With our country's financial woes, NASA's budget woes, and the imminant demise of the Space Shuttle system (in 2010), the best move with respect to the Space Shuttle is to continue using the techniques developed to detect and repair damage before re-entry, and pour what little money is left into either their Constellation Program (Ares I and V, Orion, Altair, and EDS), or into DIRECT.

DIRECT is said to be a more sane approach, given the budget cuts and the economic woes, as it's a far more cost-effective approach supporting NASA's Vision for Space Exploration than Constellation. DIRECT replaces the Areas I and V boosters with a family of rockets using parts and technology already in existance, including the Shuttle's main tank, it's liquid main engines, and it's boosters.

While its origens predate the first Shuttle launch, the latest efforts include 62 NASA engineers, NASA-contractor engineers, and managers from the Constellation Program. Version 3.0 was unveiled just over a month ago in May, 2009, and on June 17, they presented their proposal at a public hearing of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, a in Washington D.C. panel reviewing US space efforts.

Lest anyone errantly think their cost-savings are "marginal," the title of Version 3.0 is Direct 3.0: Landing Twice the Mass on the Moon at Half the Cost."

Hardly "marginal."

Some question it's safety, but given that it's largely derivative of what we've been using for more than 30 years, sans the energy/payload robbing (by 130,000 lbs) and foam-problematic Shuttle,

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"Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold- bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief." - James Russell Lowell

In May, 2009, the 62 NASA engineers, NASA-contractor engineers, and managers from the Constellation Program unveiled DIRECT, Version 3.0. On June 17, they presented their proposal at a public hearing of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, a in Washington D.C. panel reviewing US space efforts.

Let's face it - if this were 2000, I'd say "Go with Constellation," as it's Ares I and V boosters, combined with the Orion command module, Altair Lunar Lander, and Earth Departure Stage (EDS), do hold promise for a "sexy jet."

The problem is that this isn't the year 2000. We can't afford the "sexy jet" approach. People are buying Subarus and Fords (if anything!), not Corvettes. Our economny is doing worse than it has since the Shuttle began flying more than 30 years ago. We have proven space components, refined over decades of flying them, yet we're willing to bank instead on new, untested components at a time when the public isn't behind the space race, and where failure would doom continuing space efforts for a long time.

DIRECT is a far more cost-effective approach supporting NASA's Vision for Space Exploration than is Constellation. DIRECT replaces the Areas I and V boosters with a family of rockets using parts and technology already in existance, including the Shuttle's main tank, it's liquid main engines, and it's boosters.

Lest anyone errantly think their cost-savings are "marginal," the title of Version 3.0 is DIRECT 3.0: Landing Twice the Mass on the Moon at Half the Cost."

That's hardly "marginal," yet it's exactly what our Space Program needs in order to stay afloat.

Some question it's safety, but given that it's largely derivative of what we've been using for more than 30 years, sans the energy/payload robbing (by 130,000 lbs) and foam-problematic Shuttle, cutting out the Orbiter's weight (by 130,000 lbs, net of Orien), DIRECT simply makes sense. Opponents question DIRECT's safety, but DIRECT engineers counter that DIRECT's Jupiter-130 Crew LV has much greater safety margins than NASA's current plans for an Areas 1 Crew LV.

Furthermore, the massive cost savings of using DIRECT would enable NASA to return to the Moon sooner, while supporting ISS, and flying additional missions to Hubble.

Let's face it - Congress has a tendancy to allow for very expensive pre-production R&D while cutting production runs, and they've done this with every major aerospace system since the 1970s, including the Space Shuttle, the B-1, the B-2, and the F-22. While that's a horribly expensive way of doing business, it's reality, and we're not likely to see a change anytime soon.

Given that reality, what should we do? Go with Constellation, only to be so budget-limited we get one, maybe two shots off before further shots are cancelled, the Mars Lander program is cut, and the ISS suffers or is shut down because we're so far in the hole, economically we can't dig ourselves out of the well?

Or do we go with DIRECT, doing more with less, with greater safety, while providing for continued NASA funding in other areas?

