credit: NASA / caption: This January 1971 concept image shows an orbital propellant depot
Beyond the yes, commercial can do it mantra of the so-called New Space community another of their tenets is how orbital fuel depots will open up this final frontier
Unsurprisingly, being an openly cynical journalist, I have my doubts about this...
The argument seems to go something like this, we don't need big government boosters we can use commercially developed rockets and for the larger payloads and the propellant they need will be waiting for them in orbit
I am not going to tackle the issues surrounding technology readiness levels for creating a storage system because part of my counter-argument is that even if the technology existed there are market and economic issues that would hinder the arrival of such a service
But first let's just imagine the depot scenario. The depot's storage unit(s) has to get to orbit. Using the circa 20,000kg to LEO capable EELV-type rockets many units could be simply left on their own in orbits at different altitudes and planes. Or the NASA concept overleaf could be followed and a space station-like depot could be created
So the costs for such a centralised or distributed, or mix of the two, depot strategy are, the cost of the storage unit, the cost of the rocket to launch it, the cost of that launch's ground support, the indirect costs of the infrastructure to transport the payload and rocket to the launch site, the ground and orbiting infrastructure for enabling and monitoring the launch and payload's commissioning and finally there will need to be a facility to monitor the storage unit's orbit and consumable costs taken into account for the orbiting depots' needs
The centralised or distributed choice also goes to the heart of whether you have one or two types of storage unit
For a centralised system you could have storage units permanently on orbit that are designed for many, many years of operation and repeated cycles of propellant delivery and use in servicing. Like a manned space station the depot would need to reboost its altitude at times and so would need to use propellant, either drawing from the supply offered to customers or using a depot specific resupply vehicle. I am assuming here that solar panel provided energy is sufficient to deliver enough power for the cryocooling technology
The other storage type would be a short term unit that only delivered the propellant and was a relatively "dumb" upper stage, but it would still need a docking capability. You could argue that such delivery stages could be made reusable but this again would come down to the economics of build-new or throw away
For the distributed strategy you may want to use these relatively dumb upper stages or the longer term storage units. For a specific mission a customer may wish to have a dumb stage at a particular LEO incline at a particular time for its spacecraft to reach and therefore that short term use would not need the more expensive storage unit. With a mix strategy you could use both and this is the strategy I would choose
So, we know the costs, we have the market segemented storage products and service options, we have the supply strategy of a mix to meet government and commercial needs
But where are the customers?
Today spacecraft have fixed inclinations and orbital altitudes, they are not going to blast across to a new plane and dock for fuel. Telecoms and Earth observation satellite propellant resupply vehicles have been in development but to date, despite an obvious market and claims by developers of anchor purchasers waiting in the wings, nothing has materialised
So no market there
Then you have the government science mission needs. With China, India and Japan all sending robots to the Moon there is a clear growing demand for spacecraft to make extra-LEO trips and the global exploration strategy, if followed, will only increase that. Those robotic spacecraft going to the Moon are a function of the money governments are prepared to spend on them, the technological development required, their range of scientific instruments, platform size, power needs (is it solar or is nuclear?), overall payload/platform mass, which in turn is dictated by the rocket market on offer and the governments' budgets for launch purchases
The question I raise is this, are there governments around the world that can pay to put together a 20,000kg robotic spacecraft that would also have docking technology (maybe they can buy that off the Russians) and would need the services of an in-orbit propellant depot?
Even the European Space Agency, with four of the G20 (I guess the G8 is a thing of the past now we need Brazilian, Chinese and Saudi money to bail ourselves out of massive corporate and personal debt) funding its budget, is only providing five 20,00kg Automated Transfer Vehicles and it had originally planned for nine
I suspect only the US could repeatedly design and build a 20,000kg scientific spacecraft that had an extra-LEO mission. That is not a market
What about tomorrow I hear you cry?
OK. Well let's assume that Bigelow Aerospace is totally successful and there is a thriving private orbital facility market with lots of non-G8, G20 governments lined up for the kudos of having national hero astronauts carry out research and mega-rich space tourists whizzing round thanks to the SpaceX, Virgin and Blue Origin spacelines does of any of their business models require the use of depots? I think EADS Astrium can rub their hands with glee at the potential market for ATVs but does anyone need to blast across to a centralised depot space station? No
And this is the final problem with depots. Volume. It is the same reason you are never going to get cheap access to space with anything remotely related to a government programme
The frequency of custom that allows for "non-recurring and recurring" (I hate those phrases BTW) engineering costs to be amortised and price elasticity and a viable value proposition and business model is not there
Unless you can show this cynical journalist different?
