NASA Chief talks about new plan for NASA

[PeZook]

WIkipedia claims that design elements in the RS-68 were first pioneered by the Soviet Union but I don't see any indication that the engine as a whole was based on a Soviet design. I thought you might've confused it with Atlas V, since that uses a wholly Russian engine.

Well, I must've remembered it incorrectly, then. It's been a while since I read up on it.

[SirNitram]

I see that Nitram continues his retardation regarding Ares I.

If it's such a bad and horrible design, shot through with flaws; then explain the near flawless flight of Ares I-X.

Because one flight of a stripped down, half-empty rocket doesn't prove much. Only the first stage will have anything working, and it's a solid-rocket, and derived from the Shuttles SRB's. And suffered the usual issues.

So what's that claim to flawlessness on a whole system, a single stage of a very old, proven kind of rocket. And that's it. But Shep will continue to bitch because he knows better than everyone.

[Skylon]

I thought the Russians are already considering turning parts of the ISS that belongs to them into MIR II?

Yeah...that's likely.

As for Shep:

How the fuck will you support ISS without a man-rated system? Pay the Russians $$$$$$ for Soyuz?

Yes. Soyuz is already the lifeblood of ISS, like it or not (unless you want to leave three to six guys up there with no way down).

Man-Rating SpaceX's rockets (ha Ha HAHAH AHAHHAHAHAHAHHA) is not an option -- and man rating our other lifters like Atlas or Delta is going to cost as much and take as long as it would have for Ares I to begin it's first manned flights.

Why?

Space X Falcon I: 670 kg <---Flown and in service
Space X Falcon 9 (Light): 10,450 kg <---First Flight in March of this year.
Space X Falcon 9 (Heavy): 29,610 kg <----even fucking more speculative.
Shuttle: 24,400 kg
Ares I: 25,000 kg
Saturn V: 118,000 kg
Ares V: 188,000 kg

Ares I - Speculative
Ares V - Speculative

You're arguing against paper rockets, with paper rockets.

We've already researched all the fucking propellants available -- did so in the sixties.

Okay, so all chemical engineers in this field should fuck off, stop wasting grant money and go work at Starbucks.

That said, I am surprised the Orion got killed amidst all this.

[Broomstick]

Also, who cares about manned flight to other planets?

Well, I do - but it's not the ONLY thing to do in space, and my rational side understands that now may not be the time to work on that project, that there may be other things we should improve first.

Actually, curious, what entails verifying that a rocket is man-usable? More thorough vacuum sealing?

Reducing the possibility the rocket will kill its occupants to an acceptable minimum, basically. That's not just a matter of life support, it's also how likely it is to blow up or not blow up during launch.

[Sea Skimmer]

Private companies do such a fucking awesome job keeping costs and schedules for military programs under control. I’m sure privatizing more of what NASA does will work out wonderfully.

[Simon_Jester]

Actually, curious, what entails verifying that a rocket is man-usable? More thorough vacuum sealing?

Reducing the possibility the rocket will kill its occupants to an acceptable minimum, basically. That's not just a matter of life support, it's also how likely it is to blow up or not blow up during launch.

This. When an unmanned satellite or probe launch blows up, it's bad news and someone gets a big hole shot in their budget. When a manned mission blows up, it sets the entire space program back by two to five years, because everyone from the White House on down demands a reckoning.

People are reluctant to launch people on rockets they don't think are reliable, and that reluctance has only gotten greater over time.

[MKSheppard]

Because one flight of a stripped down, half-empty rocket doesn't prove much. Only the first stage will have anything working

Another day, another dumbfuck post by Nitram, another asschewing by me.

You fail to understand that this is actually normal procedure for testing a new system -- you test first one stage, then when it works, you add the next stage, and test that and so on.

Normally, we would have tested the Saturn V's S-IC stage with dummy S-IIC, and S-IVB stages; but in order to meet Kennedy's goal of "man on the moon by end of decade"; really risky shortcuts had to be taken -- they actually did overrule von Braun and went for a single all-up test of the Saturn V, to cut quite a bit of development time out of Apollo.

and it's a solid-rocket

So? Solids are damn cheap now and have ISPs approaching that of LOX/Kerosene engines (aka F-1), and are much more reliable than liquids -- all of the Shuttle's launch problems mainly seem to come from the very finnicky SSMEs.

and derived from the Shuttles SRB's

You'll note that this is you know, why Ares V is going to be unmanned (other than the cost savings involved in not man-rating it); because it will have two large solid stacks right next to the center liquid fuelled main stage. If there's another seal failure like on Challenger, you'll get a nice KA-BOOM. So hence, unmanned Ares V -- good.

