NASA Watch: Is A Human Space Flight Compromise Emerging?

[Orbinaut Pete]

Woo-Hoo! :woohoo:

http://nasawatch.com/archives/2010/04/is-a-human-spac.html

 

[Yoda]

That makes more sense to me than completely halting all manned space flight, handing out pink slips to 75% of your astronauts and shuttle personall and relying on the russians to catch a ride to the ISS for the remaining few astronauts.
Hope they can make it happen !

:thumbup:

 

[Submariner]

Sounds good to me. Doing away with the Orion moon missions makes sense. NASA not having a manned space vehicle at all doesn't.

 

[Ark]

Sounds good, but until real facts emerge it's just a blob of unsubstantiated text on a computer screen.

 

[Urwumpe]

Sounds like back to the Orbital Transfer Vehicle.

 

[dnt462]

I like the sound of that, I'm just not ready for that last shuttle mission, and a sidemount, man i like the idea of that.

 

[Ark]

I really like Sidemount just as an unmanned cargo launcher. Taking people to and from orbit can be subcontracted easily enough, but any kind of interplanetary flying will involve large and heavy modules, and Sidemount is perfect for that.

 

[Mogeley]

It sounds nice but you still have to get people on orbit to transfer them to the Orbital Transfer vehicle.

There's still too much to be worked out. The way things are going 2025 sounds about right if there's anything at all. It may be better for NASA to be dissolved an let these people and the money go to private industry. I'm sure Lockheed Martin and other legitimate private space programs wouldn't mind expanding to manned space flight.

 

[Shadow Addict]

I'm sure Lockheed Martin and other legitimate private space programs wouldn't mind expanding to manned space flight.

They "wouldn't mind"? What's the point for them if they're not gonna make a profit off it?

 

[Andy44]

It sounds nice but you still have to get people on orbit to transfer them to the Orbital Transfer vehicle.

There's still too much to be worked out. The way things are going 2025 sounds about right if there's anything at all. It may be better for NASA to be dissolved an let these people and the money go to private industry. I'm sure Lockheed Martin and other legitimate private space programs wouldn't mind expanding to manned space flight.

Actually, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and all the rest have always been involved in manned spaceflight. Lockheed Martin builds the shuttle external tank and together with Boeing under a joint venture they provide the operations personnel in Houston. And the tiles on the shuttle's heatshield? Invented by Lockheed, not NASA, back in the 60s.

Sadly, private companies don't stick their necks out for new space tech like they used to. The Grummans and McDonnel Douglas's of the world learned the hard way that if you come up with cool ideas using your own money, NASA usually isn't interested, and your investment went down the toilet. The last time I remember a big private project from one of the giant companies was the McDonnel Douglas DCX project back in the early 90s. They spent a boatload of company money on that, and it looked good, but in the end NASA didn't invent it and was busy flying shuttle so it went nowhere. Those companies have been burned too many times, and now most of them are merged into the Big Three.

The New Guys, SpaceX et al, haven't been burned yet, so they are still young and fresh and full of energy and hope.

But in the end, whether NASA pays SpaceX or Lockheed to do it directly or just hires them to work under NASA, it's still private companies working for government money.

 

[Hielor]

Lockheed Martin builds the shuttle external tank and together with Boeing under a joint venture they provide the operations personnel in Houston.

If you mean United Space Alliance, it's pretty much its own company and doesn't really have much to do with Lockheed or Boeing anymore.

 

[tblaxland]

If you mean United Space Alliance, it's pretty much its own company and doesn't really have much to do with Lockheed or Boeing anymore.

Other than being owned by them :dry:. Anyway, USA does not build the ETs, it only does operations and processing work.

As far as I can find, Lockheed Martin are the lead contractor for the ETs. Boeing may subcontract to Lockheed Martin but if they do they are sure not boasting about it. Nevertheless, there is obviously some significant coordination required between the two, Boeing being the lead contractor for the Orbiters.

 

[Urwumpe]

Just for some history lesson: This plan is not new. It is old and had been practically dead for decades with a reason.

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/otv.htm

The price tag in 1986 was 2.75 billion USD (per vehicle). If you have hidden some NASA money below your bed, this would be the right time to find it again.

 

[T.Neo]

The exploration vehicle will be assembled on-orbit at the ISS. This exploration spacecraft will be a pathfinder for more complex systems that will be able to traverse cis-lunar space on a regular basis.

I'm slightly confused by this. Is this a purely LEO spacecraft, and all cislunar flights are to be done by spacecraft developed using research done with it?

Or is it intended for flight out of LEO? Is the high inclination of the ISS really worth the facilities there?

 

[Urwumpe]

Or is it intended for flight out of LEO? Is the high inclination of the ISS really worth the facilities there?

The inclination simply doesn't matter. you can fly anywhere from any inclination, there is no (significant) penalty for relative inclination for long range flights. It only matters for short range missions, even for missions to GSO, the inclination of the ISS would only add 1.285 km/s to the 1.4 km/s needed for the apogee maneuver, unless you do a bi-elliptic transfer, in which case the flight-time would be higher but the total dV reduced a lot (penalty because of 51.6° Rinc = 0.4 km/s).

Since nothing beats math... here some numbers that are vaguely related to the topic:

Bi-elliptic transfer with first apogee in 150000 km altitude:

Worst case (inclination change done evenly during first apogee maneuver Δv2):

Δv1 = 2.936
Δv2 = 1.282
Δv3 = -0.784
Δv = 5.002 km/s

Best case (inclination change done mostly during the beginning of Δv2)
Δv1 = 2.936
Δv2 = 0.980
Δv3 = -0.784
Δv = 4.7 km/s

coplanar Hohmann transfer Δv = 3.93 km/s
51.6° Hohmann transfer Δv = 5.228 km/s

The further you go away, the less the inclination matters - for interplanetary missions, the inclination is even completely irrelevant, since you can reach your solar transfer orbit from ANY direction.

 

[4throck]

I think that any further developments in space will be in the form of international cooperation.

Perhaps an international small shuttle for LEO and a capsule for more distant destinations will emerge. I can envision it incorporating the know how and experience of the current ISS partners.

 

[Ghostrider]

Competition >>> cooperation.

 

[Urwumpe]

Actually, you do best with a bit of both. Cooperation can be very helpful if you can't achieve your goal alone, but competition is what keeps you busy. Only cooperation alone wouldn't help that much, because the reference would be missing.

 

[4throck]

Don't forget politics. Support seem to be stronger to finance cooperative projects than national ones on scientific and exploration fields. And long term projects really need to have a good number of partners to become independent of short term political cycles.

I'm not thrilled with the ISS, but it is an accomplished of cooperation and the only manned space program that exists today.

In the times of competition, strangely enough, there were only Soviet/Russian space stations (and the short lived American Skylab). Even with the reference and stimulus you mention from competition, the Japanese, European and American station programs didn't materialize.

Yes, the Chinese have made progress and can be see as competition, but have only done one short EVA... I think that Intercosmos cosmonauts did more that that on the Salyuts . And Intercosmos was cooperative.

You do have a point, but in my personal view, cooperation has lead to results within the current financial, technical and political global conditions for long term projects. Now, if we are talking about space tourism or private resupply missions, it's each man competing for itself of course!

 

[Unstung]

The Chinese had only 3 manned spaceflights, right? Each mission had years between them. Are they going to get anywhere soon?

As for going out of LEO, that may be too huge of an effort for a private company for a while.