those final moments of radio silence, as the left wing disintegrated and the vehicle spun out of control before its ultimate disintegration. There can be no underestimating the bravery of men and women who knowingly choose to ride the Space Shuttle.

Mars: From Surface Lab to Sample Return

2008-10-12T13:28:00.000-07:00

Rocket Man has an interesting piece about the problems encountered by the Mars Science Laboratory program, which threaten to end the next Mars science mission before it even gets off the ground.

When I first read about the SkyCrane descent method, it seemed pretty needlessly complex in my view. How long would the "flying bedstead" need to sustain a hover in order to lower and free the science rover? How do you ensure a clean separation as the "flying bedstead" flies away from its rover? The concept could work, but it adds a lot of risk to the mission that I don't think is necessary.

Instead of pursuing MSL, Rocket Man proposes spending its budget on built-to-print copies of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. Such a move would give NASA-JPL a reliable means of investigating multiple sites of scientific interest on the Red Planet.

But I would take the idea one step further, and tie the "multiple rovers" concept into the long-anticipated mission to robotically return soil samples from Mars. While a single Sample Return mission would have scientific value, the expensive Sample-Return mission could provide a much greater science return if multiple areas on the Martian surface could be sampled.

Conceptually, using several copies of the Spirit/Opportunity rover to grab soil samples for return to earth is an excellent idea. The problem is getting all of those samples back to earth. At the pace the rovers travel, they'd have to be landed fairly close to the rocket that will lift off from the Martian surface to bring the samples back to earth. This would defeat the purpose of having multiple rovers for a sample return mission.

Alternately, each rover could be delivered to the Martian surface with its own ascent vehicle. Bigger ascent vehicles could return to earth independently, increasing the chances that at least one Martian soil sample will make it back to earth. A more complex design would use smaller ascent vehicles, and make them rendezvous with a mother-ship in Mars orbit.

In closing, the successes of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers in exploring Mars should serve as the basis for future exploration efforts. Unfortunately, Mars Science Lab discards many of these proven concepts and systems in favor of a high-risk SkyCrane approach. If SkyCrane does not work out, JPL should seriously consider a return to the Spirit/Opportunity rover design, and perform science missions with an armada of simple, cheap rovers instead of a single, expensive rover. The "constellation of rovers" approach to science missions may be the best way to ensure the success of Mars Sample Return.

"Stages to Saturn" and Lessons from Saturn

2008-10-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

I recently finished reading Stages to Saturn, Roger Bilstein's authoritative tome on the development of the Saturn rockets. The book was first written in 1979, with the perspective that Saturn-like rockets would soon be replaced with reusable launchers like the upcoming Shuttle. Perhaps Mr. Bilstein was surprised to see that, by the 2003 edition, his book could again be referenced by the designers of a new generation of launchers.

Philosopher George Santayana has been memorialized for his famous aphorism, "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Naturally this begs the question, "How has today's NASA learned from history?" The major lessons from Apollo can be debatable, and NASA's implementation of those lessons is even more open to controversy.

When the Saturn A-I was still on the drawing boards in late 1959, there was debate as to what the upper stage would be. The cluster-tank first stage was already set, but various ICBM's were being eyed to form the second stage. While the Titan I first stage was preferred, it was rejected for numerous reasons (including structural limitations.) In Spring 1960, the Silverstein Committee convinced Wernher von Braun and his team to bite the fiscal bullet and develop an all-new, hydrogen-fueled upper stage.

During the Saturn program, NASA faced opportunities where existing hardware could have been used in a sub-optimal manner, but they instead invested in high-risk, high-payoff technologies that made Saturn a success (particularly the massive F-1 engine and the J-2 engine, which was a major impetus for the development of hydrogen as a rocket fuel.) The Ares rockets are shuttle-flavored, but not exactly shuttle-derived. The existing Shuttle SRB and Space Shuttle Main Engine were rejected because they couldn't meet mission requirements. But it's debatable whether a solid fuel first stage is necessary to begin with.

The Saturn rockets became astounding successes because they had ample development time and budgets. The Saturn program had the luxury of investing in new engines like F-1 and J-2 and all the challenges that accompanied them. By contrast, Ares I is being developed on a shoestring budget until the Shuttle is retired in 2010. The conflicting demand is that Ares I be operational as soon as possible, to minimize the loss of space launch capability between shuttle retirement and Ares I first flight.

Another reason for Saturn's spectacular success was the inherent design conservatism of the team at Marshall who developed the moon rockets. Wernher von Braun was skeptical of the low mass estimates that were given for the Apollo spacecraft and lunar module at the start of the program. He discreetly had his engineers design to much higher performance margins. Sure enough, von Braun was vindicated as spacecraft mass grew, particularly in the lunar module. The structural margins in all of the stages were such that mass could be removed from the S-II stage in order to increase the Saturn V's payload.

In designing Ares I, NASA quickly forgot the guidance of von Braun. The mass budgets for Ares I are so tight that Lockheed Martin was forced to scale back Orion to a "zero base" vehicle and add redundancy back in as vehicle performance improved. While there's still some performance margin, the margin between vehicle performance and payload mass should be much higher at such an early stage in the program's life (currently past Preliminary Design Review, with delta-PDR's remaining on issues like thrust oscillation damping.)

One lesson from the Saturn staging process could have averted the failure of Falcon I Flight 3. During a Saturn launch, the vehicle was allowed to coast for a period of time following stage burnout. When the stages separated, a series of retrorockets would create additional spacing between the upper and lower stages before the upper stage ignited. My guess is that Falcon I's designers omitted the retrorockets to squeeze extra payload mass into the design; the consequence is that some reliability is sacrificed.

The use of common bulkheads was key to Saturn's mass savings on stages 2&3. In both cases, the design of the bulkheads gave the contractors significant manufacturing challenges. Common bulkheads were rejected for the S-IC because of the density difference between liquid oxygen and kerosene (although this didn't stop its use in Atlas.) Because of the temperature difference between hydrogen and oxygen propellants, the bulkhead consisted of two thin skins separated by a precisely-shaped layer of insulation. The segments of the skins had to be welded together from individual gores. NASA and Boeing will hopefully be able to apply the same techniques when manufacturing the common bulkhead for the Ares I upper stages.

A massive program like Saturn cannot survive without effective management. This became an issue during North American Aviation's manufacturing of the S-II stage, and it appeared that NAA was overextended between the S-II and Apollo spacecraft. This becomes a bigger problem for Project Constellation because there are fewer aerospace contractors left who can manage the production of a major component, like the spacecraft or a rocket stage. Will LockMart or Boeing be able to produce the Ares V core in addition to the Orion Spacecraft or Ares I upper stage? What about production of the Earth Departure Stage or Altair lander?

While Project Constellation is fairly young, logistics is a challenge that deserves serious consideration at this stage of the program. Apollo neglected logistics longer than it should have, but innovative solutions were found through the use of river barges and "Pregnant Guppies" for transport of large rocket stages. The logistics problem for Constellation takes on an added dimension because the Ares V core will be the largest rocket stage ever produced. I don't know if NASA has seriously looked into what it will take to produce the Ares V core and transport it from Michoud to the Cape. It's an open question of whether the existing facilities and vehicles are up to the challenge.

