Oh please... So far I have heard no argument that disarms anything that I have said.[*facepalm*]
The Standard Model Imploding?
...you haven't heard any from the Senators, I know that much. They haven't said anything remotely interesting about all this, probably because they have no idea what they're talking about. They aren't rocket scientists, or even space experts; they rely on the advice of those who are.
A Senate staffer actually posts on NSF. He says lots of interesting stuff. Turns out the reason Orion on Atlas V Heavy was not pushed is that it was considered to be unfair competition for commercial crew...
A Senate staffer actually posts on NSF. He says lots of interesting stuff. Turns out the reason Orion on Atlas V Heavy was not pushed is that it was considered to be unfair competition for commercial crew...
Oh I agree they are not rocket scientists. That makes it even more interesting that they were the ones designing the rocket and setting the lift requirements, like Shelby who proudly boasted about inserting language into the bill for that so tha the pork would continue to flow to ATK and Alabama.They haven't said anything remotely interesting about all this, probably because they have no idea what they're talking about. They aren't rocket scientists, or even space experts; they rely on the advice of those who are.
Uhm, from what I remember Atlas V is not capable of lifting Orion to LEO.Turns out the reason Orion on Atlas V Heavy was not pushed is that it was considered to be unfair competition for commercial crew...
Also yes, letting a cost plus funded multi billion USD capsule compete for commercial crew is somewhat unfair and beats the purpose of commercial crew (cost reduction, you know).
I gave you a chance to be reasonable, and you failed. I don't see that addressing your points will help, but it's a pretty short post, so:
Of course Shelby would say that. One of the key advantages of Shuttle-derived has always been that Congress will fund it. It isn't the best technical/economic solution in the long run, but it's not too bad, it's completely unbeatable on schedule and technical risk, and it has political support. DIRECT was pushing exactly this for years. Congress decides if you get money for what you want to do. If it isn't what they want you to do, you don't get money and you end up with nothing.
The Senate did not design the rocket. They did not set the lift requirements. They did not arbitrarily decide how much it would cost. Those numbers came from NASA and industry experts. This is known. The 70-100 ton requirement is lifted directly from what you get when you turn the Shuttle stack into an inline lifter. The 130 ton requirement (which is not a near-term requirement, just a requirement that the vehicle be capable of eventually evolving to that point) comes from a variety of Mars architecture studies, which all tend to require a vehicle in that class; those that don't tend to not close for various reasons.Skipjack wrote:Oh I agree they are not rocket scientists. That makes it even more interesting that they were the ones designing the rocket and setting the lift requirements, like Shelby who proudly boasted about inserting language into the bill for that so tha the pork would continue to flow to ATK and Alabama.
Of course Shelby would say that. One of the key advantages of Shuttle-derived has always been that Congress will fund it. It isn't the best technical/economic solution in the long run, but it's not too bad, it's completely unbeatable on schedule and technical risk, and it has political support. DIRECT was pushing exactly this for years. Congress decides if you get money for what you want to do. If it isn't what they want you to do, you don't get money and you end up with nothing.
I said Atlas V Heavy. Which is.Uhm, from what I remember Atlas V is not capable of lifting Orion to LEO.Turns out the reason Orion on Atlas V Heavy was not pushed is that it was considered to be unfair competition for commercial crew...
Looks like you completely missed the fact that Congress was attempting to protect commercial crew from the NASA/Industrial Complex. Cognitive dissonance?Also yes, letting a cost plus funded multi billion USD capsule compete for commercial crew is somewhat unfair and beats the purpose of commercial crew (cost reduction, you know).
Really, that is why they cut it by 350 million and then added the requirement on NASA that they get the SLS going before part of the 500 million for CCDev, which is far to little money to fully fund it anyway, is issued to NASA.Looks like you completely missed the fact that Congress was attempting to protect commercial crew from the NASA/Industrial Complex. Cognitive dissonance?
Yes they did.They did not set the lift requirements.
Which ones? Names? It was not Norm Augustine.Those numbers came from NASA and industry experts.
Which ones? Where is the funding for those? There is not even a Mars mission planned for the SLS at least not for the next 20 years or so.The 130 ton requirement (which is not a near-term requirement, just a requirement that the vehicle be capable of eventually evolving to that point) comes from a variety of Mars architecture studies
Thats what Griffin said (faster, saver, cheaper), billions, cost overruns and tons of paper later, they still say the same. I dont see a rocket.it's completely unbeatable on schedule and technical risk
DIRECT is only a few people at NASA that dont get that you cant do what you dont have the money for.DIRECT was pushing exactly this for years.
Why was the Heavy lifter not competed? Why? Why does it have to be "Shelby's" ATK that makes the boosters and not Aerojet, even though they would like to?
Why cant it be someone else doing the rocket all together? Why not use a COTS like model to fund this with milestones and fixed price contracts?
Why was the study on space exploration with orbital propellant depots dismissed in favor or the SLS?
Again, that would not really be a fair competition would it. Orion is funded via a cost plus contract and billions of USD in funding. It is also not quite the right vehicle for the task. The fact that you need an AtlasV heavy to launch it means that it would be much more expensive to operate than e.g. the CST100 which just needs a regular Atlas V.I said Atlas V Heavy. Which is.
Relevant? Already posted?
http://blog.nss.org/?p=3080&cpage=1
Anyways, curious what people think. I got the impression Musk is claiming a lot of savings on production based on the notion of selling a whole hell of a lot of rockets (more than the entire current market). That seems a little unfair. Unless he actually accomplishes that, of course.
Fun times ahead.
http://blog.nss.org/?p=3080&cpage=1
Anyways, curious what people think. I got the impression Musk is claiming a lot of savings on production based on the notion of selling a whole hell of a lot of rockets (more than the entire current market). That seems a little unfair. Unless he actually accomplishes that, of course.