Despite this, one proposal I heard early on was that the Obama administration was considering killing Ares I and forcing Ares V to be man-rated. Brilliant idea there, Champ.

Ares I on the other hand, has no pesky large liquid fuel tanks next to it, so if there is a seal failure like on Challenger, the worst thing that would happen is we get a nice puff of smoke at the O-Ring area, and the first stage will probably suffer from reduced ISP/thrust/premature termination due to pressure issues in the main exhaust throat (e.g. if there's a puff of smoke, gas is venting out that side, instead of out the hole at the bottom like we want it to.)

In any case, I find it funny, after attacking me earlier for:

I'm not okay with you stuffing the strawman of 'shuttle derived parts' being preference.

You now begin to use 'ew derived from shuttle SRBs' as a attack point.

But Shep will continue to bitch because he knows better than everyone.

In Martin-world, space programs must have flawless development and design records in order to be given his Rokkit Engineer seal of approval.

I recently finished reading Moon Lander by the guy who led the design team for it, and guess how many failures there were in the entire LEM program?

14,000

At the end of the LEM program in 1972, about 20~ failures remained unexplained or unpinned down.

When they started to test the ascent (or descent stage, I forget which one) stage's engines, it kept blowing itself apart; and they had to do a long test period using the 'induced combustion instability via bomb' procedure to finally wring the bugs out of the engine.

And when the very first 'flight ready' LEM was delivered to Canaveral, it leaked like a sieve from it's propellant system when NASA began to pressurize it up with helium to test for leaks, and found that the leaks measured greatly exceeded NASA's criteria.

Took a lot of work by Grumman to fix the propellant system leak problems for the next couple of LEMs.

I'm sure that in the NASA Archives, theres a blooper reel showing the failed 6 September 1963 parachute test for the Apollo CM -- the main parachute didn't deploy during the test, and harness damage caused by various methods prevented the other two parachutes from deploying -- causing the boilerplate module to hit the ground and go splat.

Let's not get into the horrible Apollo Command Module Block I configuration (all spacecraft that flew to the moon were Block IIs).

[Uraniun235]

So? Solids are damn cheap now and have ISPs approaching that of LOX/Kerosene engines (aka F-1), and are much more reliable than liquids -- all of the Shuttle's launch problems mainly seem to come from the very finnicky SSMEs.

How much of that fickle nature results from the SSMEs being part of the reusable spacecraft? I don't think we reused the Saturn V engines, did we?

[Colonel Olrik]

Because one flight of a stripped down, half-empty rocket doesn't prove much. Only the first stage will have anything working, and it's a solid-rocket, and derived from the Shuttles SRB's. And suffered the usual issues.

So what's that claim to flawlessness on a whole system, a single stage of a very old, proven kind of rocket. And that's it. But Shep will continue to bitch because he knows better than everyone.

As solid fuels are a lot more stable than liquids, why do you think that being a solid rocket is a negative point? The biggest advantage of liquid propulsion system is that you can control the fuel mass flow rate with precision unlike with solid fuels, but we have gained a significant amount of experience in rocket engines since the 60s. Due to more knowledge of the system and raw computing power we have control techniques engineers could only dream of 20 years ago.

Ares I flew without incident and fulfilled all the objectives of the mission. If rocket science was easy it would be great and there wouldn't be any incidents and delays, but it's damned hard - we still don't have a complete knowledge of what goes on inside diverse combustion chambers and rocket motors.

[Sky Captain]

When they started to test the ascent (or descent stage, I forget which one) stage's engines, it kept blowing itself apart; and they had to do a long test period using the 'induced combustion instability via bomb' procedure to finally wring the bugs out of the engine.

Did NASA also had problems with LEM engines blowing up? I have heard they had trouble with combustion instability in F1 engine and had to do lots of tinkering to get it to work properly but nothing about LEM engines esploding.

[phongn]

So? Solids are damn cheap now and have ISPs approaching that of LOX/Kerosene engines (aka F-1), and are much more reliable than liquids -- all of the Shuttle's launch problems mainly seem to come from the very finnicky SSMEs.

How much of that fickle nature results from the SSMEs being part of the reusable spacecraft? I don't think we reused the Saturn V engines, did we?

SSME is a very, very high performance engine and fairly finicky to get that performance. Liquids still also have many more moving parts than any solid rocket motor.