Most importantly, the Saturn rockets succeeded because of ample supplies of genius and luck. People like George Low, Werner von Braun, Sam Phillips, and George Mueller were instrumental to the program's success. One of von Braun's biggest virtues was not his own ideas, but his ability to support other people's ideas when they conflicted with his own (ideas like all-up testing and lunar orbit rendezvous.) Many of the leaders in the Apollo effort took large gambles; the biggest gamble of all was all-up testing for Saturn V. The fact that all three stages of Saturn V worked properly on the first launch (Apollo 4) is testament to the geniuses and methodical managers and meticulous technicians who got it correct on the first try. The same could be said about Apollo 8, launched around the moon prior to an earth-orbit test of the Apollo spacecraft aboard the Saturn V. Only time will tell if the same genius is currently at play with NASA.

One small launch for a rocket, one giant leap for newspace

2008-09-28T16:36:00.000-07:00

My hat goes off to SpaceX for successfully achieving orbit on the fourth launch of Falcon I. I'm sure a lot of observers of this industry, and a lot of space enthusiasts feel the same way. It's been a rocky road to get to this point, and the road will be even bumpier from here out. But with that being said, this is a brief moment for SpaceX to bask in the glory of achieving orbit with a privately-developed vehicle.

The only concern I have from watching the launch video feed is all of the debris that seemed to hang around the second stage nozzle. With that being said, I thought that separation was much cleaner than on the previous flights.

While Falcon I has found success, Falcon IX will be a much tougher challenge. With nine Merlin engines on the first stage and a single Merlin on stage 2, it's a much more complex vehicle than Falcon I and its pairing of one Merlin with one Kestrel.

Another factor worth considering is the long-term profitability of SpaceX. The Pegasus launcher is case-in-point. Also developed with private funds, the Pegasus program was launched with claims of low cost per each kilogram of payload to orbit. Due to a lack of missions and a low launch rate, Pegasus prices skyrocketed beyond what was initially projected. SpaceX hopes that Falcon IX will have a high flight rate thanks to COTS and space tourism missions. But if these goals aren't met, Falcon IX will turn into little more than another fairly-expensive EELV-class rocket like Delta or Atlas.

With all that being said, today is a very encouraging day. The accomplishments of SpaceX leading up to today's launch may be more important than the other government-funded space stunts of this past week, at least in terms of advancing humanity's permanent presence in space.

ISS Solutions, Made in China

2008-09-18T20:25:00.000-07:00

As multiple commentators have noted, there are no good options left in dealing with US access to the International Space Station. The Shuttle doesn’t meet mission requirements for crew return, but buying Soyuz capsules will be rewarding Russia in spite of its invasion of Georgia and proliferation of nuclear technology to Iran. When trapped between a rock and a hard place, it’s time to ask ourselves, “What would Richard Nixon do?”

Of course, I’m alluding to Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972. When the Russians are giving you a hard time, turn to China and do business with them instead. The analogy could also work for the space program. If NASA seriously looked at an alliance with China and used Shenzhou spacecraft to reach the International Space Station, it might get the Russians to make NASA a bargain. It probably wouldn’t change Russian attitudes on Iran or Georgia, but it might make the Russians cut their prices on Soyuz flights, or acquiesce to other American demands on ISS issues.

Could Shenzhou visit the space station? There are a lot of challenges that need resolution before such a flight could be attempted. Shenzhou has only made two manned flights, and probably would make NASA extremely cautious about certifying the spacecraft’s safety. The technical means for Shenzhou to dock with the station would have to be developed. It’s also unclear to me if the CZ-2F booster has enough performance to launch a Shenzhou into the station’s 51-degree orbit. Serious doubts should remain about China’s ability to produce and launch two Shenzhou per year, given the 2-3 year gaps between manned Shenzhou missions. There’s also a host of tech transfer issues that have to be dealt with. In short, I don’t view Shenzhou as a realistic option for American astronauts at present.

At the same time, Congress should direct NASA to begin talks with the Chinese manned spaceflight program and perform studies on what it would take to make the Shenzhou option realistic. If nothing else, the Russians need to know that Soyuz isn’t the only game in town.

Happy to be Stuck with You

2008-09-11T22:54:00.000-07:00

With politicians scrambling to come up with answers to the "gap" between shuttle and Orion, it's worth asking whether the US has taken a critical look at what its near-term goals in manned spaceflight are. Yes, the moon is the goal, but a 2020 landing is a long-term goal. What are our goals for the period before the first lunar missions take place?

Under the Vision for Space Exploration, the US had originally committed to supporting the International Space Station until the year 2017. This goal had appeared to be on-track until several factors popped up. First, the Orion capsule, billed as successor to the shuttle, has been delayed from "no later than 2014" to going operational in 2015 or later. Second, the COTS spacecraft, which were to partially compensate for losing the shuttle's ability to bring mass back to earth from the station, have not panned out according to the original schedule. Dragon was delayed and RocketPlane-Kistler's award was taken away, with Orbital Sciences filling their slot. Lastly, Russia invaded Georgia and gave Congress every reason to terminate the purchase of Soyuz spacecraft.

There has been a groundswell of support for extending the shuttle program in the wake of the Georgian invasion. Unfortunately, more shuttle missions will not solve the fundamental problem that ISS faces. The shuttle is great for hauling cargo up and down from the station. But the shuttle cannot stay on-orbit for six months to bring a crew home during an emergency. Without an American spacecraft docked to ISS for six months at a time, there's no way that America can go it alone without Soyuz.

Besides the reliance on Soyuz, there are myriad other ways in which ISS cannot survive unless the US and Russia cooperate. The various modules are too interconnected, and neither country can operate their contributions to the station without the other country playing along. It's conceivable that Russia could afford to build Soyuz without American money, by selling the American slots to space tourists. But a Russian-led ISS would still require use of American space modules.

America and Russia are left in a situation where it's unlikely that either will abandon the ISS, even though both nations are mired in growing mistrust. If I had to make a bet, I would say that the US and Russia will learn to grin and bear it, operating ISS jointly until 2017. When Congress looks rationally at its options, it will realize that it will have to begrudgingly buy more Soyuz if it still wants to participate in ISS.

2010: A Space Jihad-yssey

2008-09-07T21:22:00.000-07:00

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin refers to the Space Shuttle's forced retirement in 2010 as a "jihad" in a recent e-mail that's sure to get the space community (the factions supporting Griffin and the factions opposing him) worked up.

While the administrator's choice of phrase is already drawing strong reactions, it's not off-base for describing the situation at hand. If we define jihad as a war based on dogma rather than logic, the firm 2010 retirement date for the shuttle falls into that category.