Your salient thoughts with respect to the concepts, engineering, design, cost-effectiveness, and safety issues would be considered most welcome.

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"Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold- bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief." - James Russell Lowell

I like DIRECT 2.0 better. 3.0 uses the extremely expensive and over engineered SSMEs, instead of the much cheaper RS68s. I understand about the heat issue, but couldn't they just add a heat shield or something? Alternatively, they could use some smaller boosters instead of the SRBs, since the SRBs are overkill anyway. (Either way, I agree, it's a million times better than Constellation.)

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"Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together." -Carl Zwanzig

I think we should focus less on cost issues and make it a public works infrastructure project. This would mean high launch volumes and lots of mass-produced parts for launchers and space structures made by american factories instead of a few lovingly and expensively handcrafted parts from one or two favorited stinkwerks. Cheap or expensive, it really isn't important as long as the money is circulating through the wider economy.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

Frankly. All I've seen from direct is a lot of claims made by people who choose to be anonymous. that is not confidence building at it's finest.
secondly. Direct is going to have a lot of the same conversion from paper to real world rocket conversion problems as any other program if it's chosen to replace Ares.
That's not pessimism. that's realism.
whenever you reconfigure the stack you end up having to redesign parts of it to accommodate the new configuration. that costs time and money. And it wastes all the time and money spendt on the previous configuration as most of that work is now invalid.

Funny thing is. None of the alternatives to Ares realy adresses the Real problems. and that is the fact that NASA keeps being pushed around in a new direction every 4 years. Lots of programs keeps being cancelled when they are half done. that's no way to run a space agency. that is just clowning around imho.
Do anyone seriously think Direct will survive any longer than Ares has if it ends up replacing Ares?
I think not. give it a year or 2 and some other interest group is going to start spamming the internet with the new "Superior" architecture that should immediately replace direct. It will never end if they start making decisions based on anonymous interests groups pressure.
I think I'l write my own government officials and try to make them find new partners for our space needs tbh. one that is actually completing it's projects would be a nice change of pace.

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The refusal of people to put their names to obsensibly major studies certainly does not do much to encourage respect let alone critical review and engagement. It is a bit like UFO proponents who claim anonymous sources for their claims. Put up or shut up.

No do extravagant claims about "twice the mass on half the budget". That is easy to say and hard to believe when they are using a smaller launcher and haven't put together any hardware. Or that they can replaces both Ares I and Ares V when their proposed rockets appear either too large or too small for the task.

Jon

At this point, I don't see replacing real hardware with a paper rocket. Maybe a couple of years ago, but not now.

Maybe I'll change my mind if Ares 1-x is an abject failure.

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"Time travel gives me a headache." - Capt. Kathryn Janeway

Judging by the enthusiasm on NASA TV for the Aires program, I would hope that the folks there know what's riding on everything they do. I don't doubt that with enough imagination and know how they will sort out any issues with Aires. It's a question of problem solving and engineering.
Now, if the politicians get into micromanaging the whole deal, all bets are off...

politics + engineering = epic fail.
Always has and always will.
Thing is. even if time wil show that direct would have been a better solution i can tell you with confidence that swapping is still a very very bad idea.
The Ares program is pretty well under way. and Ares was chosen back when both options were nothing more than half formed trade studies. perceived advantages with Ares made it win out back then. and we can spend ages arguing about that choice in retrospect. it's easy being wise after the fact. however. just like in most cases in life. once a choice is made one better stick to it until it's proven to be a detrimental one.
The reason for that is that a suboptimal decision is way better than none. especially when you need to move forward. I don't care if all that made Ares win over direct was a stupid coin toss. as long as a choice was made at a time when that choice was needed in order to move forward and design something that could work.

That is decision making 101 rule number one. when a decision is needed to stay afloat. make one. even if it might be a bad or non optimal one. since in order to avoid disaster you need to keep moving. always.
Nasa Needed to get something out of paper and onto the pad. and the decision makers knew it. so they chose in order to keep going. love it or hate it. but at least support going forward. because going back is not an option that should be done unless your path has been absolutely proven to be wrong.

