I found this article based on a GAO report:

“CAPE CANAVERAL -- Just as supporters are pressing hard on Capitol Hill to resist efforts to kill NASA's Ares I rocket and Orion capsule, the investigative arm of Congress released a report saying that NASA has not made a convincing financial case -- or even set a firm price -- for the space shuttle's replacement.

"While the agency has already obligated more than $10 billion in contracts, at this point NASA does not know how much Ares I and Orion will ultimately cost, and will not know until technical and design challenges have been addressed," says a 31-page Government Accountability Office report released Friday.

And though NASA has said that the development costs of the rocket and capsule will total $35 billion, the GAO estimates they will end up costing as much as $49 billion of the total $97 billion for the Constellation back-to-the-moon program.”

Stories like this one got me thinking, is there any rational (i.e. non-political) reason for the ARES project? I know what it says on the NASA home page, and I know the job creation and technology development arguments, but does the ARES offer any substantial benefit over rockets designed in the 60’s?

As I understand it the ARES I is designed to deliver a 25 ton payload to LEO. The launch vehicle is not re- useable and consumes 670 tons of propellant during a LEO mission assuming a maximum payload. As of October 30th we have had one successful test launch of the ARES I-x and the program is expected to cost (according to GAO estimates) $49,000,000,000.

Now looking at the specifications of the Russian Proton SL-13, it will deliver a 21ton payload to LEO and consumes 640 tons of propellant in the process. 235 of the Protons have been launched since 1968 and the system has a success rate of 96% (in-between the American Delta at 94.64% and the Shuttle at 98.25%).

Let’s say the ARES and Proton were commercial trucks and I was in the shipping business, I would probably consider the two as competitive products. The ARIES can carry a 16% larger payload while the Proton uses 5% less propellant. As a potential customer I would expect the two to be similarly priced. According to a 2002 study by Futron Corporation the Estimated launch price of the Proton in (2000 US$) was $85M, adjusted for inflation that puts the Proton cost at about $110m.

Using simple math (I am not a rocket scientist) NASA could launch a total of 445 Proton rockets and still be $50,000,000 under the ARIES I project budget. That assumes that the price would remain constant for all 445 launches, realistically that kind of volume would bring the unit cost down considerably. Put another way, all those Protons could put 8,700 TONS into orbit assuming a 4% failure rate, that’s the equivalent of 19 international space stations.

Assuming we don’t want to place 19 ISS clones into orbit, think of what the ARES budget could be used for. The ARES budget (according to the 2009 CBO report) is $19,000,000,000 per year; if the Proton was adopted as the universal launch vehicle we could fund 15 missions per year (twice the number of missions typically undertaken by the shuttle) and still have $17,000,000,000 for projects other than delivering payloads to orbit.
Maybe the cost of ARES could be justified if it involved a new concept of interface transport like single stage to orbit, horizontal take-off or reusability. I know how inefficient the shuttle is as a payload delivery system, but at least it’s pushing the technological envelope. It may be an extreme simplification, but the ARES is basically just another big thermos bottle with an engine at the end.

I have no doubt that we could find better use for the aerospace industry and NASA then finding the solution to a problem we solved in the 60’s. There is a diminishing marginal return in trying to refine a technology that is 60+ years old. If it were private industry there is no way the ARES project would even have been suggested. Can you imagine the pitch at Boeing?

“Ladies and gentlemen of the board, our proposal is to design and build a rocket that does what rockets now can do…just for a whole lot more money.”

I am not saying NASA’s budget should be reduced, just that it seems like a waste to spend so much on something we already have, even if the new model does have go faster stripes.

A. Fuel costs in launch vehicles are in the noise with respect to total cost. (<1%)
B. Proton is not a valid comparison. Russian vehicles are historically cheaper due to lower labor costs. That is why the Proton is a successful commercial launch vehicle.
C. Delta IV and Atlas V are the vehicles it should be compared to.

D. There is this little point that NASA says that Ares I is a safer design, due to the minimal number of engines. 2 times safer than any other.