The 2010 date originated in the Columbia Accident Investigation Board's report from August 2003, which called for a major program-wide re-certification of the shuttle fleet by 2010. The Bush Administration turned the 2010 date into official policy when the shuttle retirement plan was announced on January 14, 2004. While the Griffin letter claims that 2010 was based on completion of the International Space Station, the truth is that the space station's final configuration was curtailed to fit within the existing space shuttle schedule, not vice-versa.

Trying to find logic in CAIB's 2010 "re-certification" date is difficult, hence the validity of Griffin's claim of "jihad." If the shuttle was deemed too unsafe to fly, it should have been terminated in 2003. The problem is that the shuttle and ISS have always been wedded to each other, and ISS will never achieve full functionality without the shuttle's unique capabilities. If the political benefits of operating ISS outweighed the safety risks of flying the shuttle, CAIB should have tied the shuttle retirement date to the time in the future when ISS is permanently abandoned. Instead, we have a compromise situation where ISS is completed, the shuttle is retired, and ISS hopefully continues operating with support from European and Japanese resupply craft that were completely untested when CAIB announced the 2010 date.

Part of the Griffin e-mail seems like a bit of an attempt to rescue his legacy. The warnings he claims to have made about reliance on Russia have never been publicized up to this point. Perhaps he was making these points behind closed doors. And it would be bad policy for the NASA Administrator, a high-profile member of the executive branch, to publicly bad-mouth the Russians and undermine the State Department.

With all that being said, I think NASA is pursuing a responsible policy of determining what would be required to operate the shuttle in a situation where additional funding was found, and in a situation where NASA received no budget increase to handle both shuttle operations and Ares/Orion development. At the same time, Wayne Hale's recent comments on the subject don't give me much confidence that the shuttle can fly long beyond 2010 without expensive work to rebuild facilities and supply chains that have already been dismantled. Perhaps the shuttle will be "re-certified," as per CAIB's recommendation for 2010.

Point of Know Return

2008-09-01T11:53:00.000-07:00

Wayne Hale, perhaps the best manager in the shuttle program's turbulent history, draws a line in the sand for the shuttle. He correctly points out that the shuttle supply chain is being dismantled, and an indefinite extension is not in the cards. His tone is that the shuttle program will end in 2010 as scheduled, but I do see some small space for wiggling.

The next president, whoever he will be, will almost certainly want to add more flights to the shuttle manifest. The Obama space policy calls for an additional mission to fly the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. John McCain has joined with other senators in asking the White House to halt the dismantlement of shuttle facilities and suppliers.

The biggest issue that NASA faces in assessing the prospects of extending the shuttle past 2010 is looking at critical parts and facilities which will be difficult or impossible to replace. Once the shuttle program has identified critical parts that are out of production, the quantity of these parts will likely dictate how many shuttle flights can be attempted without the need to find new vendors or perform a lengthy program-wide re certification (as called for by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.)

Putting a hold on the actions to shut the shuttle down is prudent for the time being. The next president should be able to enter office with all options open. NASA should seriously study what it will take to keep the shuttle going (an action that's probably going on as we speak.) While NASA management views a shuttle extension as a threat to Ares (which it is,) the 44th president deserves honest and detailed information for making a policy decision. Based on what I've read, it would seem that NASA could probably add a couple of shuttle missions in FY2011 based on the spares on-hand, but going any longer past that would be very dicey.

Why We Have a Gap

2008-08-25T21:11:00.001-07:00

With all the recent talk about the gap between the Shuttle and Orion, I think it's worthwhile to examine the reasons why a gap will exist in the first place. I think this question presents several instances where case studies in program management and decision-making really pay off in influencing future decisions.

In January 2004, President Bush announced the retirement of the Space Shuttle by 2010, and the onset of the Crew Exploration Vehicle with a goal of 2011, and a threshold of 2014. A cursory glance showed that NASA had between seven and ten years to develop a new human-rated space capsule. Casual space observers wouldn't think that would be too hard. Yet the history since then has showed it to be anything but.

The historical analogies for space capsule development are complex and often contradictory. It is worth noting the amount of time that elapsed from contract award to first manned flight for America's first three capsules:

Mercury: award Feb 1959, manned flight May 1961
Gemini: award Dec 1961, manned flight March 1965
Apollo: award Nov 1961, manned flight October 1968

By today's standards, Mercury was executed on a whirlwind schedule. It was the most simple of America's manned spacecraft, but the program also involved a lot of learning how to do things that no human had ever attempted before. Gemini was a logical evolution of Mercury, and had its development schedule accelerated due to the lessons learned from Mercury. Apollo actually started before America's first orbital space mission, and involved a lot of learning during the design process. While NASA and North American Aviation believed that Apollo was ready for manned flight by February 1967, the Apollo 1 fire tragically demonstrated that the spacecraft had not reached a sufficient level of maturity.

With history as an example, can we truly form a reasonable estimate for the Orion development time? To be fair, Orion requires a significant degree of re-learning forgotten lessons of the past. For instance, the Orion industry team has been unable to reproduce the ablator from Apollo's heat shield. Seven years is a fair estimate for the development time on a lunar-capable Orion, especially in light of the reduced funding levels that Orion receives when compared to Apollo.

I believe that spiral development would have been able to close the gap with Orion, but I disagree with the original strategy laid out by Admiral Craig Steidle when he was running the effort. I don't think it's necessary to have a flyoff between two unmanned "tech demo" spacecraft, as long as you're using technologies that have sufficient tech readiness levels. I believe that a "Block 1" Orion could have been developed to meet the earth-orbital mission requirement by the earliest possible date, with a lunar-capable "Block 2" Orion coming later in the program. NASA uses the "block" nomenclature, but it would appear that the current "Block 1" Orion is overdesigned for its mission of transporting six crew to the space station. It makes the leap to "Block 2" easier, but only prolongs the post-shuttle gap.

In order to meet the 2011 deadline with a seven-year schedule, NASA would have needed to put a prime on contract before the end of 2004. This didn't happen for a number of reasons. For one, presidential administrations tend to avoid big-budget commitments near the end of an election cycle because those decisions may be quickly overturned if the election goes the other way. It must also be noted that it takes a while for government agencies to perform studies, define requirements, issue a request for proposals, and conduct a source selection. While I believe that this could have been performed during 2004, it didn't for several reasons.

Sean O'Keefe's strategy when he was running NASA was to award study contracts for the overall architecture of the lunar mission. In fall 2004, the contractors responded with the results of their "Crew Exploration and Refinement" studies. Many of them utilized EELV's in conjunction with Shuttle-C derived heavy lifters, and favored the Earth-Moon Libration points as places for rendezvous between manned spacecraft, space stations, and landers. Very few of the studies bore any resemblance to the eventual ESAS study.

Rather than select an architecture based on the recommendations of one or many contractors, NASA went through a great upheaval during the end of 2004, continuing into Spring 2005. Sean O'Keefe resigned, and Michael Griffin was confirmed to replace him. The Griffin solution was to ignore the CE&R studies and conduct an internal NASA study in 60 days--Exploration Systems Architecture Study, or ESAS. While it was the administrator's perogative to do so, it rendered most of the work performed in 2004 as wasted.