I am not going to tackle the issues surrounding technology readiness levels for creating a storage system because part of my counter-argument is that even if the technology existed there are market and economic issues that would hinder the arrival of such a service
But first let's just imagine the depot scenario. The depot's storage unit(s) has to get to orbit. Using the circa 20,000kg to LEO capable EELV-type rockets many units could be simply left on their own in orbits at different altitudes and planes. Or the NASA concept overleaf could be followed and a space station-like depot could be created
So the costs for such a centralised or distributed, or mix of the two, depot strategy are, the cost of the storage unit, the cost of the rocket to launch it, the cost of that launch's ground support, the indirect costs of the infrastructure to transport the payload and rocket to the launch site, the ground and orbiting infrastructure for enabling and monitoring the launch and payload's commissioning and finally there will need to be a facility to monitor the storage unit's orbit and consumable costs taken into account for the orbiting depots' needs
The centralised or distributed choice also goes to the heart of whether you have one or two types of storage unit
For a centralised system you could have storage units permanently on orbit that are designed for many, many years of operation and repeated cycles of propellant delivery and use in servicing. Like a manned space station the depot would need to reboost its altitude at times and so would need to use propellant, either drawing from the supply offered to customers or using a depot specific resupply vehicle. I am assuming here that solar panel provided energy is sufficient to deliver enough power for the cryocooling technology
The other storage type would be a short term unit that only delivered the propellant and was a relatively "dumb" upper stage, but it would still need a docking capability. You could argue that such delivery stages could be made reusable but this again would come down to the economics of build-new or throw away
For the distributed strategy you may want to use these relatively dumb upper stages or the longer term storage units. For a specific mission a customer may wish to have a dumb stage at a particular LEO incline at a particular time for its spacecraft to reach and therefore that short term use would not need the more expensive storage unit. With a mix strategy you could use both and this is the strategy I would choose
So, we know the costs, we have the market segemented storage products and service options, we have the supply strategy of a mix to meet government and commercial needs
But where are the customers?
Today spacecraft have fixed inclinations and orbital altitudes, they are not going to blast across to a new plane and dock for fuel. Telecoms and Earth observation satellite propellant resupply vehicles have been in development but to date, despite an obvious market and claims by developers of anchor purchasers waiting in the wings, nothing has materialised
So no market there
Then you have the government science mission needs. With China, India and Japan all sending robots to the Moon there is a clear growing demand for spacecraft to make extra-LEO trips and the global exploration strategy, if followed, will only increase that. Those robotic spacecraft going to the Moon are a function of the money governments are prepared to spend on them, the technological development required, their range of scientific instruments, platform size, power needs (is it solar or is nuclear?), overall payload/platform mass, which in turn is dictated by the rocket market on offer and the governments' budgets for launch purchases
The question I raise is this, are there governments around the world that can pay to put together a 20,000kg robotic spacecraft that would also have docking technology (maybe they can buy that off the Russians) and would need the services of an in-orbit propellant depot?
Even the European Space Agency, with four of the G20 (I guess the G8 is a thing of the past now we need Brazilian, Chinese and Saudi money to bail ourselves out of massive corporate and personal debt) funding its budget, is only providing five 20,00kg Automated Transfer Vehicles and it had originally planned for nine
I suspect only the US could repeatedly design and build a 20,000kg scientific spacecraft that had an extra-LEO mission. That is not a market
What about tomorrow I hear you cry?