[MKSheppard]

SSME is a very, very high performance engine and fairly finicky to get that performance.

E.g. it has an ISP of 360 at sea level -- that's very high for a liquid hydrogen fuelled engine -- most LH2 engines have around 200. That performance has to come from somewhere. Making it reusable for like 10+ flights also hurts. It wouldn't hurt as much if you just threw it away after 2.5 runs (a half run to certify it on a test stand; then two flights); but TEN?

[Skylon]

When they started to test the ascent (or descent stage, I forget which one) stage's engines, it kept blowing itself apart; and they had to do a long test period using the 'induced combustion instability via bomb' procedure to finally wring the bugs out of the engine.

Did NASA also had problems with LEM engines blowing up? I have heard they had trouble with combustion instability in F1 engine and had to do lots of tinkering to get it to work properly but nothing about LEM engines esploding.

I don't know about the F-1, but the SSME's certainly. Their development (along with the shuttle TPS) was part of what delayed the first flight by two years. Astronauts, prior to Challenger, were more worried about them (due to their complexity, and some ground test failures) versus the SRB's which were simplistic in design, and ALWAYS worked in testing.

However, the SSME has proven itself pretty well, it has had exactly ONE failure during flight (STS 51-F in 1985, lost one of its three SSME's during ascent due to an instrumentation error).

[MKSheppard]

Another fun tidbit. About a year or two ago, the INTARDTUBES was all abuzz about problems encountered during Ares I design, like thrust oscillation -- and how that would doom Ares I.

Well, surprise, surprise; during the I-X test flight; they had it all instrumented to hell and gone -- there were 700 sensors feeding a computer/recorder setup in the dummy 5th segment; and all thrust oscillations recorded during the mission were within normal limits. They even put little rockets onto the vehicle to help control the oscillations by firing to counteract it. NASA's simulations predicted that they would fire 20-25 or so times during a flight.

Well, surprise! They only fired three times during the I-X flight.

But Ares I is flawed, and won't work!

[SirNitram]

Because one flight of a stripped down, half-empty rocket doesn't prove much. Only the first stage will have anything working, and it's a solid-rocket, and derived from the Shuttles SRB's. And suffered the usual issues.

So what's that claim to flawlessness on a whole system, a single stage of a very old, proven kind of rocket. And that's it. But Shep will continue to bitch because he knows better than everyone.

As solid fuels are a lot more stable than liquids, why do you think that being a solid rocket is a negative point?

Absolutely nothing, actually. They're quite handy. The issue is when claiming some mock up of a stage entirely consisting of the most stable and well-known propellent is flawless, and thus go ahead with the whole problem. Which is basically where Shep's been arguing from, when he's not vomitting up strawmen left, right, and centre.

[SirNitram]

But Ares I is flawed, and won't work!

Shep, surely those two braincells of yours have come to notice strawmen aren't much of a argument by now, mm? Ares-I is an unknown, except being behind schedule and overruning it's budget, while you continue to pretend a flight of the most reliable form of rocket known to man is proof the entire thing is feasible.

Again, you think you, a guy on a couch or chair knows better because he can post pretty pictures. I just think the team at NASA, this being their area if authority, are the ones to trust.. Not some nobody on SDN. They having access to data you can't get, and seeing the designs up close.

[MKSheppard]

The issue is when claiming some mock up of a stage entirely consisting of the most stable and well-known propellent is flawless, and thus go ahead with the whole problem.

AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH

You fucking retard.



Hey look, the flame is coming out of the bottom, which is the first stage, which is, you know, solid fuelled.

I didn't know that mockups could generate 2.6 million pounds of thrust.

It was the SECOND stage, you know, the one that was going to be liquid fuelled via LOX/LH2 and the J-2X engine, which was represented by 60,000 lbs of inert mass spread around the various sections of the second stage boilerplate to represent the propellant in a fully fuelled second stage.

Which is basically where Shep's been arguing from, when he's not vomitting up strawmen left, right, and centre.

Concession accepted, hatfucker.

You just continue a blind wall of ignorance because it's quite clear you have no fucking idea what you are arguing about, or what is going on -- or how multi-stage rockets are slowly developed from the ground up.

[MKSheppard]

Ares-I is an unknown, except being behind schedule and overruning it's budget, while you continue to pretend a flight of the most reliable form of rocket known to man is proof the entire thing is feasible.

Concession acccepted, Mr "lets move the goalposts".