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the space program isn't about doing things cheaply- it's about keeping thousands of the best and brightest people gainfully employed working on cutting edge technologies for "us" instead of taking their knowledge and abilities to some other "them".
anyone who thinks this is all about doing it cheaper and easier by using off the shelf proven tech misses the point- NASA is all about funding the r&d research that is to risky and expensive for private companies to do it on their own.

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The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

I agree. government engineering programs are about pushing the envelope and taking risks that no profit driven organization is able to afford.
Nasa needs something that will work. and currently they have nowhere to buy it at any cost. so they have to make it themselves.
Most opposition to Ares I seems to be about Nasa not pushing the envelope enough. while most opposition to Ares V is that they are pushing it too much

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Or until a better one comes along. It doesn't have to be "detrimental" to be worth abandoning. Once it becomes a sunk cost, future decisions should be made on present circumstances, not the past.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

present circumstance is a partially completed Ares I.
So if one is to compare costs vs capability that sunk cost should be deducted before a comparison. however most comparisons I've seen are not doing this.
Not to mention a rather distinct tendency to understate costs on the alternate options.
One of the main cost drivers on the Ares is that it's 2 launchers being developed and not 1. items that are on the critical path of the Ares V has been forced upon the Ares I. And so has the costs of those items. some of those expenses are at least partially sunk as well. I'm referring to the new J-2X Engine as prime example.

In the case of using a separate rocket for crew than for cargo it was a decision made with safety in mind. the decision still seems quite reasonable to me. one rocket that can be maximized for safety while the inanimate stuff goes up on a rocket where a loss is a cost issue rather than a disaster.

Ares I has several safety selling points for the role of a crew only launcher. It's being designed for the safest trajectory, it will have no black zones. it's first stage is a single engine witch means it's initial launch has only a single engine failure point when leaving the pad. besides solids do not explode when they fail. if it faisl in other ways then the LES will be able to pull the capsule away easily enough. that is what it is designed to do after all.What you launch the cargo missions on. well. there are still time to adjust the options. but retaining shuttle technology and pad architecture should not be on the list of priorities.
Getting the sorely needed large fairing Heavy lift vehicle needed to go to the moon and beyond otoh. That should be number one.

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We could have the makers of the PT Cruiser change over to rocket building. But that might give Ares a black eye right off the bat.

Besides the way I see it is, we just don't have the need for a large number of human launches each year. They would just give us more of the same old bone studies and such.

I'm not so sure, Ara, as there's a difference between parasitic "income" and real income. When John grows the corn that feeds Bill's cattle which supplies Frank's steakhouse which feeds John's family... All that money circulating around does little good for the economy as a whole, other than allow for multiple resources to be shared, and paid for, by multiple people. The same economy, in stagnation, would require no additional work. Indeed, they'd be out of work, but instead working for themselves, probably on a farm.

Would you prefer those 62 NASA engineers who're contributing to DIRECT reveal themselves and get fired for not toeing the party line?

Given that DIRECT makes tremendous use of existing technology and tried-and-true components currently in use, while the more expensive option is a total, from-scratch design, that's not realism. That's mere pessimism.

The majority of the stack remains the same. So not much time or money. Certainly far less than Ares' totally new design.

Sunk costs are unrecoverable and cannot be included in current cost analyses. That's finance/accounting/industrial engineering 101.

I'll agree with you on this one - constantly shoving huge sums towards R&D only to suffer drastically cut production runs is a horribly inefficient and expensive way to make progress.

Not without a change in NASA's hierarchy as well as the mindsets of those who hold the pursestrings. Then again, those are the same pursestring-holders who've cut the production runs on most military programs in the last twenty years, so...

I doubt it. DIRECT is an underground, but inside (NASA) effort. Besides, it's been around since before the first launch of the Shuttle. I don't think any Internet spammers will shove it aside anytime soon.

Again - would you come forward from within the ranks of NASA if it meant loosing your job?

Given the nature of who's behind DIRECT, that statement is just downright disingenuous, Jon, an apparent attempt (ad-hom) to discredit DIRECT while failing to discuss the details of DIRECT itself.