E. D is the truth but 2x safer equates to only .4%* more safer. So $35 Billion more for .4% or even .6%. That is a joke. Ares I will too few of times for the probable risk assessment to be valid. There are other greater influences on its reliability like design and production errors. Also, any manned vehicle is going to have an escape rocket.

F. Ares I is a waste. Delta IV and Atlas V have configurations that can do the job.



* I am going by memory. It might be .6%

Ok, I picked the Proton because it has (roughly) the same payload to orbit as the Aries I. We could compare it to the Delta IV-H which only cost 5 times as much to launch as the Proton with the same payload. If the goal is to get the payload (whatever it is) into orbit it seems like the Ares I (or even the Delta IV) are just a waste of NASA’s (meager) resources. I don’t think the Delta IV is really a competitor for Proton because it’s unit launch cost is in the $500M range (in 2006) and its LEO payload is 4 tons (about 15%) less than Proton.

Even the US military is forced to purchase foreign designed (and in some cases built) systems if the cost savings are significant. Even when cost competitive, the DOD will occasionally pick a foreign design (Beretta over Browning for example). So it does not make any sense to develop a system which is much more expensive than what exists o the open market.

As for the Ares V, why don’t we just build the Energiya under license and save the $50B in development costs. It will lob a 140ton payload into LEO (about the same as the Ares V specification) and I am sure it could be produced at a lower unit price. If it’s a Jobs issue, we could just build it in South Carolina and name it “Freedom” or “Liberty” and slap a “built in the USA” sticker on it.

Is this just too easy?

Isn’t that like saying a government agency shouldn’t by the most successful commercial trucks for its trucking needs because they “commercial” trucks? Last time I looked Federal agencies did purchase commercial vehicles for use. There is no plant operated by the Department of Transportation to produce “official government semi-trucks”.

No, but there is "Buy American" requirements.

1. Incorrect.
A. The DIVH is not 500 million per launch. 350 is closer.
b. LEO performance is not a valid measurement, GTO/GSO is and the DIVH has double the capability. Anyways, the Proton does not have more LEO capability than the DIVH
c. Which mission has NASA used a DeltaIVH for?

2. There is a US policy that Gov't payloads have to fly on US LV (51%)
A gun is not the same as a LV. The US doesn't buy fighters or bombers. Anyways, there would be security issues with the military using foreign launchers.

3. There is no Energiya. It no longer exists just as the Saturn V doesn't.

We do, the AV-8 is UK design built by McDonnel Douglas for the Marines. License fee to British Aerospace.

But I agree, at 350 vs 110M I can see legitimate arguments for the Delta IV-H over the Proton. In fact, if the $47B for the ARES I were partially channeled into Delta IV-H production I bet the unit cost on the Delta IV-H would be even more competitive. Given a larger scale production the Delta IV-H (say 15-20 units per year) mission cost could probably be brought into the $250M per mission range.

For the Ares V, I thought the original NASA quote was an expected unit cost of $900M each, that seems a little low unless they are not amortizing the R&D and development costs into the unit cost. I think the Energya’s all in unit cost was in the $1.5B range.

i posted in this thread yesterday, but someone didn't like it so it is gone.

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I can see the ’60 Minutes’ report now.


“The US government is spending $110 million in stimulus buying Russian rockets while our own engineers are working at McDonalds or collecting unemployment checks.”

That will go over real well.

Did you ever wonder why the government doesn’t buy it’s fleet autos from Korea, where they could get a 10 year warranty for less money? Keep the peoples money in the country even if it’s costs more.

I've read that Pratt & Whitney has a license agreement to produce the excellent Russian RD-180 engine (used in the Atlas V EELV) in the US. When the bottom fell out of the booster market, they never exercised that option. However, there's apparently nothing stopping them should launch demand call for it.

They would need to open up shop in the U.S. and finish demonstrating a U.S.-built engine works following the Russian design specs. The difficult part of the engine was already demonstrated and it was the oxygen-rich preburner if I remember correctly.

You have to realize a U.S. RD-180 would inherently cost more both because new manufacturing tools cost would need to be amortized as well as the nontrivial fact that Russian labor is cheaper than U.S. labor. That's why there was no impetus to start domestic production.

