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Monday, July 6, 2009

Now NASA has an alternative moon launch vehicle

Jul 6 2009 8:06AM | Permalink |Comments (21) |

NASA has commissioned a study to see if there is a cheaper way to get to the moon then the 35 billion dollar redesign of the space shuttle. The study shows they could do it for 6.6 billion dollars. This is reassuring, especially in view of the renegade NASA rocket scientists I told you about last year. That renegade proposal, done as a hobby by engineers and project managers too terrified of management retribution to let their names be known, seems to have set the tone for this study. By reusing solid rockets from the shuttle as well as reused liquid rocket components the cost to do heavy lifting to the moon and beyond can be greatly reduced.

Every engineer knows that evolution rather than revolution is a better design methodology. Dragging out a white sheet of paper every project is a good way to waste money, or fail, or both. Unfortunately the goals of NASA may be more to spread money to crony contractors and keep bureaucrats in jobs rather then reach the moon. This is another sad case of the engineers being ready willing and able to do a good job but the politicians and political managers just won’t let the engineers do their job. I linked to it in the first post, but please re-read Dr. Richard Feynman’s blistering critique of the NASA culture that caused the first space shuttle explosion.

Perhaps this new NASA study is really a sign of the health of the organization. They are still too political to just accept the work of the renegade scientists, but at least they are not brushing all the good work into the dustbin of history. NASA actually investigated some or all of the proposal and then laundered it as their own study. Bravo NASA if that is what is going on. As we teeter on complete economic collapse due to the systematic looting of the economy by the finance types, it will behoove us to get to the moon in the cheapest way possible. We have to save the big money for Wall Street bonuses. I don’t like it either, but that is the reality of the society in which we live.

[Update: I found a nice drawing of the shuttle O-ring before and after redesign. You can see how the original design would force the O-rings away from the seal as the interior of the booster pressurized. They added a third O-ring and more importantly, added structure to keep the original O-rings against the sealing surface. The added complexity of the new seal is worrisome, and I wonder why they did not do a labyrinth seal to cool the gasses and put the O-rings on the outside. I assume they had to do it this way for re-usability.]

[Update: Super-Croatian Andy Turudic sent a link yesterday that I just got. It also has a video in that the title of let me find the YouTube link that is broken inside the first link in this post.]

Related entries in: Analog |

Reader Comments

at 7/6/2009 12:38:28 PM, The Super-Croatian said:
LOL@my moniker. Anyway, I think you are right about the cronyism. NASA'a always been front man for military work and a boondoggle creator for contractors (nothing wrong with that as it keeps out engineers' and scientists' axes sharp and employed), another source of funding outside the DoD budget. I suspect this has nothing to do with budgetary motivation (since when does the government care about spending responsibly?) that the Constellation program has been too long in its gestation and that the US has now fallen significantly behind schedule in getting to the moon and bringing back the goods, budget be damned. I believe this is all motivated by a modern day arms race - turns out the moon has a bunch of He3 captured just beneath its surface and He3 is an extremely rare isotope here on earth, and we're about to send an artificial meteorite to excavate and validate He3's presence. Why He3? It is a significant yield enhancer for fusion weapons, so it's no surprise that those expending a good chunk of their GDP to get there are USA, India and China. The cover story(there always is one)? Fusion POWER.... -andy t

at 7/6/2009 1:31:16 PM, Meredith Poor said:
"As we teeter on complete economic collapse due to the systematic looting of the economy by the finance types..." An assertion whose truth comes from repetition. In the bigger scheme of things the 'finance types' got relatively little for themselves, but what they did do was misallocate vast amounts of money for real estate development that should never have happened. The people that got that money were the suppliers and laborers that poured into the construction industry. Taking a few percentage points off of $1.2 trillion is a lot of money, but it is still only a few percentage points.

at 7/6/2009 2:51:39 PM, Jeff said:
It is so nice to see someone else kick NASA around... How many private, low-cost, human-rated space flight organizations do you know of? The job is damn hard and the so called "NASA front man" is an insult to all of the dedicated engineers working in the space program. Without NASAs slow, careful, methodical approach many more astronauts would have perished in space exploration, and the effort would have ended.

"If we die, we want people to accept it. We hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life." -Gus Grissom

That is NOT what will happen today - loss of life nearly stops space dead in its tracks.

at 7/6/2009 3:47:26 PM, PeterT said:
$35 Billion; 6 Billion??