A good question is whether all of the studies mentioned before were necessary before the Orion contract could be awarded in mid-2006. A lot of work was performed during the Orbital Space Plane program which could have been used to issue a request for proposals on a Block 1, ISS-only Orion spacecraft. The risk is that the Block 1 spacecraft that results might be so unsuited for the lunar mission that the Block 2 spacecraft would be a totally new development. Back in 2004, Americans weren't too concerned that Russia would go rogue and start invading western allies (although Vladimir Putin's curtailment of civil liberties after the Beslan Massacre should have given us reason to pause.) I don't think there was any great rush to get Orion developed, and it was partly due to a naive faith that the Russians would help us get through the gap.

A final factor worth mentioning is that the Ares program relies on taking over shuttle facilities as that program dwindles to a close. Gemini didn't need to wait for Mercury launch pads to open up, and Apollo didn't wait for Gemini launch pads. While the Orion spacecraft is just as much of a pacing item as the Ares I rocket, the need to rebuild shuttle launch pads and reuse other shuttle facilities creates interesting dilemmas. Any extension in the shuttle program (a position now favored, to various degrees, by both presidential candidates) is a likely delay to a first Ares-Orion launch. If one launch pad is modified to support Ares I and Orion, it forces the shuttle program to abandon parallel processing of orbiters and adopt a slower "serial processing" workflow. If a Block 1 Orion could be flown on a Delta IV Heavy, the shuttle program could be extended while retaining parallel-processing and making no impact on the Orion schedule.

It's been a winding road of political and management decisons which got us to The Gap. It will be an even more difficult traverse to get us out of this predicament. The shuttle can't go on forever, and America can no longer rely on Russia's political leadership or buy the Soyuz. Unless Elon Musk can get a manned Dragon and Falcon 9 flying within the next few years, we're going to be in for a lot of trouble.

Skirting the Issue

2008-08-20T19:51:00.000-07:00

After months of intense study, NASA's engineering teams seem to have settled on three solutions for the thrust-oscillation issue which threatened the safety of crews flying on Ares I:

1) Use of sixteen "tuned oscillator arrays," a passive damping system, inside the SRB aft skirt
2) A "SoftRide" Isolation System between Stage 2 and the Interstage
3) Possible mounting of crew seats on springs

The aft-skirt dampers shouldn't add too much mass to the system, and should work pretty reliably (unlike the active thruster concepts that have been studied in the past.) It should be noted that thrust oscillation should not be a problem on Ares V because the twin boosters cancel each other's vibrations during flight. It would make sense to replace the skirts with non-damping versions for the Ares V SRB's.

For years, various versions of SoftRide have been used to isolate fragile spacecraft from the vibration environment of their launchers. It's only natural to apply the SoftRide concept to Ares I. But there's two big differences between the Ares I SoftRide and all those which have flown before. First, the Ares I upper stage and Orion Spacecraft are far more massive than the microsatellites which have previously flown on SoftRide. Second, the Ares I upper stage and its SoftRide are subjected to aerodynamic loads in addition to the vibrational environment. This has not been an issue with previous SoftRide missions because the spacecraft and its isolators are protected inside the launcher's fairing.

Still unclear is whether NASA will give the SoftRide contract to CSA Engineering, award it to another vendor, or perform the work in-house. The CSA team has done a thorough and professional job in everything I have seen, and they deserve a shot at this challenging task.

The ideas presented have much promise for making Ares I a workable design. It's a shame that they will not be tested on Ares I-X in 2009. In the past, I have been critical of the marginal risk reduction that will be accomplished by Ares I-X. But it's the perfect way to get an early assessment of whether SoftRide can handle the second stage mass simulator and the aero loads. NASA could slip the Ares I-X schedule, work the thrust-oscillation solutions into this test flight, and retire much of the thrust oscillation risk that faces the real Ares I.

Tempest in a Teapot

2008-08-18T20:30:00.000-07:00

All the space blogs seem to be possessed with discussion over the space policy positions being taken by the two major presidential candidates. When thinking about it, I have to say I'm more amused than anything else. At the end of the day, both candidates will have very general, and very similar, positions on space exploration. The devil is in the details, and the future of America's space efforts will boil down to the person selected by the next president to be NASA's next administrator.

The presidential candidates are both bound by two hard truths. One, America will never cede its ability to put humans into orbit. Two, neither political party wants to take the blame for massive layoffs in central Florida and elsewhere when the shuttle program winds down. Thus, it's pretty likely that Ares I or another NASA-operated crew launcher will win the support of the next president.

With that being said, the campaign promise to close the gap by accelerating Orion with more money should not be taken too seriously. Using Apollo as a historical example, it takes nearly seven years to move a manned, lunar-capable spacecraft from contract award to first manned flight. Using this metric, even a level of funding similar to Apollo wouldn't get Orion ready until 2013. Now that we're two years past Orion contract award, the opportunities to accelerate that program in any meaningful way are dwindling.

The real space policy questions should be saved for whomever is appointed to run NASA after Michael Griffin resigns. I'm looking forward to a tough Senate confirmation hearing with real questions instead of softballs. Will you adhere to the current Project Constellation schedule? What will you do to support COTS? How will you keep Constellation on budget? What is your vision for the agency after the moon? How will you retire the shuttle while still ensuring the safety of the crew and the retention of the workforce?

The next presidential term will see the retirement of the shuttle, the inevitable (and intolerable) spaceflight gap, and the continuing development of Project Constellation. While neither Ares nor Orion will make a manned flight during those four years, the decisions made in that span of time will have a profound impact on America's manned spaceflight capabilities and lunar ambitions. Neither candidate wants to see the effort end in disaster, but NASA needs an iron administrator who can see it through.

For SpaceX, a Golden Opportunity

2008-08-14T20:40:00.000-07:00

As I’ve noted in my last post, the United States faces an uncertain immediate future in space due to its reliance on Russia. The ISS and American use of Soyuz spacecraft were marriages of convenience to save the American and Russian space programs as they sought new relevance in the Cold War’s aftermath. Unfortunately, the current relationship leaves Russia in the driver’s seat. Which is all the bigger problem in light of Russia’s recent moves to intimidate America’s allies in eastern Europe.

On the flip side of the coin, one US-based company could potentially reap the profits from America’s growing mistrust of the Russians. That company is SpaceX.

In discussions of the gap between Shuttle and Orion, the idea of moving Orion to an Atlas V or Delta IV or DIRECT comes up. The problem in all of these scenarios is Orion itself. As currently designed, the spacecraft won’t be ready for flight until 2013-2014, regardless of whether it rides on Ares or an alternative launcher. It’s unlikely that the program schedule can be accelerated at this point, regardless of how much additional money it receives.

The solution to the gap is a simpler capsule that can beat Orion to the launch pad. Of the competing capsule designs, SpaceX’s Dragon is farthest ahead. Dragon is the basket into which the US should be placing its eggs.