I suppose the Shuttle's SRBs, it's main tank, and it's SSME's aren't "any hardware..."

What do you mean by "appear?" Are you referring to the way they "appear" to the human eyeball? Or do you have some facts and figures you'd like to use to back up your claims?

Those must be those "paper rockets" that have been lifting off the Cape since 1977...

After all that additional money has been sunk into Ares, you mean...

Let me see... NASA TV... Showing enthusiasm for their officially-sanctioned Ares program, without providing any coverage of DIRECT....

Agreed.

Disagreed, and as far as the science politics go (allowed as a topic under BAUT rules), given the nation's economy, DIRECT would not only be an easy sell, but it would help restore confidence in the government's frugal spending of funds on known technologies rather than reinventing the wheel with marginally better, but much more expensive new technologies.

Sunk cost.

That's like saying let's not slow down until we actually run into the brick wall we see ahead of us.

So let's move forward with the more optimal solution, instead, and incorporate some of Ares' technology, incrementally.

Best of both worlds.

Well, we know DIRECT will work, as all the main components have been flying off the pad since the mid-1970s.

Decision-making 102, which supercedes decision-making 101, states: "Never allow the momentum of mistakes made yesterday keep you from making a better decision today."

Well-said, Ara, and I'll note you said it before me! Nice to hear one's thoughts echoed by another such as yourself.

Exactly. Proper cost analysis discards all sunk costs on both sides, and only examines the costs to be incurred from this time forward for each avenue of approach, as well as the incremental costs of the various combinations.

Always a tendancy, and potentially a huge problem.

I agree this is a prudent approach, but then have to wonder why we don't just use a man-rated version of the Delta IV.

All of which are available with DIRECT, save the for single engine point of failure (why is this a good thing, when DIRECT can continue with one SSME out?)

DIRECT does this...

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"Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold- bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief." - James Russell Lowell

Posting that post twice took away quite a bit of real estate in this thread.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Problem one with the claim of those anonymous people supporting direct are Nasa engineers. as long as they remain in the shadows there can be no proof of this. trust requires openness. At least some of them should have stepped forward now that they are getting a public hearing.

whither Direct is better than Ares V can be debated. but direct as it is presented is overkill for crew only launches. that has to be addressed somehow if a change in direction from Ares I is aimed for. Ares V is pretty much as nebulous as any other proposed design at this stage since it's practically in the planning stages still. And important factors like the weigh of the lunar lander is still largely unknown.
The 5 seg SRB's are close to completion. so there is no reason not to finish up with Ares I and at least get some LEO capability going. I can see where swapping out the second stage engine to maybe a single SSME or something similar could be a prudent choice to save on money. those new J-2X engines are expensive to develop as well as time consuming.
And as far as i have understood it they are not needed for the Orion Block 1 variant that will ferry astronauts to the ISS. With the current political clime i doubt anything more will be done about the moon for a while. At least by the US. Not until some other nation comes close enough to make the politicos take notice.

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Ares 1-x is a sunk cost. Let it fly.

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"Time travel gives me a headache." - Capt. Kathryn Janeway

I'm not sure I understand the point of the disagreement. What you describe as "multiple resources being shared and paid for by multiple people" would seem to be the goal in or evidence of a good economy. Ya know, specialization and economies of scale and efficiency savings. If we all worked as jacks-of-all-trades for a subsistence level, then we wouldn't be very advanced.

Or maybe I'm not following your point about parasitism. A space infrastructure project can be more than make-work. It could have real goals that would generate a profit structure for private business that rides along that infrastructure.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

I'm sure we could think of something to do with it.

Tell me, if you want to make banana splits for two, would you purchase a hand of five bananas if that's all there was at the store? Why not, they're cheap and you'll probably think of another reason to eat the extra banana. Either way, it's not a big decision to make. The infrastructures of transportation, energy, manufacturing, distribution and storage, farming and commerce make it possible and even make it affordable to have bananas on a whim.