OK. Well let's assume that Bigelow Aerospace is totally successful and there is a thriving private orbital facility market with lots of non-G8, G20 governments lined up for the kudos of having national hero astronauts carry out research and mega-rich space tourists whizzing round thanks to the SpaceX, Virgin and Blue Origin spacelines does of any of their business models require the use of depots? I think EADS Astrium can rub their hands with glee at the potential market for ATVs but does anyone need to blast across to a centralised depot space station? No
And this is the final problem with depots. Volume. It is the same reason you are never going to get cheap access to space with anything remotely related to a government programme
The frequency of custom that allows for "non-recurring and recurring" (I hate those phrases BTW) engineering costs to be amortised and price elasticity and a viable value proposition and business model is not there
Unless you can show this cynical journalist different?
on November 19, 2008 11:52 PM | Reply
Rob,
Sorry if my tone in the previous comment was a little on the rude side. You have some good questions, and when I get home tonight, I'll see if I can come up with a rebuttal on Selenian Boondocks.
~Jon
on November 20, 2008 12:07 AM | Reply
Something seems to be missing from this article. I can't figure out where the necessary weight of 20,000kg for a robotic spacecraft before a propellant depot is necessary comes from. The suggested EELV launch vehicle to put the depot in orbit has a capacity of 20,000kg but that doesn't seem to be related to the mass of a probe which uses the depot. Unless I'm missing something, perhaps you could add a note or something to explain that figure. Also, how about the possibility that the USA estabishes a sustained presence on the moon? (I admit that possibility seems remote at present) Supporting such a presence would seem to be the best use of such a depot.
on November 20, 2008 1:04 AM | Reply
The idea is that you have the fuel in the depot and not in the spacecraft right? So you use the EELV payload capability (if you look at the LEO figures about 20,000kg is the best they do) to the absolutely maximum for mission specific systems, instruments etc, otherwise why have the propellant off-vehicle, and then you fill up the fuel tank with the depot's propellant or maybe even use a dumb upper stage as an EDS, which means you don't even have to use part of the EELV launched payload as a propellant tank
A sustained presence on the Moon would help but I still think that building bigger rockets is ultimately more efficient than the entire depot Earth to orbit industry, infrastructure you would have to build to deliver this propellant, that could be on-vehicle using one big booster
on November 20, 2008 5:23 PM | Reply
The depot is very useful only when there is enough traffic. That is only required when NASA (the only instance that has enough money) goes to the moon - which it is currently spending a large portion of its budget on already.
But the ESAS study which NASA bases its architecture choices on unfairly trashed propellant depots, so NASA went for a big booster, which will probably never even get built. If it will, it could be a financial disaster because of huge per flight costs AND because it is an inherently unimprovable program, another problem with which NASA will be stuck for 30 years (STS model) or which will be canceled completely and then there's nothing left anyway (Saturn model).
Humanity will never get to establish a significant presence in space until there are multiple redundant capabilities to get there, solutions that can be made reusable and routine because of decent flight rates, that can be updated, improved and interchanged easily as well. And propellant depots enable all that, as an alternative to a single solution behemoth rocket that sucks most of the tonnage from the world launch market. It is bizarre that one man, Mike Griffin, has had such a huge power in shaping the future of the space faring world, and this generation's resources have been tied to emulating Apollo. There was a reason it was cancelled. It is one definition of foolishness, to try to keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Propellant depots are the best way to enable the way to real spacefaring, which is not suffering the problems of Apollo or STS, but offer a real, sustainable, improvable, advanced and robust way to launch: high flight rates of multiple launch solutions.
on November 20, 2008 9:29 PM | Reply
Rob,
BTW, I hope you don't take my rebuttal personally. I do appreciate your work, and think you're doing useful things in the world of space journalism. I just happen to disagree (strongly) with you on this one, and I hope you aren't offended.
~Jon
on November 20, 2008 10:13 PM | Reply
So what time frame are we talking about here? Now? Ten years from now? Sure there's no customers now, but nobody is putting up a propellant depot next week. And I'd point to the markets that you say aren't markets as a good source of early customers for a propellant depot when it finally goes up.
Second, propellant depots were originally proposed as part of a alternate to heavy lift launch vehicles (HLLV). If there's government money for an HLLV, which incidentally has even weaker markets than a propellant depot would have, then that same money could be used to fund a launch infrastructure with smaller, more frequently used rockets and propellant depots. You lose some features going with smaller rockets, namely, can't launch anything that requires the mass or fairing size of an HLLV.