There is hope that a cash infusion would be able to help accelerate the Dragon schedule. It’s unclear how much testing has been performed towards preparing Dragon for human spaceflight. SpaceX certainly hasn’t performed any tests of the Dragon escape tower, in either the pad abort or flight abort scenario. While more cash could help with Dragon, it’s unclear whether SpaceX’s current manpower levels, management structure, and facilities could support an accelerated timeline. If SpaceX was forced to team with an established aerospace contractor (akin to the LockMart-Boeing team responsible for the F-22 fighter jet,), it would help in a situation where the schedule was dramatically accelerated.

A less-discussed aspect of the Russia situation is the impact it will have on Atlas V launches. Among industry observers, it was perceived that the Defense Department was biased against Atlas V because of its Russian-supplied RD-180 engine. The problem reared its ugly head in early 2007 when United Launch Alliance took over Atlas operations, and the engine supplier used the contractual name change as justification to delay engine shipments. If relations with Russia deteriorate further, Atlas V could become a victim. It’s not like this sentence is totally undeserved, as Pratt & Whitney never lived up to their obligation to set up domestic production of RD-180’s. Domestic production would have been expensive to set up, and the engines would be more expensive than those made in Russia. But the alternative is being held hostage to the political battle between the US and Russia.

If Atlas V goes defunct as a result of sour US-Russian relations, SpaceX’s business case for Falcon IX gets much brighter. While Dragon launches were the main use for Falcon IX, it would be possible to augment those with two or three DoD missions every year. SpaceX would still have to compete with Delta IV from ULA, but it should be able to hold its ground if the cost and reliability estimates hold up.

The Intolerable Gap

2008-08-11T21:03:00.000-07:00

As I'm typing this entry, Russia is invading the sovereign, democratic nation of Georgia. This brazen act of war should be offensive to the shared values of the American people. The US government should be using all elements of the nation's soft power to force Russia's retreat from Georgia.

Throughout the course of the space age, spaceflight programs have been viewed as a form of soft power for spacefairing nations. It logically follows that the US should be using space as a means of compelling a Russian withdrawal from Georgia. The easiest way to do so would be to temporarily withdraw from the International Space Station until the Russians went to the peace table. But that's much easier said than done. A mixed Russian-American crew is currently aboard the station, with no way of evacuating the American contingient without getting the Russians involved.

Regardless of how long the Georgia crisis drags on, it represents a disturbing long-term trend. As long as the Putin regime is running the show in Russia, that nation will continue to intimidate and coerce former Soviet clients and breakaway republics to prevent them from forming close ties with the US and western Europe. As long as this status-quo remains true, America cannot in good conscience cooperate with the Russians in space endeavors or purchase Soyuz spacecraft under an exemption to the Iran Nonproliferation Act.

The Space Shuttle's imminent retirement and the wait until 2015 until the first crewed Orion mission should give America reason to pause. Its astronauts will be hostage to a mafia-run bully-state for at least five years. This frightening reality should make Congress, the President, and NASA more willing to consider accelerating the SpaceX Dragon program, flying Orion on a Delta IV or DIRECT, or even extending the shuttle program. As a last resort, American astronauts can stay grounded, as they did during the 1975-81 gap. But the alternative of sponsoring a rogue hegemon like Russia should be morally repugnant.

Depression sets in

2008-08-03T18:13:00.000-07:00

Going into yesterday's Falcon I launch, I really thought they were going to make it to orbit. The second flight in March 2007 made it oh-so-close, and I hoped that Launch 3 would work out the remaining bugs. Unfortauntely, the launch was a step backwards, and terminated after less than 2.5 minutes.

Elon Musk's press release attributed the failure to a stage separation. Flight 2 also suffered from an off-nominal stage separation, but it wasn't enough to destroy the vehicle during the earlier flight. I would suspect that it was a new failure mechanism, rather than the same one that affected separation on Flight 2. Perhaps it was the fix for the Flight 2 problem that doomed Flight 3.

I really feel for the SpaceX team, especially Elon Musk. They've started from the ground-up, and are re-learning many of the hard lessons that NASA and the Air Force learned during the early Thor, Atlas and Titan programs of the late 50's. One must ask how much fortitude they have, and how much money they are willing to sink into the effort. It must be very easy to get discouraged after the first three failures, and requires a high degree of faith in the future of the Falcon program (and all of the manned spaceflight effort, in general.)

I must also question whether SpaceX will go ahead with a Falcon IX flight test if they haven't flown Falcon I successfully. If the Falcon IX flight schedule slips, the chances of closing the post-shuttle gap to three years or less will evaporate.

I have a lot of respect for everything that SpaceX has accomlished so far, and I feel for the tough breaks they've been given. At the same time, I have to side with Rocket Man and ask why NASA has put SpaceX's new rocket on the critical path for closing the spaceflight gap. Hopefully SpaceX will recover from the recent failure and succeed on attempt 4, but I feel that the goal of closing the spaceflight gap has already slipped away.

Red Scare

2008-08-01T08:57:00.000-07:00

As we head into the Beijing Olympics, the event is being widely portrayed as a means for China to enhance its national prestige. The same is generally said about China's manned spaceflight program.

Since 2003, the Shenzhou project has moved at a slow flight rate but has achieved very deliberate goals. The second mission, two years later, introduced a second "taikonaut" into the capsule. The third mission, anticipated for later this year, will probably be China's first spacewalk. It's fair to say that China's manned spaceflight program matches the prowess of the Gemini and Voskhod programs, and is quickly catching up to the early Soyuz.

Beginning in 2010, China intends on launching the first in a series of incrementally-more-capable space modules, leading up to a true space station. Beyond that general plan, China's manned space activities are anybody's guess. While the words "China" and "Moon" are linked together in the minds of many, there has been no stated desire by Chinese officials for a human lunar landing.

In spite of the slow flight rates and unanswered questions, this hasn't stopped American space officials, including Michael Griffin and Richard Gilbrech, from painting a "doom and gloom" picture of a new space race with China, with the moon as the ultimate destination. Even Buzz Aldrin has warned that China will make it to the moon with a human by 2017. The implied message to Americans: keep supporting all the money you're sinking into Project Constellation. We can't let the Reds beat us!

What's so magical about the 2017 date? By 2013, China intends on launching its Long March 5 rocket. Unlike previous Chinese boosters, Long March 5 is a modular family of rockets which use cryogenic propellants. While the first Long March 5 will fly by 2013, it's reasonable to look at 2017 as the year when the heaviest, most powerful member of the Long March 5 family will fly.

In its heaviest variant, Long March 5 will offer similar performance to Delta IV Heavy. That is probably enough to fly a Shenzhou around the moon, similar to the Soviet Zond program. But it's a far cry from putting a human on the lunar surface and returning to earth safely. It serves the Chinese goal of national prestige, but does nothing for the goals of lunar settlement, science and exploitation.

