Go here for the Aerospace Corporation's presentation given to the Norm Augustine led review of US human spaceflight plans committee 17 June meeting. Because of the complexity of the subject matter the slides content's meaning is not always clear but what can be gleaned is that
- Delta IV launcher could be ready in 5.5 years
- development period includes upper stage re-competition
- new upper stage with J-2X could deliver better performance than Ares I
on June 19, 2009 5:47 PM | Reply
Rob,
I watched the presentation when it was given, and there were a lot of caveats and assumptions buried in it. Sure, if you continue Ares V and Orion exactly as is (in spite of the fact that Ares V is still entirely a paper design concept), and you assume a 7 year total redesign of the Delta-IV upper stage (with MSFC in charge), then the cost savings might be wiped out by cost increases elsewhere. But if you make one change to the architecture, it's worth reevaluating the other parts to make them work together. If you go down the Delta road, you wouldn't do Ares V the same way you would do if Ares-I gets built. You might not even do an Ares V.
And as you probably saw as well, the Augustine Committee was rightfully skeptical of the 5.5-7 year date. It only took something like 2 or 3 years to "man-rate" both Atlas and Titan back during the Apollo program. This was back when these were vehicles with atrocious reliability records, back when we had little experience with manned spaceflight at all, so the projects were cutting new ground, and back in the infancy of space launch.
~Jon
on June 19, 2009 7:17 PM | Reply
I've read elsewhere that the ULA guys don't know where this figure of 5.5-7 years comes from. They feel confident that they could have a man-rated Delta IV in four years, and a man rated Atlas V with a third party vehicle (Dream Chaser?) ready even sooner.
Is it just me, or did it seem like the people doing this study were being very conservative and mostly looking at several worst case scenarios with regards to schedule and cost issues? Even then, their analysis still shows that the EELV option is a cheaper alternative to Ares I. The worst thing they could come up with was it _might_ take longer to develop than Ares I.
The other thing that bothered me was the way that they described the how the money that would have been spent on Ares I for systems to be used on Ares V would have to be absorbed by the Ares V project. They made it sound as if it would cost more to just do Ares V than if they were to do both. Certainly it would cost more than Ares V is currently budgeted for, but I can only assume that the total cost would be less. If the total cost difference is more than it would cost to make the necessary Delta IV modifications, then the decision should be a no-brainer.
on February 22, 2010 4:13 AM | Reply
1. the 5 segment SRB and the J-2X were to be developed for Ares 1, thus saving that cost when utilized for Ares V. 2. The nice Delta IV heavy has a heavy G load that causes large issues for man rating and abort modes. This is all published info, by the way.
on February 22, 2010 4:15 AM | Reply
1. the 5 segment SRB and the J-2X were to be developed for Ares 1, thus saving that cost when utilized for Ares V. 2. The nice Delta IV heavy has a heavy G load that causes large issues for man rating and abort modes. This is all published info, by the way.
Of course, all this is moot if we cannot find a way to save our manned program. One guy should not be allowed or able to destroy a great piece of our heritage.