Fun times ahead.
n*kBolt*Te = B**2/(2*mu0) and B^.25 loss scaling? Or not so much? Hopefully we'll know soon...
Well the good thing is that the Falcon Heavy and the Falcon 9 share almost everything, so it does not really make much of a difference to SpaceX whether they fly one Falcon Heavy or three Falcon 9s.
This is where the economics of scale come in.
Also, if they can really do reusability of even just the first stage, the whole game would change quite dramatically. I think that with reduced prices will come more clients.
This is where the economics of scale come in.
Also, if they can really do reusability of even just the first stage, the whole game would change quite dramatically. I think that with reduced prices will come more clients.
IIRC you have to get below about $1000/kg before market elasticity sets in. There was a study. Of course that was some years back...
Falcon Heavy with all three booster cores recovered might do it...
Falcon Heavy with all three booster cores recovered might do it...
Last edited by 93143 on Sat Oct 01, 2011 12:00 am, edited 1 time in total.
Skip with all due respect you must go read Kraisee's comments at NSF. You will have to dig, but you will find that he and they know at least as well as anyone else that the money and politics factors are paramount.Skipjack wrote:DIRECT is only a few people at NASA that dont get that you cant do what you dont have the money for.DIRECT was pushing exactly this for years.
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/09/ ... sion-2019/
Sounds to me like NASA has been getting antsy waiting for the Administration to get the hell out of the way...
Sounds to me like NASA has been getting antsy waiting for the Administration to get the hell out of the way...
See, you've misunderstood my position (as I've tried to make clear). I wouldn't take that bet. It's beside the point anyway, as you would realize if you'd actually heard the "other side" of the argument rather than just political press releases and straw men... or, for that matter, if you'd thought through your own position.
This is not a race, or any kind of contest. SLS and commercial launch serve different purposes and can coexist.
This is not a race, or any kind of contest. SLS and commercial launch serve different purposes and can coexist.
Well unfortunately they cut the funding (as I have already mentioned several times) for commercial crew from the requested 850 million to 500 million in order to fund the SLS. Those 350 million are missing now and it will be very hard for NASA to make a contract with more than one provider because of that. This is totally counter productive, since the availability of one of more providers and competition among them would have driven costs down in the long term. It would have also meant that there would be a backup solution in case one provider has to be grounded due to a technical problem. As we have seen with the shuttle which was grounded for years whenever something happened (and the US had then hitch rides from the Russians), this would be prudent and smart to do.This is not a race, or any kind of contest. SLS and commercial launch serve different purposes and can coexist.
NASA has also decided to change the contract model from a fixed price milestone based model to a more NASAish model, so they can impose their usual beaurocracy on the COTS competitors. Of course this gives the big competitors like ULA who have their own departments to deal with this crap an unfair advantage. All these things are purely political decisions designed to torpedo commercial crew and make the SLS look better.
...that's not totally wrong, but it's wrong enough.
The Authorization Act, which Obama signed, allocated $500M for CCDev this year. And $2.65B for SLS and $1.4B for MPCV. Now along comes Obama with his FY2012 budget request, completely disrespecting the compromise reached between all parties (you know how difficult that is, right?) and slashing SLS/MPCV while jacking up CCDev. (What part of "commercial" didn't you people understand?) So the Senate restored CCDev to its previously-agreed amount and restored a small amount of SLS/MPCV funding - though nowhere near enough to bring it back to baseline (perhaps because they had seen the cost estimates, which are better than expected).
Basically Obama was ignoring the law he'd signed, and Congress called him on it.
I'd rather have more funding for CCDev too (though I'm admittedly working on feeling, without much data). But getting $500M worth of blood from the Congressional stone is probably going to have to do. Remember, even if the pro-space Congressmen all agreed precisely on the way forward (they don't), they'd have to deal with the non-pro-space Congressmen, of which there are a lot more...
As for the SAA thing, you can't build a contractual relationship on SAAs. They are trying to rework the fixed-price contracting arrangement so as to approximate as closely as possible the freedom afforded by an SAA, without giving up the ability to set requirements at the level they feel is necessary. It's actually quite a complicated issue... add to that that Congress seems to feel that NASA has been abusing the SAA framework and has given them a non-binding instruction to rein it in a little...
...
I'm curious. What's your opinion of ATK and Astrium's Liberty?
The Authorization Act, which Obama signed, allocated $500M for CCDev this year. And $2.65B for SLS and $1.4B for MPCV. Now along comes Obama with his FY2012 budget request, completely disrespecting the compromise reached between all parties (you know how difficult that is, right?) and slashing SLS/MPCV while jacking up CCDev. (What part of "commercial" didn't you people understand?) So the Senate restored CCDev to its previously-agreed amount and restored a small amount of SLS/MPCV funding - though nowhere near enough to bring it back to baseline (perhaps because they had seen the cost estimates, which are better than expected).
Basically Obama was ignoring the law he'd signed, and Congress called him on it.
I'd rather have more funding for CCDev too (though I'm admittedly working on feeling, without much data). But getting $500M worth of blood from the Congressional stone is probably going to have to do. Remember, even if the pro-space Congressmen all agreed precisely on the way forward (they don't), they'd have to deal with the non-pro-space Congressmen, of which there are a lot more...
As for the SAA thing, you can't build a contractual relationship on SAAs. They are trying to rework the fixed-price contracting arrangement so as to approximate as closely as possible the freedom afforded by an SAA, without giving up the ability to set requirements at the level they feel is necessary. It's actually quite a complicated issue... add to that that Congress seems to feel that NASA has been abusing the SAA framework and has given them a non-binding instruction to rein it in a little...
...
I'm curious. What's your opinion of ATK and Astrium's Liberty?