Why are we going to the Moon? Been there done that.

Mars is the goal!

No need to go to the Moon; AGAIN!

PeterT

at 7/6/2009 3:59:19 PM, Meredith Poor said:
"... No need to go to the Moon; AGAIN!" WHERE we go is probably less material than how.
 
Something that might prove rather anti-climactic is if a fleet of robots build a lunar and/or Mars colony and operate it for several years before any humans show up. In such a circumstance the landing won't look much different from coming into an airport. By that time, of course, the robots are also building houses, factories, and utility infrastructure on Earth. At that point the transit of space won't feel much different, to some people, from flying from SF to Australia.

at 7/6/2009 11:00:33 PM, Pett said:
Hello,
Interesting, I`ll quote it on my site later.
Thank you

at 7/7/2009 7:31:28 AM, Just a Designer said:
This is another one of those NASA sucks articles with very little Science or Engineering proof. For those that don't know the center fuel tank and the boosters were both redesigned. Why the center fuel tank, well look at the video footage of the accident that hot spot is liquid under preasure from the center tank leaking. The O-ring was blamed because it was easy to do, some famous scientist came up with it. You notice they blew the boosters up no evidence. Besides where do you get 35 billion, last I heard the redesign was at 8 billion.

at 7/7/2009 7:48:47 AM, Citizen said:
The moon or mars? How about instead we don't waste the tax money so I can afford to drive to work?

at 7/7/2009 10:30:46 AM, WSpaceport said:
PETER T claims:"Why are we going to the Moon? Been there done that...No need to go to the Moon AGAIN!"~~~~~~~That's the same flawed argument as stopping at only six spots in Los Angeles, California (Disneyland, Redondo Beach, Knott's Berry Farm, Universal Studios, Hollywood and Staples Center) and spend between 2hrs and 6hrs at each location -- and then say that "We've seen ALL of California; no need to go back again. Been there, done that."

CITIZEN whines: "How about instead we don't waste the tax money so I can afford to drive to work?" ~~~~~~~Please. Give me a break. Americans consume 50 billion pints (200 million gallons) of beer each year -- second highest consumption in the world. At the going Pub rate of $3.87 a pint (plus tax), that's $196 BILLION that's being pissed away (figuratively and literally) each year.

NASA’s funding for one year – if cancelled and used elsewhere – would only cover ONE of the following:

1.) Two months of U.S. peacekeeping forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, OR;

2.) One month of Social Security, OR;

3.) Three weeks of Medicare, OR;

4.) Three weeks of Unemployment Insurance, OR;

5.) Three weeks of the Budget Deficit, OR;

6.) Two weeks of Medicaid, OR;

7.) Two weeks of Interest on the National Debt.

What does NASA cost you? Simple. About $60 a year for funding our future. That works out to $1.25 a week or $0.18 cents a day.

Go save the world on that, if you can (highly doubtful).

at 7/7/2009 11:51:27 AM, Citizen said:
WSpaceport sounds like all democrats when they're spending someone elses money. Comparing money to urine and revealing your debauched lifestyle is completely expected. Yet another reason not to let you fruitcakes spend my money.

at 7/7/2009 12:51:03 PM, Meredith Poor said:
One of the 'little' projects NASA worked on in the 1960's was FEA (Finite Element Analysis) when mainframes had Ks instead of Megs or Gigs. This was handy when you were trying to lower the weight of a discrete collection of stress bearing elements, as one might find on a Saturn 5, Saturn car, wind turbine, or bicycle frame.
 
Another 'little' project that NASA was deeply involved in (along with the US Air Force) was defect-free monocrystalline silicon carbide. Useful for high-brightness LEDS, high power-density transistors, etc. Used by the Prius, for instance, in their hybrid load controller, and essential for us to run a 'smart grid'.
 
So if NASA had not wasted all our tax dollars on satellites, we wouldn't be aware of incoming hurricanes and wouldn't have a GPS to get out of the way in a hurry when the roads are clogged.
 
The US pours billions of dollars into research, with NASA being one element of that complex (along with DOD, DOE, and the National Institutes of Health, in particular). American productivity rises at a rate of about 3% per year, which means that for someone living nearly 80 years, productivity increases by an order of magnitude. You are 10 times as productive as a worker on the job in 1930.
 