Ares I is not an unknown, not after the successful test of the I-X flight which proved the aerodynamic calculations, load calculations, etc etc were all correct for the first stage, and that using a solid propellant inline stack for orbital launch -- rather than as a ICBM was feasible -- e.g. the expected thrust oscillations that were such a hue and cry several years ago as proof that you can't man-rate a solid, didn't appear.

And even if they do appear in the later versions of Ares I as it moves to full production flight ready hardware -- guess what? NASA hasn't been sitting around with it's thumb up it's ass; they've developed a mass damping system to kill off oscillations before they can rise to a level that threatens the astronauts health or the safety of the launch vehicle -- the space and mass for this system are reserved in the design of the second stage.

Again, you think you, a guy on a couch or chair knows better because he can post pretty pictures.

I do that because a picture is worth a thousand words.

I just think the team at NASA, this being their area if authority, are the ones to trust.

I agree. Which is why you know, NASA came up with solutions to problems as they raised themselves; e.g. the thrust oscillation issue, and revised the designs as they encountered problems.

FYI, here is the evolution of the Ares I stack:

Link

Left is the earliest designs, using as much shuttle derived hardware as possible, rightmost is newer.

[SirNitram]

And Shep now retreats into 'I POST PICTURE AND LIE ABOUT WHAT YOU SAID" mode while screaming concession accepted. I have never denied there was a Space Shuttle Derived SRB(Down to the same contractor, Alliant tech.) launching there. I denied that meant jack or shit. Oh, wow, Alliant can make a working SRB. We've only known that for decades. Of course, riding on top of an SRB has it's issues, as Von Braun predicted in the '70s: The 45th Space Wing pointed out an abort would likely kill everyone on ascent, what with all that solid, burning propellent, and a nylon parachute.

But perhaps I get too far into the bushes for a man who thinks a Ares-IX launch of just it's SRB is proof the Ares-I works, as you showed in your last thread here.

[MKSheppard]

Oh, wow, Alliant can make a working SRB. We've only known that for decades.

Actually, no we haven't.

We've known for decades that you can have a segmented, reusable solid rocket booster that's strapped to a central core, and doesn't have to carry through structural design loads, due to it being a strap-on design.

(ICBMs are monobloc one piece motor castings, rather than segmented castings/cases as found in the Shuttle SRB).

What we didn't know was whether that same basic design could withstand the aerodynamic and structural loads involved in having to support the mass of a fully fuelled stage sitting ON TOP of it, in addition to the already present stresses.

FYI, the Upper Stage Mass Simulator was actually HEAVIER than the J-2X powered upper stage which will fly in the future; placing more stress on the SRB stack than the actual production hardware will.

And it didn't fold up and die in a variety of spectacular failure modes.

Of course, riding on top of an SRB has it's issues, as Von Braun predicted in the '70s: The 45th Space Wing pointed out an abort would likely kill everyone on ascent, what with all that solid, burning propellent, and a nylon parachute.

You know, this proves your utter lack of knowledge on this subject.



Oh look, what's that pointy thing on top of the Ares I stack, covering the Orion CEV?

Why look, it's an escape tower!



This is a shot of an early test prototype of the tower for Orion firing.

All the crew has to do if things go pear shaped is just twist a switch inside the CEV marked ABORT and off they go!

And the Escape tower concept works, and is actually proven.

On 26 September 1983, Soyuz T-10-1 caught fire on the pad before launch. The crew said 'oh shit' and pulled the loud handle, and went WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE and went rocketing off the burning rocket seconds before it exploded. They landed two and a half miles down-range from the pad, after enduring 14 to 17 gees, badly bruised but alive.

This of course, is a great advance over Shuttle, which has no ejection system for the crew while in flight, and on the ground, the entire concept of 'escape' is basically:

1.) Unstrap self from seats in shuttle on your back.
2.) Crawl down to the lower deck.
3.) Open Hatch.
4.) Run across gantry to escape rope.
5.) Grasp Escape Rope Harness, hook it up to your spacesuit.
6.) Slide down really really long wire rope to bunker on the ground.
7.) Unhook Harness.
8.) Wait till everyone is inside.
9.) Close Door of Bunker.

If you said 'Gee Shep, that's complicated and takes a long time!' then you're right!

And besides, the Shuttle SRBs are actually very damn tough. Challenger's SRBs actually continued on, albeit in unguided spinning mode, after the humongous explosion from the external tank, before range safety officers blew them.

