Or it is if this history blog is correct in its re-telling - discovered by this blogger via English language Indian tweeter Pradx - of that key moment in US space policy when the Richard Nixon administration ended Apollo
According to the Beyond Apollo blog site Nixon's NASA was presented with five options for what the agency could do next as the Moon programme was wound down
The fourth and fifth of the five options saw the Saturn V production line continued and rather like the Review of US human spaceflight plans' report an unconstrained budget provides the heavy lift vehicle for human exploration. The third option was a robotics programme with landings on the Moon and eventually Mars
Options one and two were essentially the same using space "tugs" that are in-space vehicles that cycle back and forth through cislunar space but only one of these options had space stations. The Beyond Apollo website summarises the first option thus:
The [Integrated Program Plan] had NASA bringing online its Earth Orbit Space Station (EOSS) and winged reusable Earth-to-Orbit Shuttle (EOS) by 1977. The EOSS would serve as base for reusable piloted Tugs and reusable Nuclear Shuttles. When mated to a Nuclear Shuttle, a Tug would be capable of reaching the moon. NASA planned to use this infrastructure in 1981 to establish a Lunar Orbit Space Station (LOSS) with a propellant depot. A Lunar Surface Base (LSB) would follow no earlier than 1985 (see images at the top of this post).
Clearly there is no Shuttle with the Obama plan but the EOSS, or as we call it the International Space Station, is there and a nuclear shuttle could always be the VASIMR. Note the use of propellant depots. The blog goes on to say that:
Scherer's Option 2 was a "Shuttle/Tug lunar program." The EOS and a reusable piloted Tug without EOSS, LOSS, and Nuclear Shuttle would enable piloted lunar orbit and landing missions by 1979, he told Culbertson. He stressed that, to enable this option, lunar mission requirements would need to play a role in the drafting of Shuttle and Tug sizing and performance requirements. As envisioned by Scherer, two Tugs would suffice to place astronauts in lunar orbit, while four Tugs would allow astronauts to land on the moon. A pair of landings at a single site would be sufficient to establish a temporary "minibase" by 1982.
To have a mini-base by 1982 when in 1970 there was no Shuttle or tug(s) of any description is quite an ambitious target. This second option does require a Shuttle, which NASA won't have come 2011, but it shows that the tugs were seen as modular vehicles that together enabled different capabilities
The reality for an Obama spaceflight vision, if it survives Congress and if it had a similar architecture to option one, would probably be a 2032 manned lunar landing. The idea of ISS becoming a low Earth orbit shipyard and sending in-space vehicles out to the Moon not only matches the proposed flexible path but it also matches European Space Agency and Russian Federal Space Agency thinking on how an international exploration strategy could work - even with an orbiting lunar space station
on February 11, 2010 4:11 PM | Reply
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Shuttle: launch cost $600M, payload 24 tons max (+7 astronauts) = $25M per ton to ISS
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Falcon/Dragon: COTS+CRS funds to SpaceX $2.1 Bn / 20 tons (and ZERO astronauts) = $105M per ton to the ISS
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so, the "cheap" Falcon/Dragon price-per-ton-to-ISS is OVER FOUR TIMES HIGHER than the "expensive" Shuttle!!!
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also, send seven astronauts with a Soyuz (instead of a Shuttle) will cost $51M per seat x 7 = $357M
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on February 11, 2010 6:08 PM | Reply
Will the ISS still be around in 2032, or are we going to stage a Lunar Landing from the Presidential Suite of the Bigelow Hotel?
on February 11, 2010 8:01 PM | Reply
If theres one takeaway from this, nothing ever goes as planned. any projections of NASA course beyond 2015 are just BS
on February 11, 2010 10:58 PM | Reply
Rob,
For once I would more or less have to go along with you on this one.