But you gain several features: lower cost (higher launch frequency trumps more mass in payload), greater operational flexibility (no single point of failure in your launch vehicle, greater choice in when to fuel a vehicle in orbit), and the ability to service customers other than the core ones. A specially made HLLV only serves whoever buys payloads on it. The propellant depot can serve anyone willing to buy propellant. The smaller launch vehicles have a far larger customer base than the HLLV could have.
on November 21, 2008 9:55 AM | Reply
Not offended at all Jon. As a journo you either have a thick skin to start off with or you grow one. The existing space industry, beyond the odd technical paper, doesn't address the whole system that is such a proposal as a propellant depot infrastructure and the New Space community evangelises about it (which is why I describe it as a religous thing), so who is taking a critical look at this and other sacred cows? Us thick skinned journos. Expect more taunting from me in future. But thanks to the New Space people for taking a different tack
on November 22, 2008 9:21 PM | Reply
Rob,
I think your analysis is somewhat disingenuous because it implies that people are arguing for orbiting propellant depots because they would make sense with respect to the current space paradigm. Obviously they don’t and all your article does is set out the basic reasons why this is so.
Now, maybe there are some “enthusiasts” out there who are arguing this way but, from my experience, most present the case in a somewhat different manner: they recognise the constraints imposed by the current paradigm and try to figure out ways in which it could be changed. In my opinion, this is what NewSpace is all about.
Most see the cost of space access (i.e. launch costs) as being the greatest constraint, though many also site things like launcher availability and reliability as well as the demanding design and operational requirements they place upon payloads. Reusable launchers are considered the best way to reduce most of these constraints but current market demands are either too small or too conservative (e.g. comsats) to justify their development. So, this raises the question: what can be done to increase/evolve current markets and, more importantly, develop new ones?
Unfortunately, there is *no* easy answer to this question; no single solution that could change things, though some regard space tourism as one such a “killer app”. However, many consider the vast sums spent on government programmes as having the potential to tip the balance towards a new paradigm by fostering the development of new markets that encourage the development of new launch systems. Employing orbiting propellant depots within future human space exploration architectures would be one way of doing this because the majority of the “payload” launched into orbit would most likely be propellant (i.e. assuming no propulsion breakthroughs like gas-core fission or fusion engines). As such, it which would be amenable to launch by a wide range of systems and, more importantly, it could be utilised by other future government programmes and/or commercial ventures, once its utility has been demonstrated.
Concepts such as orbiting propellant depots therefore represent ways in which government resources (i.e. technology, credibility... cash!) can be used to foster a paradigm shift in the way we explore and, more importantly, exploit space for the benefit of all human kind. Nevertheless, many still consider the current paradigm as the best or only way to achieve this goal. Based upon your article, I assume you believe this too.
on November 23, 2008 12:26 AM | Reply
1/ "even if the technology existed"
NOW ISS Russian Segment already acts as a Propellant Depot (UDMH/N2O4) (+ Parom Tug with a BIG ?)
2/ "But where are the customers?"
REAL SOON A synthesis with ESA/ATV [MMH/MON] and a new fuel module attached to the ISS could rapidly build infrastructure for Evolved ATV/ Evolved Fregat EDS to LLO and a second LUNAR ISS and a second hypergol PD
(I refer you to your own article on the topic!)
3/ "fixed inclinations and orbital altitudes" or should that be attitudes :)
SOONISH Assuming an international space effort with a singular lunar destination, a second ISS (International Service Station!) would be orbited at a mutually inconvenient altitude and inclination but ideal for Lunar departure.
4/ AS SOON AS POSSIBLE Add Xenon PD (non Cryo) to the mix for (Solar powered) SEP tugs at a high equatorial LEO (800km)to minimise atmospheric drag.
5/ SOONER RATHER THAN LATER Add Lunar sourced Oxygen and if we're really clever Aluminium too (Brower et al who expect an Isp of 285 seconds.)
Who needs LH or Methane for that matter?
6/ A.C. Clarke Memorial Lunartron
The other argument (by DIRECT v2.0) is that a PD is a method of 'buying into' the VSE (v2.0) thus international partners with minimal Upmass (ESA, India, China?, Brazil??, Iran???) could pay into the Propellant bank and trade up for a visitor pass to Armstrong Base.
Finally you hit the nail on the head:
"infrastructure you would have to build"
Something that is desperately needed especially if it is human tended.