Assuming that a Chinese lunar landing utilizes a heavy-lift rocket (which, NASA assures us, is necessary for going to the moon,) it will take several years to develop. Heavy-lift rockets are very difficult to cloak from foreign intelligence, because the facilities to build and launch these rockets are behemoth. This fact helped the CIA to produce remarkably-close estimates of the Soviet lunar program during the 60's. If China is to attempt a lunar landing by 2017 with a rocket in the mold of Saturn V, they'd better start development soon. But it's unlikely they'd launch such an outlandish program when they're still five years away from flying the relatively-puny Long March 5.

Claims of Chinese lunar prowess are often trumpted up by supporters of Project Constellation. The idea is that we need "Apollo on Steroids" so we can prevent Chinese monopolization of the moon. But there's no reason to believe that a program which molds itself after Apollo will be any less temporal. Apollo had the political will of a genuine Cold War behind it, and it could only manage six lunar missions before it was scrapped. Project Constellation will likely meet the same fate, if Ares V and Altair are funded at all. Even in Red China, the prospect of sustaining a Chinese equivalent to Apollo should be greeted with a large amount of skepticism.

China's manned space program has made some big strides over the last five years, but it is still plodding along at a slow flight rate with uncertain goals for the future. Any claim that China can beat America to the moon should be treated with a large amount of skepticism. The only way that will be reversed is if America insists on a fiscally-unsustainable and politically-unpopular approach to lunar exploration, which kills the American lunar effort and allows China to walk to the finish line.

COTS Parts

2008-07-29T08:55:00.000-07:00

In today's The Space Review, Jeff Foust gives an excellent accounting of the COTS program thus far. While it has the potential to give birth to a true commercial market for manned orbital spaceflight, the execution has been uneven.

Some good commentary on COTS can also be found from "Rocket Man" at the "RocketsAndSuch" blog here, here, here, and here. It's definitely worth a read, even if you're not fond of his demonizing of "Emperor" Griffin.

Rocket Man has a good point in noting that NASA is spending COTS money on new rockets that essentially duplicate what we already have. Falcon IX is similar to the under-utilized Atlas V and Delta IV in their single-core versions. Taurus II is a more economical replacement for the Delta II, which will likely be retired by 2012 unless new orders come along. Could COTS move along faster if all of the funds were being spent on capsules instead of rockets? It's not always possible to crash the schedule by throwing more money at the problem, but I suspect that both Dragon and Cygnus capsules could be accelerated to some degree if the funding was present.

NASA's current strategy for COTS D is quite schizophrenic, as Mr. Foust points out. The capability isn't currently funded, even though it will sorely be needed after the shuttle retires in 2010. But let's assume that a manned Dragon flies by 2012. It will only be needed for another three years once Orion comes online in 2015. And Orion will be out of the ISS picture when the US abandons ISS in 2017. Does any of this make sense? COTS D appears to compete with Orion for a market that is very small to begin with. But COTS D only applies to Dragon, since the Cygnus spacecraft bus is probably too small to support a useful manned capsule for the COTS D mission (especially when Taurus II is the booster.)

The most enduring part of Michael Griffin's legacy is likely to be the COTS program, which is currently stimulating two teams attempting to resupply the space station. Eventually COTS may lead to a commercial manned spaceflight program. The opening of the orbital frontier to NewSpace will have a far more enduring legacy than any fiscally-unsustainable push to put humans on the moon by 2020 and establish a base. At the same time, space observers should have justified reservations about whether this effort is likely to succeed.

Getting a Good Buzz

2008-07-25T22:33:00.000-07:00

When you look at the "NASA vs. DIRECT" arguments, they typically boil down to the following:

NASA: Trust us when we say that DIRECT will never work. We're f**king NASA, bitches!
DIRECT: Nuh-uh. You're fudging the numbers. It's because you're in bed with ATK, aren't you?

At this point it's clear that Mike Griffin's NASA will not accept anything other than the current strategy, insisting on an Apollo-sized rocket in spite of not having an Apollo-sized budget. The proponents of the DIRECT proposal approached NASA from a position of weakness, outside the agency itself. It appeared that there wouldn't be an independent and unbiased authority to arbitrate between the two sides in the debate. But now Buzz Aldrin wants a say in the matter. (Hat tip to Clark Lindsey)

Within the space business and also from an outsider's perspective, few space commentators and visionaries enjoy the level of respect that Buzz Aldrin possesses. In addition to being the second man on the moon, he has gone on to espouse a clear vision for the future of manned spaceflight in both his technical proposals and the science fiction he has written. When Columbia was lost and when North Korea launched its unsuccessful ICBM, Buzz Aldrin was the first guy the cable news networks turned to for an interview. While other retired astronauts have failed at their attempts to be administrators and rocket designers, Buzz Aldrin stays relevant through his keen analysis of the problems at hand and his common-sense technical approaches for solving them.

Buzz Aldrin is most interested in the choice of rockets for going back to the moon. But the smart place to start is a through examination of the mission requirements. Mike Griffin's NASA decided, for reasons never fully explained, that four astronauts would spend seven days on the lunar surface (for a total of 28 man-days.) This has driven the mission architecture towards a rocket that's bigger than Saturn V and threatening to outgrow the existing infrastructure. What if Buzz Aldrin looked at something like a three-astronaut mission, with two astronauts spending fourteen man-days (seven per astronaut) on the lunar surface? Such a reduction in the scope of the mission would greatly ease the requirements on the launch vehicle.

It's unclear what will happen to the results of Buzz Aldrin's analysis of alternatives, but it's clear that they will not earn so much as a second glance from Mike Griffin. My suspicion is that Buzz Aldrin is preparing himself to advise the next NASA administrator, and perhaps the next president himself.

Supporters of DIRECT might take heart in knowing that Buzz Aldrin is not currently pleased with the status quo. But if his past proposals are any indication (see here and here,) he's not totally sold on DIRECT either. At the same time, Buzz Aldrin's mindset favors shorter development times and smaller development budgets than NASA has currently baselined. These are qualities that many DIRECT supporters will rally around, even if their preferred strategy isn't chosen. While there is no guarantee of which option Buzz Aldrin's panel will support, there's little reason to hope that it will be favorable towards the current Ares I and Ares V.

Wedge Issue

2008-07-19T23:19:00.000-07:00

It has been argued that America needs Project Constellation to fend off attempts by China to monopolize the moon. While it will be important for America to hang on to its own corner of the lunar surface in the event that foreign powers try to claim it, there are serious reasons to doubt that the specific plan laid out in Project Constellation will be sustainable enough for America to retain any lunar real-estate.

Project Apollo has been summed up as "flags and footprints" by many space enthusiasts. NASA came, it saw, and it abandoned. There was neither funding nor political will to sustain a presence on the moon or develop the hardware which would be required for a permanent lunar presence. We will have to examine "Apollo on Steroids" to determine whether the same political and economic factors will doom this effort to becoming "flags and footprints" as well.

