U.S. Human Spaceflight is dead for the next two decades.

[Iosef Cross]

We know Falcon 1 was unreliable. So were the early Atlas rockets. That didn't stop people from going into space on Atlas a few years later.

The fact that we were in a technological cold war arms race with the Soviets, and the legacy of a dead president drove us to take a hell of a lot of shortcuts to meet his unrealistic deadlines.

Unrealistic? The goal: Moon. When: End of Decade. Task Accomplished: July, 1969.

There were a ton of bumps along the way, and some risky moves (Apollo 8 possibly was the most risky spaceflight flown until STS-1). But how can you call the goal unrealistic when it was accomplished?

Because it cost a lot of money to make it go so fast, and also risks increased. It would have been cheaper and safer if they had done it with more patience and arrived at the moon in 1975, for example.

[PeZook]

I'm not sure it would significantly change anything ; Only Apollo 8 was truly a high-risk mission (beyond the whole "we'll shoot people away from Earth on tubes filled with high explosives) thing. For the rest, every step of the way was tested with several missions to iron out the kinks. No American astronaut was lost in space during the program, either.

[MKSheppard]

But how can you call the goal unrealistic when it was accomplished?

Because it permanently pushed US Manned spaceflight away from realistic goals -- von Braun was already planning to go to the moon well before Kennedy; except he was going to do it in a rational way (Earth Orbit Rendevous); with manned space stations step by step to set up a program which while running slower, would have been much more unkillable than Apollo.

This was not possible with Kennedy's ten year deadline. So a lot of shortcuts had to be taken -- like with the LEM.

You could have just launched a larger, bigger version of it into orbit on a Saturn IB; which had a 25,000 kg to LEO capability -- the historical LEM was 14,700 kg and rendevoused with it via EOR; allowing the Saturn V to launch a bigger CSM stack; allowing overall both vehicles to be much bigger and much more capable.

Additionally, with Apollo's Lunar Orbit Rendezvous, everything was self contained -- you could cancel it at any time because a single Saturn V carried everything you needed to land on the moon and return. With EOR, you have a lot of infrastructure in space which can't be killed easily.

Look at just how fucking hard the ISS is to cancel...

[MKSheppard]

Sent this to Senator Mikulski via email:

I respectfully hope you will consider the effects that the termination of the Constellation program will have on future U.S. Manned Spaceflight.

For one, there is no guarantee that whatever program replaces Constellation's heavy lift and spacecraft capabilities will not suffer cost escalation overruns and schedule slippages, leading to it's termination several years from now; leaving us exactly where we are now.

Many of the faults levied against Constellation, such as underfunding miss the point -- that this is no longer the 1960s, where NASA gets about $11 billion (2007 adjusted dollars) each year to develop both the heavy lift rocket and two spacecraft types (orbital module and lunar module) simultaneously.

When NASA can only budget an amount between $1 and $1.5 billion a year for manned space development, sequential development must be followed -- you develop the spacecraft and it's launcher first, then you develop the heavy launch vehicle and the lunar module next.

If you consult the FY2009 NASA budget documentation; you will see that ARES V development would grow from a start of $35.7 million seed money in the FY2008 budget to $1.2 billion by FY2013.

But when you consult the FY2010 budget request; Ares V funding growth is terminated -- it does not rise above $25-$30 million in funding out to FY2014.

Zeroing out a program's planned growth is a good way to claim that it is "behind schedule" when you cancel it.

[Skylon]

Because it permanently pushed US Manned spaceflight away from realistic goals -- von Braun was already planning to go to the moon well before Kennedy; except he was going to do it in a rational way (Earth Orbit Rendevous); with manned space stations step by step to set up a program which while running slower, would have been much more unkillable than Apollo.

Gotcha. It would have been fairer to say "unsustainable" versus "unrealistic."

This was not possible with Kennedy's ten year deadline. So a lot of shortcuts had to be taken -- like with the LEM.

You could have just launched a larger, bigger version of it into orbit on a Saturn IB; which had a 25,000 kg to LEO capability -- the historical LEM was 14,700 kg and rendevoused with it via EOR; allowing the Saturn V to launch a bigger CSM stack; allowing overall both vehicles to be much bigger and much more capable.

Granted. However, considering the political climate of the time I couldn't see this flying. I doubt it would have saved money as far as Congress was concerned.

Additionally, with Apollo's Lunar Orbit Rendezvous, everything was self contained -- you could cancel it at any time because a single Saturn V carried everything you needed to land on the moon and return. With EOR, you have a lot of infrastructure in space which can't be killed easily.

This simplifies things a bit too much. Von Braun's big infrastructure involved a space station, a shuttle and lots of fancy stuff before going to the moon. You just proposed using a Saturn V/Saturn IB EOR combination for Apollo. The later doesn't require as much of an infrastructure and could be killed just as easily as Apollo was, when both the Saturn V and Saturn IB production lines were closed, capping the existing number of vehicles.

[Darth Yan]

Wasn't the space program already in trouble after the challenger incident? Shep, hate to burst your bubble but the space program's prospects were bleak long before Obama came onto the scene. Besides, trying to make peace in Gaza is very possible

[phongn]

Wasn't the space program already in trouble after the challenger incident? Shep, hate to burst your bubble but the space program's prospects were bleak long before Obama came onto the scene.

Project Constellation was funded and had a plan before Obama's change in priorities.

[MKSheppard]

Project Constellation was funded and had a plan before Obama's change in priorities.

As Mike Griffin said it best:

"Other problems don't have these problems and are head schedule and behind budget, because they're not being built."

Seriously Phong, WHY is there so much hate towards Constellation?

It's basically DIRECT with all the problems fixed:

1.) We won't send people up on a sidemounted booster stack; greatly improving launch abort reliability.

2.) We won't need to launch two large 80 tonne to orbit HLVs in order to support a single manned lunar mission -- we'll just use a much smaller 25 tonne to orbit vehicle to put the astronauts into orbit in addition to our heavy launcher. Plus, we won't have to do in orbit propellant transfer from the other HLV's spent final stage to achieve our mission.

3.) Actual believable weight estimates are applied to the design.

4.) The SSME is eliminated -- why would we want to throw away three $50 million dollar engines ($150m each mission) on an expendable launcher....when we can throw away five $15 million dollar RS-68s ($75m each mission) instead; and also get more mass to orbit (160 tonnes vs 80~ tonnes).

And a lot of the other proposals were clearly long term proposals -- like a Saturn V 2.0; using 1+ million lbf kerolox engines -- they would take a lot longer to develop than shuttle derived hardware (like ARES is). Remember, NASA has not launched any rocket with a 1+ million lbf kerosene/oxygen engine since the last F-1 fired to send Skylab into orbit in the 1970s.

[MKSheppard]

Project Constellation was funded and had a plan before Obama's change in priorities.

Shhhh....you're supposed to cite the $200 billion 20-30 year TOTAL program cost as a reason that it's overpriced and unaffordable and unsustainable!

Nevermind that over that length; it comes out to $6 to $10 billion a year; when NASA's budget is $17 billion...........