PS -- if burning solid propellant makes nylon die, what will a liquid fuelled explosion do? But in Nitram World, only nasty solids make nylon melt, not the massive fireball from a liquid fuelled rocket exploding...

[phongn]

E.g. it has an ISP of 360 at sea level -- that's very high for a liquid hydrogen fuelled engine -- most LH2 engines have around 200. That performance has to come from somewhere. Making it reusable for like 10+ flights also hurts. It wouldn't hurt as much if you just threw it away after 2.5 runs (a half run to certify it on a test stand; then two flights); but TEN?

It's not just that - it has very high chamber pressure (20.5 MPa, compared to 9.59 MPa in RS-68) and is required to run through a very wide range of operation regiemes (sea level into space). NASA had originally wanted to use J-2S instead but when S-IC no longer became an option, well ...

However, the SSME has proven itself pretty well, it has had exactly ONE failure during flight (STS 51-F in 1985, lost one of its three SSME's during ascent due to an instrumentation error).

OTOH, it never really quite met its design goals of ten flights before refurbishment - the HPFTP remained seriously problematic (and IIRC only recently did it get close).

Of course, riding on top of an SRB has it's issues, as Von Braun predicted in the '70s: The 45th Space Wing pointed out an abort would likely kill everyone on ascent, what with all that solid, burning propellent, and a nylon parachute.

Shep has covered other points, but missed this one. RSRM has a different self-destruct and failure mode than Titan SRM (which is what the USAF based their study on). You can pretty easily observe the (major) differences from the USAF's presentation and the actual range safety self destruct that occurred on STS-51-L.

[Simon_Jester]

Shep, surely those two braincells of yours have come to notice strawmen aren't much of a argument by now, mm? Ares-I is an unknown, except being behind schedule and overruning it's budget, while you continue to pretend a flight of the most reliable form of rocket known to man is proof the entire thing is feasible.

Sir, I have to ask:

Do we have a fairly secure guarantee that anything that replaces it will be better? Does the Ares have an unusual number of design, schedule, and budget problems, more than other comparable rocket designs had at similar stages in their development? What are the odds that the replacement-Ares design (whatever its name) will not wind up being unknown, behind schedule, and over budget in its early prototype test phases?

[adam_grif]

A reason out of the professionals why Ares was scrapped. Doubtless, though, armchair directors will continue to say it would've been fine.

Project Orion or bust!




In all seriousness though, I was kind of scared when they started announcing all the NASA cuts and the impact it would have. It's nice to see that they're trying to innovate.

[SirNitram]

Shep, surely those two braincells of yours have come to notice strawmen aren't much of a argument by now, mm? Ares-I is an unknown, except being behind schedule and overruning it's budget, while you continue to pretend a flight of the most reliable form of rocket known to man is proof the entire thing is feasible.

Sir, I have to ask:

Do we have a fairly secure guarantee that anything that replaces it will be better? Does the Ares have an unusual number of design, schedule, and budget problems, more than other comparable rocket designs had at similar stages in their development? What are the odds that the replacement-Ares design (whatever its name) will not wind up being unknown, behind schedule, and over budget in its early prototype test phases?

A little more than Ares, being built by someone who made a national story about hating the idea of someone checking his work.

However, said thing will not be sucking up so much money we have to cut the cord on a flying lab(The ISS, while failures in many things, has proven itself as a labratory), and said thing, if succeeding, will not be built for.. A mission to the moon. Which is kinda pointless. As I've covered before there's not much there we can put to good use or learn from.

[Colonel Olrik]

Because one flight of a stripped down, half-empty rocket doesn't prove much. Only the first stage will have anything working, and it's a solid-rocket, and derived from the Shuttles SRB's. And suffered the usual issues.

So what's that claim to flawlessness on a whole system, a single stage of a very old, proven kind of rocket. And that's it. But Shep will continue to bitch because he knows better than everyone.

As solid fuels are a lot more stable than liquids, why do you think that being a solid rocket is a negative point?

Absolutely nothing, actually. They're quite handy. The issue is when claiming some mock up of a stage entirely consisting of the most stable and well-known propellent is flawless, and thus go ahead with the whole problem. Which is basically where Shep's been arguing from, when he's not vomitting up strawmen left, right, and centre.

There were perfectly valid techical reasons to use a mockup stage that conformed to the objectives of the test. In engineering a complex construction like a rocket, the proper method is to do it in stages in order to avoid cumulative error dispersions. In this case, the solid fuel stage was the one successfully fired.