For the past 27 years, NASA has succeeded in keeping Americans in space by obtaining the funding to keep the shuttle program alive. It's a sound assumption to believe that inflation-adjusted levels of shuttle spending can be sustained, because America's leaders believe that 1) America should ahve some type of manned spaceflight capability, and 2) laying off the shuttle personnel will be political suicide. At the same time, it's hard to imagine NASA getting any funding increases for manned spaceflight beyond an adjustment for inflation. The political will to do so can't be conjured up unless America enters into an over moon race with another spacefaring superpower. Even still, such will cannot be sustained after said race comes to a comclusion.

It stands to reason that NASA should conduct Project Constellation in such a way that the operational costs per year do not exceed the yearly costs of the Shuttle and ISS programs in constant-year dollars. Unfortunately, I'm skeptical that the current Constellation architecture can fit within the shuttle funding wedge. Even if the program is limited to two lunar missions per year (two Ares 5/6 launches and two Ares I launches,) the size of the enlarged "standing army" and the cost of the expended hardware will probably outpace shuttle spending.

NASA will always have the option to grow its share of the pie if it can't fit within the current funding wedge. If the private sector is involved early in the game, it will bring private dollars in to enlarge and sustain the effort. If international partners join it, it can also help the Constellation effort at the expense of added oversight by additional nations.

The current Constellation architecture is not well-suited for either foreign partnership or private investment. Constellation has been designed around preserving America's industrial base and making use of American facilities, with the noted exception of the J-2X nozzle (being designed & built by Volvo, utilizing their experience from the Vulcain 2 engine.) It's also hard to imagine a system that is designed, owned and operated by the government being open to private funding anytime soon.

I've been skeptical the Project Constellation will receive full funding, but I don't think that a Constellation-based moon landing is out of the question. The real political challenge will be sustaining the effort after we've gotten there. That was the failure of Apollo, and NASA is currently on its way towards reliving history.

Perhaps not the best analogy

2008-07-17T13:38:00.000-07:00

The chief prosecutor for war crimes trials at Guantanamo compares the process to the Space Shuttle. He's trying to argue that the trials are events that seem extraordinary now, but will soon become commonplace and unremarkable.

But is that what most people think of when they hear the phrase "Space Shuttle." No way! They think of a hopelessly-complex albatross that has a significant risk of blowing up or disintegrating under intense heat and stress. Every Space Shuttle mission should be seen as a remarkable achievement of thousands of people who must do their jobs perfectly in order to get the crew back safely.

I guess the point of this little rant is that it's prudent to use the space shuttle analogy sparingly and wisely. Unless you intend to talk about risky ventures.

Picken' on the Feds

2008-07-10T20:48:00.000-07:00

Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens is making waves by turning over a new leaf in a bold fashion. He's proposing an alternative energy plan which, among other things, would build more wind turbines to generate electricity. In turn, this would free up natural gas to replace petroleum in automobiles.

In general, I see much to like with the basics of the Pickens Plan. But I have to ask how we can implement such an ambitious undertaking. Elected leaders and government employees in a position of influence have a responsibility to set the example for Americans to follow. Alternative energy should be no exception.

Every year, government agencies purchase thousands of fleet vehicles. What would be the impact of guaranteeing a market for natural gas cars by mandating that a fraction of new government vehicles run on natural gas? What if every Defense Department and Department of Energy installation had a natural gas fueling station? It would certainly be an impressive start for the Pickens Plan.

But let's go one step further. Why not supplement the electrical needs of DoD and DoE installations through wind turbines? Or allow private wind-farms on stretches of federal land that are suited for the purpose?

When it comes to alternative energy, the United States has a long ways to go until it achieves its energy independence from the nations that breed terrorism, and from despots & mafiosos. If the government practiced what it preached, it would be a bold step towards this goal.

Hurry Up and Wait

2008-07-08T18:30:00.001-07:00

NASA has released the schedule for the final ten space shuttle missions, claiming that the program will wrap up with the final mission in May-June 2010. But let's think about this for a second. The current plan counts on launching five missions in 2008 (three down, two to go) and five in 2009. This will be a tall feat to accomplish with just three orbiters. It's even harder when one considers all of the challenges the shuttle workforce must overcome to put each massively-complex machine into orbit. Add to that the Congressional pressure to fly the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the space station.

What does it all add up to? A gut feeling that we'll be wrapping up the shuttle program in FY11 instead of FY10. Unless NASA insists on a hard cutoff at the end of FY10 that would ground all unflown missions. Hopefully the schedule pressures will not get the best of the shuttle team, particularly at a time when working on the shuttle program is perceived to be a step below working for Project Constellation.

Ticket to the Moon

2008-07-08T18:15:00.000-07:00

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, has provocatively declared that an eventual flight around the moon would cost $80 million. I assume he means $80 million per seat, which is four times the rate of an ISS trip on a Russian Soyuz.

Mr. Coppinger complains that passengers in the cicrumlunar "Dragon" will be cramped. They'll need a habitation module and an earth departure stage, or so he claims. While SpaceX's Dragon capsule can carry up to seven people, it's likely that some seats would be removed for the lunar voyage to reduce mass and/or provide more habitable volume. It is likely that a circumlunar version of F9 Heavy would need a restartable upper stage to perform the mission, unless the current second stage can restart, and if it has enough propellant left over once the capsule has achieved orbit.

The plan to launch a Dragon around the moon using a Falcon IX heavy has a lot of merit. Unfortunately, I'm skeptical whether Falcon IX Heavy is capable of the 27 ton payloads that are promised. That's similar in performance to the postulated Atlas V Heavy. Unfortunately, Falcon IX has less energetic engines on both stages compared to Atlas V. The gas-generator Merlin has a vacuum Isp around 309 seconds, while the staged-combustion RD-180 has an Isp of 331. The upper stage comparison is between the kerosene-burning Merlin and the hydrogen-burning RL-10A-4A; there's no contest betweenthe two upper-stages performance-wise. Until a Falcon IX flies, it's hard to say whether it will live up to expectations.

Still, Elon Musk's announcement should serve as testing the waters on whether there's a commercial demand for lunar exploration. While the lunar trip might only appeal to eccentric billionaires at first, it's the first step towards an entire lunar exploration industry.

EDIT: After re-reading the Rob Coppinger piece, it appears that the quoted $80 mil figure is for the entire mission, and all seven seats will be utilized. Such a boast does not pass the sniff test. But a four-crew mission with each ticket costing $80 mil seems to be a more credible approach.

Stranger Than Fiction

2008-07-06T02:19:00.001-07:00

I recently read Houston, You Have a Problem, the autobiography of Danny Deger. This review of the novella (96 pages when printed) is based on two assumptions:
1) The author is the Danny Deger described in the text, a real person, and
2) The text is an accurate description of real events

With both of those caveats, I will add that the story would be interesting even if it was a total fabrication. If it were a movie, it would be equal parts Top Gun, Office Space, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

The narrative begins with Danny Deger as an intelligent, God-fearing young man who decides to serve his nation as a pilot in the US Air Force. He flies the legendary F-4E Phantom II during the height of the Cold War and learns quite a bit during the adventures that ensue. After a brief tours as Air Liason to the Army and a civilian in the field of "Special Weapons," he goes to work for NASA's Johnson Space Center. He trains the astronauts in launch aborts and entry procedures, then goes to work designing displays for the shuttle cockpit. Along the way, he experiences bullying managers and the banality of NASA internal regulations. The stresses of a hostile workplace culminate in a message from Deger to the much-despised JSC Director, George Abbey. The consequences of that action would be very profound for Mr. Deger. He would eventually return to JSC and play a formative role during the Orbital Space Plane and Orion/Ares I programs, but the long-ranging consequences from the earlier incident would come back to haunt him.