"Oh Great"
If it weren't for that ISS "infrastructure" and a cranky SARJ there would be no Space Program, just a few robot probes being ignored by 99.9...9% of the Global Village.
on November 23, 2008 8:23 PM | Reply
I generally agree with your fuel depot analysis as well. Fuel depots are a generation ahead of where we are in space right now. I think it would be great to work on the individual subsystems which will have to be eventually incorporated into a full fledged fuel depot design, such as upper stage fuel storage, fuel scavenging, fuel transfer, and fuel delivery, within the low earth orbit framework which will must now necessarily revert to after the failure of ESAS to develop a viable post space shuttle architecture.
But to posit fuel depots as a savior or alternative to Constellation is just more wishful thinking right now.
Such is the state of our fiscal and technological maturity. We need to make the most of our eight year term in the penalty box right now, and certainly fuel depots qualify as a useful endeavor to pursue, but the near term problem is shuttle transition to a viable successor, and Constellation is not that successor. So thinking needs to be directed a little closer to that near goal.
on November 24, 2008 3:11 AM | Reply
This line of stories up to the human rated Ares V go back to the same problem. U can't launch cargo & humans on the same trajectory. Of course you'd want to put large fuel tanks up on steeper trajectories to save money & boost the humans using a shallow trajectory.
on November 24, 2008 9:33 AM | Reply
Yes people forget that and they forget that the EELVs have been designed for that much steeper trajectory, one of the reasons I am sceptical of the EELV Orion solution, that and the fact that they were designed in the 1980s (just 10-years after Shuttle) and we might just want to have something better for the second decade of the 21st century
on November 24, 2008 3:50 PM | Reply
One can fly as flat a trajectory as one wants, as long as the stack can handle the loads and thermal abuse, and the gravity losses do not eat up fuel efficiency.
The problem with manned Deltas and Atlases could be easily solved with the increased thrust of a Pratt and Whitney RL-60, and the increased thrust of the RL-68A would certainly help as well. Clearly a reengined Delta IV could deliver a suitably light and smaller lifeboat and capsule to the ISS, or even better, an equatorial commercial space station, where staging to further destinations could be performed, as you have pointed out, without the need for a full fledged fuel depot. With relatively easy propulsion advances, several COTS vehicles in development and existing engines such as the SSME we have at least six or seven viable near term launch vehicle architectures at our disposal, that can be quickly fielded for LEO access, and which will significantly increase flight rates, reduce flight costs and advance the state of the art.
The problem is that most people who are not even particularly privy or proficient in launch vehicle design have some sort of mindset that Ares is the only and best way to proceed. The Ares V, if ever built, will be a vastly wasteful launch vehicle, with an extremely low flight rate at an astronomical cost.
on November 24, 2008 7:56 PM | Reply
Rob, EELV:s *can* fly shallower trajectories.
There are lots of myths around regarding this. You can only get the straight answer from the trajectory analysts at ULA.
I suggest you ask them. Unless they are too afraid to talk, that is. So make it anonymous at a secret location. I am serious, no sarcasm here.
And this is first hand experience based on hearing from multiple people themselves having gotten into trouble for speaking for EELV:s for human launch.
There is a huge opportunity for investigative journalism in the whole Ares history. There is also a need for good technical insight so one can check if what the sources say makes any sense before saying things or writing them into papers or blogs.
I hope there was more expansion in the "third way" for space journalism, at the moment it's more like the big professional publications relaying NASA and ESA etc PAOs and company press releases, while blogs and forums are pushing snark and rumors (mostly false, but there are technical people there that help checking that at least some).
Not being entirely fair here, but it's easier to describe it so briefly without nuances.
on November 25, 2008 10:36 AM | Reply
I am aware of the fear that exists within part of the aerospace community about talking publicly about certain issues
In journalism if people don't talk to you you can't write anything. It is just a fact of life
The people in the know won't talk till at least Griffin is gone, if he goes. But at some stage what has been going on will emerge
I recognise this is frustrating for people but large ships like government policy and the vested interests that sustain them simply take a while to turn around
By third way I guess you mean a wider use of EELV. I still have my doubts about this option
What I don't understand about New Space is that they cheer for EELV but then publicly attack the very companies that develop and operate them and call them old space dinosaurs
on November 25, 2008 3:49 PM | Reply
I mean third way for space journalism.