Now, what if you had to hike down to Central or South America by yourself to locate a banana in the wild for you and your friend's banana split sundae? Would it be worth it? That's kinda how some people want to look at space.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

It's not a matter of make-work, but rather, when a portion of work is circular, failing to add to the bottom line, and usually robbing from it. An oft-quoted example is one where an unnecessarily complicated tax code requires hiring tax accountants and tax lawyers. While some argue that creates jobs, the truth is that those jobs are paid for out of net profits that would otherwise have been reinvested in the company had the tax code been simpler, and the freed-up labor could have been put to better use either improving or marketing the product than simply complying with unnecessarily complicated tax law.

As for economies of scale, one of NASA's goals has been the sharing of information. Indeed, their airfoil research is heavily embedded in all modern airliners.

Another example of an economy of scale is to use the Shuttle's SSMEs, proven, reliable engines, in various configurtions. For example, DIRECT calls for the three SSMEs, but a beefed-up external framework could be added to the main tank, allowing for four or five SRBs. A larger external tank could feed seven, or even nine SSMEs, for a vastly imcreased heavy lift launch capability.

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"Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold- bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief." - James Russell Lowell

Okay, I think I understand now, but I'm not sure how a space infrastructure project is parasitic.

What you write above reminds me of a few things I've read and heard over the last few months and thoughts I've had about the economy. There is a theory that an economy needs to be balanced between manufacturing, labor, and finance. Part of the current problem with the economy is that labor was busted and finances took too much of the pie, such that manufacturing suffered as the rates of return in finances made capital flee manufacturing, which had lower rates of return, which tried to respond by busting labor. Your comment above about tax-accountants and manufacturing seems to fit that model.

Moreover, there is a theory that automation and robotics will eventually make manufacturing even less of a mass employer in the future. This can be both good and bad. Efficiencies may increase, but the concept/ethic that people must work for a living would seem poised to rob those efficiencies via make-work jobs, such as finance sector and other middle-management types of jobs.

Perhaps the space program and the economy and general wellbeing of the population in general would be served by another form of wealth distribution scheme. I don't want to get into politics here, but Milton Friedman's idea of the "Negative Income Tax" might be appropriate, and make spaceflight expenditures more palatable as an emergent growth industry. Maybe that just sounds like a rebranding of breads and circuses but if we have the surplussage from mechanized industry, then it could work.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

I think you're talking a somewhat Star Trekkian topic, Ara! Nothing wrong with that, and I think once our society gains a better grasp of how economics really works, we may yet get there.

As for the economics of DIRECTv3, they claim it's much better than Ares, while some naysayers here have said otherwise, but without having said how, otherwise.

So how, otherwise?

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"Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold- bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief." - James Russell Lowell

That is quite backwards. it's the direct proponents that has to show How direct is cheaper.
Keep in mind that the Direct website itself is performing the concorde fallacy when most of it's savings claim stems from dropping Ares I considering that a fairly large chunk of Ares I is already a sunk cost.

The last claim that the Direct would require less redesign is patently false. the shuttle ET requires extensive modifications in order to be used in the manner proposed both in direct's jupiter and the Ares V configurations. these costs will remain virtually the same for both vehicles.

Reading trough the website for direct.
They use a lot of charts for costs that are not sourced nor are the numbers behind those charts made available so that one can check the claims out oneself. this is a FATAL flaw when it comes to convincing me at least to have any confidence in those numbers.

When looking at the pretty charts i also see that the estimates for parts of the architecture that should remain more or less the same like the fixed maintenance and payroll costs for ground infrastructure. these should not change by over 1 bill considering that both direct and ares needs 2 launch pads and the same accompanying maintenance of these.
Again. without any sourced numbers that are proven to come from anywhere else than somebody's fluffy dreams it becomes impossible to compare anything in any meaningful manner.

If a car salesman were to try to sell me a car with charts like these, instead of showing the real numbers and assumptions behind them. I would tell him to go packing.