In the story, Mr. Deger admits that his language skills are weak compared to his analytical reasoning. With that being said, he does write well. His prose lacks the polish that would be expected of a commercial publication, but it is servicable to a reader with some technical knowledge. I would complain that the descriptions of dogfighting and other combat while flying the Phantom II are hard to follow, especially for those uninitiated in aerial warfare. Frustratingly, much of the story hinges on the e-mail to George Abbey which is neither reprinted or paraphrased for the reader's benefit.

The heart of the story will undoubtedly engender much controversy. Should it be viewed as an expose of an agency whose management is steeped with the culture of narcissism on multiple levels? Or is it merely the diary of a madman who is trying to convince the world that he is sane? Without being able to hear a rebuttal from NASA JSC, the jury is out. But it doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to envison a large federal organization lashing out in an illegal fashion to silence a whistleblower.

If you have spare time on a weekend, I would definitely recommend reading "Houston, You Have a Problem." If it's accurate, then it's a disturbing look inside Johnson Space Center. If it's all fiction, then it's nonetheless a story that vacillates between amusement and horror while never boring the reader.

The Write Stuff?

2008-07-02T00:57:00.000-07:00

People always ask me what I'm going to do after I am emancipated from the Air Force. I'm still not sure, but I want to try being a writer (the kind of writer that gets paid in money, not the blogger who gets a charge from every time that somebody in the blogosphere gives him kudos.)

In pursuit of that goal, I recently submitted a short story for a contest. At the outset, it seemed like an easy task. By the end of the process, I wound up with a lot more respect for professional writers (not that I lacked it to begin with,) and a lot of self-doubt as to whether I'm meant for dramatic writing.

The story started with a simple premise and a limit of 6,000 words. With that upper bound, I had to narrate a lot of events in the story rather than hinting at them through dialog and subtle clues. The high concept was that of a man who has made a lot of mistakes in his life, but tries to make things right and finds redemption through sacrifice. Shortly after I started typing, the characters quickly turned into a way to espouse the things I'm feeling right now. The protagonist became more like myself, the antagonist morphed into my program's chief engineer, and the nefarious corporation that weaves throughout the story assumed the traits of the Air Force.

I finished the story with a sense that it was a burden lifted from my shoulders. A few friends read it and liked it. Then I ran it past an avid sci-fi reader who told me that it was all too cliche. Most importantly, she made me realize that I created personalities for the main characters, then turned everything on its head for the conclusion. Can we really expect the cold-hearted antagonist to have an epiphany at the end? I hastily rewrote some of the dialog and much of the ending. The protagonist's sacrifice was now motivated by spite, and the edge was taken off the antagonist to make his conversion more believable.

Am I happy with the story? Not really. It has a mechanical quality to it, and the most human scene was cut from the original ending because it bordered on cheesiness. The story that developed from my original concept had a lot more untapped potential to explore themes like "how much should a man give of himself to a cause he doesn't believe in?"

I'm left with the conclusion that my half-baked story was the result of being something I was forced to write. Maybe things will go smoother with a story that wants to write itself. My goal is to write and publish a satire of the military acquisition bureaucracy. Now that's a story that demands to spring forth to life across my computer monitor. It also gives me a canvas for humorous writing. I can't guarantee that my humor will work, but my drama obviously didn't.

Nature of the Beast

2008-07-01T01:16:00.000-07:00

Dwayne Day, who happens to be one of my favorite space historians, takes a swipe at people like myself who have compared NASA to Fascist systems of government. The gist of his argument, in my view, is that "Fascist" is an arbitrary label that's applied as an invective. In this sense, he is correct, a fact that I pointed out in my first post on the subject.

Many people are taken aback by the overuse of the term "fascist" because of its negative connotations. But Jonah Goldberg is quick to point out that things that are "fascist" are not necessarily wicked. He admits that some of his favorite movies have overtly-fascist themes. I will admit to enjoying "fascist" movies like "Gladiator" and "Falling Down."

For those who truly knew the horrors of the Holocaust or the Second World War, I can only begin to understand why the hurting is so deep, and I apologize if a seemingly-juvenile invective has touched off on the deep scars of the past.

Regardless of whether you feel that "fascist" is an overused insult, or whether it's being misused in respect to NASA, it does not change the basic facts of the agency, its behavior, or its mission. NASA's manned space program is a taxpayer-supported effort which primarily serves to enhance national prestige, while enshrining a small number of large corporations as the titans of the aerospace and tech sectors.

As far as NASA not being "fascist" because "fascists don't allow for competition," I think that the recent history speaks for itself. Will NASA allow for parallel manned space efforts? Dan Goldin was certainly opposed to Dennis Tito's space vacation on the ISS. Mike Griffin's NASA resorts to debunking alternative approaches to manned lunar missions, even though their current approach is not likely to survive the current election without profound changes. NASA officials currently resort to scare tactics, raising support for Project Constellation by claiming that China will be on the moon by 2017 unless we give Project Constellation full funding. There's no reason why the US and China can't share the moon, no compelling reason to beat China to the moon, and no evidence that China has the means to fly a human around the moon by 2017.

To be fair, NASA has done a better job at allowing for competition as of late. If properly funded, the COTS program will create an alternate means for space access that's closer to a free-market approach. With that being said, awarding a COTS contract to Orbital Sciences is hardly the way to break the oligarchy of large companies that dominate the space economy. Furthermore, with NASA dropping out of ISS in 2017, the incentives behind COTS become diminished.

Is the "fascist" label for NASA extreme and deceptive? Perhaps. But the fact remains that NASA subverts the capitalist system in the name of national pride. I will admit that a private-sector rationale for exploring the moon will require at least 30 years pull off; the NASA plan is the way to go if you're willing to throw untold quantities of taxpayer dollars at going back as soon as possible. But I would rather sacrifice the moon in my lifetime than undermine capitalism. I don't care what name you want to apply towards NASA's manned space program and its practices. You can call NASA what you will, but it doesn't change the nature of the beast.

EDIT (7/3/2008): The tone of this piece did come off as unapologetic, but I wanted to state unequivocally that my use of the term "fascist" is divisive, hurtful and not conducive to the rational debate that truly needs to be held in this country regarding manned spaceflight and the NASA mission. It was a mistake that I should have avoided in the first place. With that being said, I unapologetically oppose taxpayer-funded manned missions whose primary benefit is preserving the nation's prestige. As for the topics of COTS and China, they will be addressed in the near future.