But if we import our TVs why not our rocket enginges?

Oh, I defiantly think that whatever solution NASA adopts would need to be built in the United States. My argument is that it seems to be a waste to spend so much on development of a system that is not materially better than systems developed in the 60’s.

If we were to use some variant of a Proton design it would need to be manufactured domestically so I would think that the unit cost would approximately double when one takes into account higher US labor costs, developing a construction facility, etc.

Given the cost of a US built Proton, the Delta IV is probably a better option and if you throw in the fact that it’s a US design, I think it would win hands down. The Fulton report lists the Delta II as costing $55m per launch; I don’t think the Delta IV is available commercially so it wasn’t listed in the comparison. The Delta II is 30% more expensive than the latest RL-7 derivative so I would expect a commercial Delta IV to be competitive with the Proton. So…why develop the Ares I if the Delta IV-H will do the Job?

I know for many the Ares I is just a stepping stone to the Ares V, but wouldn’t it still be much more cost effective to use the Delta series to develop a super heavy lift vehicle in the 140+ ton range? If you have something that works why change? Boeing has been refining the basic 707 airframe for 50+ years now (737-900 anyone?). Yes it’s better than the original 707, but there is still a lot of 367-80 lurking inside the newest 737.

I am not arguing about putting anyone out of work, NASA should still get the $97B allocated to the Constellation program, but they should use the resources to develop better space vehicles rather than launch platforms.

I thought the reason for the Ares I was that the technology would be upscaled for the Ares V?

If the Delta IV was chosen, they'd still need to make another rocket for heavy lift for the Moon/Mars.

Strictly speaking, it's very debatable as to whether an Ares V class heavy lifter is required at all. The greatest mass required to fly to Mars is propellant. You can launch that with several medium boosters far cheaper than the cost of developing and flying the Ares V. As for the flight hardware, one lesson learned from the ISS is that on orbit assembly is possible. Your booster requirements then derive from the largest single piece which should be sized according to booster capability, not the other way around.

The projected cost for developing the Ares I is $35 billion (the cost of creating 70 SpaceX sized companies). Developing the Ares V won't be cheap, either. There would be little demand for an Ares V launch so the per-flight cost would be extremely high. You can buy a lot of EELV-sized launches (Atlas, Delta, Falcon 9, etc) for the R&D costs of the Ares boosters.

Which brings us to one of the ideas behind governmental agencies: developing technology too costly and risky to be done by the private industries.

A point which raises more questions than it answers, I know...

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Actually. what you say is counter to the findings of the Augustine report. they clearly state that a heavy lifter in at least 140 tonne payload range to LEO is essential to get any sort of exploration beyond LEO going. the reason is simple. with anything smaller you end up with too many launches. they put a minimum bound on about 75 tonnes to LEO just to launch the spacecraft for a Lagrange mission.
Secondly. Depots are not a mature technology. so there is still a significant lead time to go before it's ready to be used in a mission critical role. we are talking 10+ years of development and testing, not to mention a significant amount of money. money NASA does not have.

While the usefulness of Ares I can be debated, most of the money sunk on it can actually be reclaimed as part of an Ares V lite program. 5 seg SRB. the J2-X engine and a significantly less constrained Orion capsule can all be inherited.

following the flexible path in the Augustine commission does removing any LEO servicing of ISS from the role of orion. so commercial crew becomes a part of the critical path for keeping ISS alive past 2016. If ULA wants a piece of that they can very well just go trough and man rate their launcher and stick a capsule on top. as long as they pay for it themselves that is.
SpaceX appears a lot less squeamish about shelling out their own cash for making stuff happen than ULA ever has, and if i were a betting man i'd say we'l see the first manned commercial access to space from them.

While it is in my opinion that NASA should get out of the launcher business they do need a capability that current launch markets do not. and that current providers do not have. that means that Nasa has to make this rocket themselves. and it very well may be the very last time they do so. the Ares V should have a planned obsolescence date of the first flight of a commercially developed rocket that can replace it.

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Signature? Why?

Which brings us to one of the ideas behind governmental agencies: developing technology too costly and risky to be done by the private industries.

It's one thing for government to contract for expensive things. It's a different matter for government to build things itself that competes with the private market. If there is a need for a heavy lifter (and that's a debateable point), then NASA should issue the specifications and a request for proposals to industry. Industry would then reply with their design proposals, NASA would select the winner and fund the development. That's the mechanism that all other US government agencies use. Why should NASA be an exception?

Actually. what you say is counter to the findings of the Augustine report. they clearly state that a heavy lifter in at least 140 tonne payload range to LEO is essential to get any sort of exploration beyond LEO going.

Yes, I disagree with the Augustine Commission on this point. So do many others. The Augustine Commission is not holy-writ handed down from on high.

Depots are not a mature technology. so there is still a significant lead time to go before it's ready to be used in a mission critical role. we are talking 10+ years of development and testing, not to mention a significant amount of money. money NASA does not have.

What are you using as a basis for that 10 year estimate? Sounds rather like a number pulled from a body cavity rather than one based on engineering. Furthermore, the Ares V is far from a mature technology. They don't even have the money to work on it so it'll likely take quite a bit longer than 10 years to make one fly.

While the usefulness of Ares I can be debated, most of the money sunk on it can actually be reclaimed as part of an Ares V lite program. 5 seg SRB. the J2-X engine and a significantly less constrained Orion capsule can all be inherited.

Except they aren't going to use the 5 segment SRB on the Ares V. They're up to 5.5 segment SRBs so that doesn't directly transfer, either.

There is a whole separate argument about whether or not government contraction of private industry is as efficient as it could be. But, if there are questions about government procurement policy, I am sure it would be hard to find a less-efficient way of developing any system is having a government agency develop the system itself.

Also, NASA does cont(r)act many private companies for development of things such as Ares 5.

If not, companies such as Boeing wouldn't be filing their ideas regarding Ares 5 design aspects to NASA, would they.

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Russsians certainly have a lack of funding...They were only able to produce 1 Space Shuttle and never got into service.

Would be a mistake to rely on them for the interim trips to the ISS.

Kicking out of Buran wasn’t a mistake. I always thought Russians thought something along the lines of

“It looks dumb on paper, but because the Americans are doing it, we should do it too, maybe they know something we don’t”

Once they got the thing running and realized that it cost 5 times as much as traditional rockets they scrapped the program quickly. You have all heard the one about the first astronaut’s visit to Mir, right? Just in case anyone has missed it, the story (true or not, I am not sure) goes something like this:

Ivan the Cosmonaut notices Jim the Astronaut writing a report with a pen while on Mir. Ivan asks Jim about the pen in space and how they get the ink to flow without the aid of gravity. Jim explains to Ivan about the years of research and the thousands of man hours which went into making the miracle pen. After he finishes talking about the wonders of NASA and Yankee ingenuity he pauses and says to Ivan, “so where is your space pen?” Ivan then quietly pulls a pencil from his pocket.

Urban myth
1. It was not developed by NASA
2. Lead pieces have been known to cause shorts in electronics.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/buzz-a..._b_351335.html

Good ol' Buzz sure does put it nicely My favorite line -> "...unleash the commercial sector by paying them for transportation services to the station."

Any ?'s (?)
Alex

Also see http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp

Alex

Buzz is the coolest! I need to send him fan mail now, this is exactly the same conclusion I came too.

Wasn't that Mir the station that had that big ole fire on it...

Thank heavens for the pen Buzz used to repair the circuit upon depart from the lunar surface...

Go Yankees...

I've looked over the Energia/Buran, and to me it seems far superior to the shuttle. The Buran orbiter may have had some the shuttle's flaws, but even if you decide to scrap that, the core rocket and boosters still would have made an excellent heavy lift launch vehicle.

Also, the story about the pen and pencil is apocryphal. I'm pretty sure pens actually do work in space. It does reflect some reality though.

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I think regular pens would work in space, but only if you'd swing them every few words to make the remaining ink touch the ball (in case of a ball point).

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