on February 12, 2010 12:03 AM | Reply
Shades the 70's...in many ways this is a re-run. Ending of Apollo, shuttle and the gap. The gap if anything is very reflective of the 70's. The gap prompted me to pursue a career in mechanical engineering rather than aerospace. Most of society forgot about the space program we had Star wars, Buck Rogers. A major recession underway (stagflation). For many young Americans the first flights of the shuttle became the first exposure to a new low-profile space program. The coverage was gone, along with the excitement and interest. We entered forty years of dead-end non-inspirational LEO/ISS. Now FLEX-UP restores the LEO/ISS dead-end, no goal, non-inspirational re-run of a space program? Ok so its commercial now which means a very small segment of society (those directly involved) will be excited and inspired. The public will be bored stiff by it. By 2030 lackluster public interest in manned space travel will be long lost, no markets, no desire, no interest...no VSE. One hope rest with ULA and Space DEV combo with the Dream Chaser. Dream Chaser has potential to spur excitement the Atlas-V reusable "Dream Chaser" lifting body combo truly is a 21st century space-ship. Bigelow is a potential game changer but he screwed the pouch and went with relic capsule...total bummer. Cheap probably but also splash down, puking sea sickness, drowning, no cross-range, high-G reentry, reusable...I doubt? C'mon Bigelow luv your hab but the capsule thing is a spoiler.
on February 12, 2010 3:09 PM | Reply
The thing is going for new developments means risk means potential financial black holes. Bigelow is using common sense but downturn is going for almost obsolete but proven artefacts like Apollo derivates. Government funding is essential to get breakthroughs. Without that the best you can hope for is amateurism not going bad.
on February 13, 2010 7:24 AM | Reply
Doug has some good points. I too prefer a lifting-body to a capsule .. I would imagine that Astronauts used to the Shuttle for 30 years would prefer to land on a runway rather than splashing-down.
The problem is ... all these commercial ideas (most will never come to fruition - if any) are directed to LEO exclusively. The US has no plan for LEO after ISS (2020 not 2032...be time-expired before that).
So I call on all Bloggers to support a 'son-of-Orion' made by whoever which would be designed from the beginning for deep-space application, be it the Moon, Flexible-Path or Mars.
Then do like Wernher von Braun did whenever the NAZIs visited Peenemunde..hide the good space-dreamer drawings!
on February 15, 2010 4:01 AM | Reply
doug wrote: "Ok so its commercial now which means a very small segment of society (those directly involved) will be excited and inspired. The public will be bored stiff by it."
After Bigelow Aerospace has put a commercial space facility into orbit and commercial flights start taking place you will start seeing more coverage on space than the first lunar mission.
Once reality TV goes to space it will be a game changer. I can already see the SCI/Fi channel doing a tv show like their "Ghost Hunters" program only it will be
"UFO Hunters"
I can just see it now,
"Our intrepit band of UFO Hunters are here on the Bigelow Space Facility and we are looking out BA330-A-port window and ... WOW WHAT WAS THAT?"
Camera zooms in.. the audience is held spellbound at the edge of their seats and the camera zooms in on a frozen chunk of pee from the space station
"WHEW that was a close one, tune in next week as we try and capture a picture of those elusive grays and other life in space" ... fade to black...
Human space flight has NEVER been hyped for a commercial return before because it has always been a closely held monopoly by NASA. Once space is opened up to individuals and corporations with big check books and they put the FULL WEIGHT of thier marketing departments behind it to make it work it will be a totally new invironment.
We do not have a clue about what commercial opportunites are going to happen and what it will mean for the public. Historically game changing events never really reveal what will actually take place while it happens. It is only through history that we see what happened 50 years before that led to the point we are today.
Could you have predicted what the future would look like on the windy plains of kitty hawk when the wright brothers flew? The first steam engines, trains, hell the first horseless carriages? They were all thought as novelties and many times scoffed at, ridiculed, or said to be nothing more then a toy for the rich.
To claim that you KNOW what the public is going to find boring 20 years from now, for technologies and systems that are not even in place yet.. well it is silly in the least case and insanity on bun in the extreme.
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Great article Rob, keep up the good work.