NASA, in total, is probably 'free', in that the benefits it's provided the country have more than outweighed the costs over the entire life of the agency. I would even be willing to assert it's done so several times over, although I would have to research it to get a number. Anyone that wants to be driving to work in 2020 would be better off seeing NASA get it's funding.

at 7/7/2009 4:14:42 PM, Stiggle said:
Only idiots want NASA funding cut off and givin to the idiots and give-away programs! Most of the great technology we enjoy today finds its roots in NASA and some other government science programs. Even with the waste, our money has been well spent on NASA and some defense research projects.

at 7/7/2009 9:06:01 PM, M. Simon said:
We don't need to go to the moon for He3. The ocean is full of Deuterium and Boron.

The Polywell Fusion Reactor can almost certainly burn Deuterium and may be able to burn Boron. We will know in 2 years.

Magic code: KR8H3

at 7/7/2009 9:12:41 PM, M. Simon said:
Did I mention that the Polywell Fusion Reactor experiments are being funded by the US Navy? If it works fusion powered rockets are definitely in our future.

at 7/7/2009 10:06:19 PM, Andy T said:
Amazing how many romantics are here. We don't go to space, or spend a good fraction of our GDP, to colonize, be first, or to explore, and never have. Being there is not the reason for going.

at 7/8/2009 5:55:24 AM, arclight said:
All: NASA is kind of a two-faced entity. There are loads of brilliant scientists and engineers, and good project managers and administrators, who do excellent work, regardless of whether they are civil servants or contractors. There are also loads of lazy civil servants who look for contractors to kick around and who rarely if ever produce anything of value. I worked at a NASA Center for a number of years, and I saw it operate firsthand.

Our current debt (counting unfunded obligations to SS, Medicare, and Medicaid) is about $56 TRILLION dollars. The Congressional Budget Office has recently issued yet another warning to Congress on this...another warning that will be ignored. We are headed toward default on our debts (which will basically wreck the country) in not too many years (one study suggested around 2040). We either make paying down that debt our Number 1 Project for the next 75 years or so, or we're done. NASA, DoD, EPA, Education, etc., etc, etc.,....all the agencies and departments, and all the causes and ideologies as well, are sooner or later going to have to take a back seat to just paying off our debts. Might as well get used to that idea, and start figuring out how to get it done.

at 7/8/2009 1:35:05 PM, Stiggle said:
Dear arclight. Don't worry about the national debt. The government will just print more money and transfer the balance to another credit card...I guess I will be begging when social security fails and there is no other SS services to feed me since my 401 is nearly worthless and continuing to tank as the value of the US dollar approaches zero. But I do like the USA and I'm proud to be an American.

at 7/12/2009 4:27:55 PM, Donnie said:
i am glad to see the goverment is using our tax dollars for something worthwhile instead of squandering it on things like cancer research and sick children and soldiers that got their arms & legs blown off in Iraq and better hiways and global warming and the homeless and clean water YeahBoy proud to be an American!!

at 7/19/2009 5:59:30 PM, Donnie said:
going to the moon and all those other places would be wonderful if we didn;t have so many problems here on earth Cancer Hurricanes unsafe roads wars clean water and i could go on and on lets fix things here before we go "out there"

at 8/5/2009 4:52:33 PM, Roger said:
It is utterly amazing to me that this ithe first blog I have ever explored that didn't degenerate into a name calling and blame game exercise. Keep up the good debate!

As an ex NASA employee I fully recommend you all read the Caib report. It documents the trouble NASA had in securing funding for the space shuttle, the resulting compromise in the shuttle design to accommodate missions that would never fly, and then leads you to the subsequent diversion of launch missions to advanced heavy lift vehicles (Atlas and Delta).

DDE was right: the military industrial (congressional) complex is the greatest threat to mankind ever faced.

at 8/12/2009 6:52:16 PM, SeaCrow said:
"NASA's slow, careful, methodical approach many more astronauts would have perished in space exploration, and the effort would have ended" -- yeah, yeah. I bet every biker in the USA would sign up in a heartbeat for the opportunity to mine roughneck the moon for raw materials, build moonbases, etc. As for "lets [sic] fix things here before we go 'out there'" -- whatta crock! Mankind will never solve those problems, on earth or on the moon, so let's take our future out of the hands of greenies, utopians, and bureaucrats and get the job done.

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Monday, July 6, 2009

Now NASA has an alternative moon launch vehicle

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