There are sources that are not official that can still be used, which if reasonably verified (signed documents, court evidence class are the ultimate of course, but there are lesser things) are much better than rumors. That's the job of the journalist to investigate and not just propagate press releases. Watergate happened because of strong journalists driving for the truth to be uncovered. Aviation Week wasn't used to be called Aviation Leak for nothing etc etc... I don't mean you're not doing investigations, just that there should be much more of it, and more resources being put into it too.
There are more things besides Ares or human-rated EELV:s.
What about the Galileo satnav farce? (And I don't mean the traditional US vs EU stance taken.) How could EADS buy SSTL? There are probably tons of people inside the program, both on the industry and on the government side, just wanting to get their stuff known. Incompetence, corruption, shameless narrow self interest driving, etc. there is that like in every industry... Once again, a journalist gatekeeper with a good sense of the problem needs to make this all heard, otherwise it just goes into either silence or an anonymous rumor mill, loads of unverifiable claims and mud slinging. For democracy to work, the media is extremely important. Government and EU procuring is a very obscure process to the voters.
Mainstream space journalism is too kind. On the other hand, many forums and blogs are too snarky and amateurish.
There needs to be enough investigation to uncover the dirty secrets and there needs to be technical competence to understand what the issues are. That's the third way for space journalism. Real investigation and criticism to the point.
on November 26, 2008 8:29 AM | Reply
I can assure you that if journalists felt that they had verifiable unofficial sources that could give them that sort of story they would publish it.
No journalist I know is here to propagate corporate propaganda. If NASA announces that it has had a successful motor firing test, for example the abort motor, then, a, that is part of Constellation so it is news worthy, and b, I don't have any information showing that it wasn't a success, so you write the story that it was a success.
Journalists are here to write what happened, based on all the evidence, not what people want to think happened, whether that is good or bad.
The usual criticism directed at journalists is from people who want to read articles that reflect their perception of things, so for example someone who doesn't like the Ares I CLV will want reporters to write that it is an absolute technical disaster waiting to happen but the reality is that there is no independent verifiable evidence to show that; whatever opinions people might want to give on that. It has its problems but no info has come to light that is a total showstopper, that can't be overcome without some effort and expenditure.
on November 26, 2008 2:25 PM | Reply
I'm not one of those people who claim Ares I is an absolute technical disaster waiting to happen. It has so far been a relative technical disaster though (lack of performance margin and thrust oscillation problems come to mind at least), and has been and will be a financial burden on the agency.
So you say you would publish a story if someone came forward with good evidence of something not so nice going on (like significant waste of taxpayer money, and I don't mean any hobby horse of mine, just *any* project where it happens to a significant degree). How actively do you seek out those hands on people with the interesting stories inside the industry and the agencies then?
Not the press affairs people or celebrity leaders (who are important too in their own right), or some cranks throwing mud on their previous employer (the internet is full of such people), but those real experts with first hand experiences of significant issues, whose voices are rarely heard except on a few blogs and forums where it's wasted because of a narrow readership and being somewhat incredible by association (ie there's no prescreening, it's so easy to get to write there).
NASP, SLI, CRV and countless other aerospace projects seem such wasteful and sad failures to the outside. There is some text written about them (there is a free book available about NASP for example), that detail more on why. I don't know what the press wrote about them when they were running (and a lot of info was secret then), but it'd certainly enable a lot better informed political and technical decisions if people knew the real state of such multi-billion dollar programs as well and as early as possible. Did anyone get any insight into any of the above mentioned programs' imminent cancellation when reading aerospace press at the time? I don't have a good answer to that, not having followed the field that actively back then, probably there was more information content than just NASA / DoD press releases.
There are some very positive insider stories too, of which almost no-one knows of either. One example has been Antonio Elias on nasaspaceflight.com, recalling the early days of Orbital (and the current workings with Taurus 2 too).
There has been some good inside info here on Hyperbola too, for example about Spaceshiptwo.
on November 26, 2008 2:47 PM | Reply
The programmes you identify were really victims of politics and not incompetent engineering
The question that has to be asked is, who would know if money was being wasted or something was going very wrong and costing much more than expected?
Progamme managers and their team members are the people, in aerospace certainly, and their line managers, they are the ones who would know.
I meet these people at conferences. There I can talk to them without PAO hovering around, though not always, and at the sorts of technical conferences I go to the celebrity leaders, as you call them, do not attend, or rarely.
A programme manager, unless in unique circumstances, is not going to admit to financial problems. But maybe a member of their team who is fed up with a given situation will blab.
But even when they blab you have to corroborate that, quite frankly, hearsay, and unless you have documentary evidence you are on shakey ground. You certainly have to go the PAO people with these unattributed allegations to get a response, documentation or not.
Forums do appear to have people with inside knowledge but a lot of the time they, as Americans say, are blow hards. They whinge and will make all sorts of allegatons but they don't really know anything. If they did why isn't my inbox full of emails with attached images and documents? Why isn't NASASpaceflight.com the most famous space news website in the world? Why does it rarely register on web traffic rankings like alexa.com?
The reality is that the circumstances within which people will risk their livelihood to provide reporters with revelatory material are rare and each have their own unique characteristics.
Antonio Elias is a senior Orbital guy and so you will only get positive stuff from him. It was nice to meet him this year but I am not expecting any explosive inside stories from that quarter ;-)
Again, remember reporters are trying to find out what has happened, not aiming to reflect back to people a world that is what the readers want to perceive it to be
BTW find Flight's NASP coverage in our archive here
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/search.aspx?ArchiveSearchForm%3Asearch=NASP&ArchiveSearchForm%3AfromYear=1990&ArchiveSearchForm%3AtoYear=2000&x=40&y=5
on August 2, 2009 5:17 PM | Reply
"In regards to the core of the facts involved as Rob laid it out....one thing keeps buzzing around in my head. Regardless of all the "space-tec-speak" in the article itself, and the comments by the bloggers as well, with the huge amounts of money it would entail and the "technical know-how to match, with formulas not in existence", would it not be better to research an already exisiting propulsion fuel possibility such as an "ion-drive" engine!? We already have the basic tools for same, we now know how to smash atoms to the "nth degree and have nuclear fuel as well", and I would think it possible with a combination of the preceding sciences in acruality at present, the "space-brains"- would put that on the table for heavy discussion! Leave the current lift-off systems in place for now, forget the "bigger is better" scenario and concentrate on an "compact drive", that would NOT require re-fueling stations, but would replenish itself!" I know it sounds like "Buck Rogers fare", BUT, many of "Buck's tools are alerady in existance now"..so why NOT, buckle down and build an ion-propulsion system"!? It woud also allow "speed close and way over that of light, thus enabling vast space distances to be traveled a heck of a lot faster"!
Just my opinion Rob.
on August 3, 2009 3:19 PM | Reply
http://spacecynic.wordpress.com/2009/08/03/i-swear-this-guy-is-one-of-us/
Glad we found you!
on August 3, 2009 9:49 PM | Reply
20 tons on LEO ?
If you would be planning for a lunar-landed teleoperated rover, i dont think for a moment, that it would be difficult to fill that quota.
Budget half of that for power systems ( solar arrays + batteries + supercapacitor banks ). Beef it up with some heavy rad shielding and thermal protection. Add in triple-redundant comms equipment and control computers.
With that skeleton, you can pretty much do everything that you ever wanted to figure out on moon.
You could fit in couple competing ISRU test equipment proposals, drills, tools, labs, hydroponics.
Living on a moon would be a solved problem, and it wouldnt cost a fortune because you would _overbuild_, not gold-plate everything.
on August 5, 2009 3:55 AM | Reply
Its my job to spit the koolaid out!
on August 20, 2009 7:15 AM | Reply
Picking at just one of your contentions, in paragraph 6: that a propellant depot would need constant reboosting, and so would use the fuel it was meant to store. The ISS needs frequent reboosting because of its low altitude, which is limited IIRC by the capabilities of the Soyuz and Progress systems. If one looks at the plots of altitude vs time, it is clear that going just a bit higher greatly reduces the need for reboosting. Eventually the fuel you save is not worth the energy cost of launching the hardware to a yet higher altitude. There is an optimum altitude, and it is probably a moderate distance above the ISS with much lower air drag, reboosting, and fuel consumption.