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Its not to be just manufacturing jobs that will be cut. Service sector jobs are being chopped by automation as well. Notice how many grocery stores now have "self-checkouts" these days? Somebody's not working because of those things. We've got robots that vacuum, clean pools, gutters, and even ones that will cut your lawn. Humans are a variable cost (health costs, pay raises, quality of work, etc.), robots are a fixed cost, and as such, are more appealing. Employers are always going to be looking at ways of cutting humans out of their operating expenses, so the amount of jobs available to people is going to be on the decline (a process which is only going to accelerate with the increase in computing power). Wait till we get to the point that anyone can be a writer, because all they have to do is punch in character names, the situations, and the software will do all the rest. (A future review of an author will no doubt include the phrase, "The current algorithm used by the author is much improved in this work, over the one used in his last book, but still not as good as the one the Stephen King Bot is using." )

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Tuckers! Automotive Oddities! Building my hot rod with the help of the intarwebs Those who would delay scientific progress for a little temporary prosperity shall have neither. MachineCast Save the planet, by leaving it! "To be second in space is to be second in everything," LBJ.

They've done that. Bear in mind the website is a way-dumbed-down version of the proposals they've floated to others in different circules.

I do not believe their current (version 3) calculations are touting Ares' sunk costs as any sort of cost savings.

That is patently false. First, "extensive modifications" is overstating the case. Modifications, yes, but by no means a new design.

Well, there's the recurrent substance behind your claims in your post. As I mentioned, the website is a very dumbed-down version, and does not contain much detail.

Try their proposal to the AIAA Space 2007 Conference & Exposition , instead. It's not their most recent one, but give it time, they'll soon have that one out there, too.

You see pretty minimal stuff. You're looking in the wrong place, Antice, and as the remainder of your post is similarly based on the dumbed-down information, I'll refrain from commenting further.

Please let me know when you've reviewed more definative information on DIRECTv3. You may wish to review, in detail, the 2009 interview with DIRECT's Ross Tierney, their "front office" public interface to their "back office" team of NASA engineers and contract engineers. It begins on Page 8 of the Horizons, AIAA Housten publication.

Thanks.

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"Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold- bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief." - James Russell Lowell

If the website is made to sell Direct they need to fix it. The average joe is not going to be spending lots of time searching around on the net in order to confirm the numbers presented.
I'l use the care salesguy as a comparison. he cant just use numbers from thin air on fuekl consumption etc. what he do is give you documentation from the manufacturer and any testing instances that has tested the vehicle as independant confirmation of his claims. Even if most people do not realy check up on the claims it gives the impression of being honest. especially if people can see links to non affiliated sources that are looking at it independantly.

I am going to review those papers you linked but it will take time as i am fiendishly bussy these days with both work and private stuff.

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You'd be surprised at how often a "minor" modification turns into a massive headache. Especially when you're dealing with something that has to undergo lots of various certifications to prove that its safe.

I used to work for a company that made nuts for Boeing, and the amount of hoops we had to jump through was incredible. Boeing supplied the raw material, along with reams of documentation that had to accompany every part the entire way through the process. Every piece of scrap metal produced while making the parts had to be returned to Boeing. (And if the weight didn't match what their estimates said it should be, we had to tear the place apart until we found the missing material and could document that it was the missing material.) The used tooling also had to go to Boeing, along with documentation explaining when it was replaced and why it was replaced, any tooling left over also had to be shipped to Boeing, no matter how many parts it was used to make. We also had inspectors from Boeing randomly checking parts as well as the methods used to make the parts (and every aspect of the process had precise steps which had to be followed exactly, or Boeing would reject the entire shipment).

I've been told by people who've been involved with the shuttle that the documentation on it is so extensive they can locate the exact tools (as in which shovel first dug into the soil) used to extract the ore which went into production of the craft. Any modifications to it are going to have to be equally complete.

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Tuckers! Automotive Oddities! Building my hot rod with the help of the intarwebs Those who would delay scientific progress for a little temporary prosperity shall have neither. MachineCast Save the planet, by leaving it! "To be second in space is to be second in everything," LBJ.

That may very well be!

You're correct. But it's the average Joe to whom they're selling it, as those are the ones who write their Congressmen.

No worries, and no hurries. Enjoy your weekend!

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"Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold- bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief." - James Russell Lowell

Are tolerances really that tight, or was Boeing more worried about corporate espionage?

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau