Constellation: June 2009 Archives

The study did not address the other US Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) - a heavy-lift version of the Atlas V - because of "no clear advantages and several disadvantages," including the difficulty in obtaining human-rating data on its Russian RD-180 engines.

wrote Frank Morring with his 15 June scoop. Of that sentence there are 12 words that represent the biggest obstacle to using the Atlas V and I can't remember it ever being discussed by the blogosphere, the difficulty in obtaining human rating data on its Russian RD-180 engines

The Russians will have their own technology export rules and it is not beyond plausiblity that the information that is needed to human rate the Energomash RD-180 is restricted by them

Oh but the Russians might use the RD-180 for the new launcher for the Advanced Crew Vehicle, I hear the blogosphere cry. Fine, and they have access to the data to human rate that engine but Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne won't be getting it anytime soon

Or to flip this argument on its head, if you think members of Congress don't like paying Russia for crew transport to the International Space Station now how do you think they will like having the the US ISS ferry and subsequent return to the Moon programme's crew transportation system dependent entirely on Russian engines?

he sad reality is that this whole RD-180 situation has been dragging on for years...   

This video was shown by Constellation programme manager Jeffery Hanley at the 17 June public meeting of the Review of US Human Spaceflght Plans committee in Washington DC and is embedded from the NASA YouTube website

Thanks to NASA and UStream if you missed the 17 June public meeting of the Review of US Human Spaceflght Plans committee in Washington DC then you can while away the hours watching the above

Speaking to NASA Space Shuttle programme office manager and shuttle derived heavy lift vehicle proponent John Shannon today he expressed views on the outcome of the Norman Augustine led review that could cheer some but perhaps concern a lot more

"There is not enough time to do this super detailed review and I really don't expect them to come out and say you should build this rocket. What I suspect is that they will have a 'NASA should go look or consider at these options with this architecture for this budget number' and we'll go work that with Congress and White House and whatever budget numbers we get will define a lot of what happens next," Shannon told Hyperbola, the implications of which are that NASA will continue working on Ares for some time to come just as it is already while the Review of US human spaceflight plans is ongoing

More uncertainty extending into 2010 would surely be the worst outcome? More delay and more studies would simply make the situation worse for the likes of Kennedy Space Center and the wider industry if, as Shuttle retires, there is doubt about the new vehicles and all current work was abandoned - love or loathe Ares I its keeping capability and jobs alive come 2011

A post-Augustine technical investigation could, paradoxically, ensure Ares I wins by default because by the time any such study concluded the maturity of the crew launch vehicle design and propinquity of the 2015 target date could close the book on other proposals

Shannon gave a presentation on the Shuttle derived heavy lift vehicle on 17 June at the first public meeting of the Review of US human spaceflight plans committee in Washington DC

credit Aerospace Corporation

AvWeek's Frank Morring has explained the above figure of $16 billion in his article about the 17 June Review of US human spaceflight plans commitee meeting. But he doesn't detail why and so I am guessing that its a mixture of shutting down the solid rocket booster infrastructure and then years later starting it back up again and not developing the J-2X engine for a new Delta IV upper stage and having to restart that work years later

credit NASA / caption: "original" plan for lunar development, what does CxP know about the lunar goals?

Another NASA presentation slide from the 17 June Norm Augustine led review of US human spaceflight plans committee meeting. Presented by NASA exploration systems mission directorate associate administrator Doug Cooke and his Constellation prgramme manager Jeff Hanley, according to the presentation's first page, some of its bullet points raise further questions

It says Orion is designed for land landing contingencies but I understand that the airbags have been deleted so I am guessing that an Orion crew exploration vehicle capsule making an off-nominal land landing is not going to be reusable but probably surviveable

The other interesting bits are this $35 billion cost figure for 2015 IOC (whatever happened to those $40-plus billion figures?) and the reference to an "original plan" that had $9 billion for lunar development (that does add up to $44 billion)

This and the other presentations in today's Hyperbola blog posts can be found here and eventually these and more will no doubt appear here

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

Here is Lockheed Martin's press release, released here at the Paris air show, about an imminent Orion LAS test:

Lockheed Martin announced today that two launch abort system (LAS) motors for NASA's Orion crew exploration vehicle are now in place at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico for integration and preparation for the first flight test, known as Pad Abort 1.

Lockheed Martin and NASA have planned a series of ground and flight tests for the launch abort system over the next few years leading up to Orion's first crewed flight to the International Space Station scheduled for 2015.

As the prime contractor to NASA for the Orion Project, Lockheed Martin is responsible for designing and building this advanced-technology spacecraft that will have more flexible space exploration capability than any previous human space flight vehicle. The launch abort system that sits atop Orion is a complex system designed to activate within milliseconds in the event of an emergency on the launch pad or during initial ascent phase.

Congrats to Frank Morring on a great scoop that builds the case against abandoning Ares I

Hyperbola was aware of the argument that US Air Force Expendable Evolvable Launch Vehicles (EELV) could not deliver a vehicle in time for the 2015 target date but did not know if the latest Aerospace Corporation report would confirm that

In this article I referred to a 2005 report Aerospace Corp produced on human rating EELVs. Never published because of its highly technical and commercially sensitive content Hyperbola was aware that its conclusion was not as positive as some EELV proponents would have liked

Despite claims in the blogosphere of rigged analysis and inaccurate upper stage mass figures in the Exploration Systems Architecture Study report the claim that launch vehicles designed for satellites could "easily" be converted for crew capsules never rang true

credit NASA / caption: will it all go as planned?

Progress for the test flight vehicle Ares I-X has been the subject of a NASA release this week and in the above Ares I-X team 90-day timetable it looks like August will see stacking of the experimental booster, planned for high bay three of the vehicle assembly building, while elsewhere its reported that "stacking operations" begin on 30 June

Hyperbola is guessing that the rescheduled (meaning postponed) 24 July avionics acceptance review is going to be a key point in this process and wonders what date under review means for the first stage review and the 18 September launch date now given for the much delayed test

There can be few objects whose alleged imminent death has been cheered by so many so vocally bar perhaps Saddam Hussein's statue in 2003 or one of those boats they floated in the Coliseum where they apparently recreated ancient sea battles 20 centuries ago in imperial Rome. But the criticism of NASA's Ares I crew launch vehicle must be on a par

With US Air Force memos making claims about exploding Ares I first stages (126 Shuttle missions and not one SRB has exploded so why do they worry so?) and newspaper articles about launch abort systems taking longer to design - what the article doesn't mention is that you can't close a LAS design until you know what mass (hello, Orion project office?) it is definitley lifting - the staff of NASA's Ares projects office might be feeling like the Christians that the Romans so happily fed to Lions, again in the Coliseum

It has to be said that the English language pro-spaceflight community's blogosphere (which is overwhelmingly American) is broadly in agreement (see here, here, here and here as examples) over what future Ares I should have, i.e,. none. Sorry NASA but your blog postings don't quite balance things out...

But not to worry as Hyperbola is setting itself on a trajectory to put forward counter arguments (hopefully better ones than NASA has put forward to date) to the blogosphere barrage and give reasons as to why Ares I will survive the US human spaceflight plans review  

caption: is this the way of the future for bad news?

I get RSS feeds from NASA, am on pretty much all the agency's email alerts and over an hour after this tweet went up (at 1640h Thursday 11 May) there is still nothing on the website or in my Google reader or in my email inbox. The URL in the tweet goes to a NASA webpage that has a description of MLAS and gives 15 June as trhe launch date

Just a week ago NASA announced the MLAS launch would take place on 15 June and now it is to occur on 20 June. It seems tweets is the new way of getting out not so good news

Read NASA's background on MLAS here and Hyperbola's previous blog postings about previous MLAS launch target dates in May and March this year here