Why ESA hasn't manned space program since they have rocket ESA

[tater]

Back reading the posts, it seems largely covered. Note for anyone in Europe who wonders about how NASA works. Replace countries with States, and some of the issues with NASA become clear to you, the US and EU are actually sometimes decent analogs of each other, with State=Country.

[PB666]

2 hours ago, tater said:

Back reading the posts, it seems largely covered. Note for anyone in Europe who wonders about how NASA works. Replace countries with States, and some of the issues with NASA become clear to you, the US and EU are actually sometimes decent analogs of each other, with State=Country.

ESA is responsible for the Orion service module also. So its that logic squared.

[tater]

Yeah, the terrible Orion SM. Too much for LEO, not enough for anything useful. That thing needs a real SM.

[DDE]

43 minutes ago, tater said:

Yeah, the terrible Orion SM. Too much for LEO, not enough for anything useful. That thing needs a real SM.

Yes. It was quite amusing to read the posts from back in the day, with people not realizing how big of a trap it was.

[Nibb31]

5 hours ago, Pawelk198604 said:

Necroposting my old thread that i created just after i bought KSP  why ESA not have ovn manned launcher? 

Why are you necroposting ? Didn't you get the answer the first time ?

They don't have a manned launcher because they don't need or want a manned spacecraft. There's no point in human-rating the launcher if you're not going to launch humans on it.

Edited March 15, 2018 by Nibb31

[Canopus]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Yeah, the terrible Orion SM. Too much for LEO, not enough for anything useful. That thing needs a real SM.

You just need to abandon the sentimental attachement to the Apollo style approach. And since Orion was never meant to fly to LLO on its own while simultaneously carrying cargo like a lander, it doesn‘t need that much delta v.

[kerbiloid]

Europe saves money for

Spoiler

 

[NSEP]

The Soyuz works fine i geuss?

[tater]

5 hours ago, Canopus said:

You just need to abandon the sentimental attachement to the Apollo style approach. And since Orion was never meant to fly to LLO on its own while simultaneously carrying cargo like a lander, it doesn‘t need that much delta v.

It's not sentimental in the least.

Right now, Orion has the SM it has, so the mission is the place that it can go. Clearly it makes more sense to decide what the goal/mission is, then design a SM to achieve that goal.

Constellation had the huge lander doing the LOI burn for the stack, but the point was to go to the Moon. Dumping the lander means you have a spacecraft designed to go to the Moon, minus a critical component. It is very analogous to the so-called "STS" (space shuttle) that lost the other components of the real STS project, leaving it alone, and unable to accomplish the original goals (which included cislunar).

If Orion is to be a generalist vehicle---build it, then look for things to do with it---and it's also so expensive that those things to do need to be "big" every single time, and the launch cadence is so uselessly low that any such job has to be in one launch, then it needs to be more like Apollo if the goal is the Moon, so it needs more dv to have more possible mission goals (all unstated). DSG (LOP-G, whatever) is pointless. It gets you nothing for looking at the moon that could not be done remotely, and it's not any more useful to stop at DSG OTW to the lunar surface than it is to stop at ISS OTW to the lunar surface, in fact it's wasteful to do so.

Edited March 15, 2018 by tater

[Cassel]

EU is in crisis, most of it's spending is for immigration and social programs, they don't even think about future or new technologies.

[Canopus]

25 minutes ago, Cassel said:

EU is in crisis, most of it's spending is for immigration and social programs, they don't even think about future or new technologies.

You read the wrong news.

Anyway what would be the reason to develop a manned spacecraft if all the destinations for manned spaceflight are already accessible soon by a range of manned spacecraft from international Partners? Hermes only made sense in combination with the free flying Columbus. Not with an international Space station.

Edited March 15, 2018 by Canopus

[Cassel]

16 minutes ago, Canopus said:

You read the wrong news.

 

http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-annual-budget/2017/

"Almost €6 billion in commitments and hence around 11.3% more than in 2016 will be available to address the migration pressure and make the life of European citizens more secure. "

ESA budget € 5.75 billion (2017)

See the problem? Migrants and social programs are going to push only costs into space, but it won't help ESA to do same.

 

[Canopus]

3 minutes ago, Cassel said:

 

See the problem? Migrants and social programs are going to push only costs into space, but it won't help ESA to do same.

 

You do understand that they aren‘t taking money from ESA or CERN and giving it to those pesky immigrants? 

[p1t1o]

 

56 minutes ago, Cassel said:

EU is in crisis, most of it's spending is for immigration and social programs, they don't even think about future or new technologies.

 

10 minutes ago, Cassel said:

http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-annual-budget/2017/

"Almost €6 billion in commitments and hence around 11.3% more than in 2016 will be available to address the migration pressure and make the life of European citizens more secure. "

ESA budget € 5.75 billion (2017)

See the problem? Migrants and social programs are going to push only costs into space, but it won't help ESA to do same.
 

Half-butted political discourse is, for good reason, against forum guidelines. I dont want to derail this thread by explaining immigration, european scientific policy, and greater societal concepts such as "you cant just pick the thing you dont like (immigrants) and say that it takes money directly from the thing you do like (space) because thats not how any of that works." so I'll just point out that threads tend to get locked when those subjects take over, which they are wont to do.

 

 

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Europe saves money for

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Edited March 15, 2018 by p1t1o

[Cassel]

1 hour ago, p1t1o said:

 

Half-butted political discourse is, for good reason, against forum guidelines. I dont want to derail this thread by explaining immigration, european scientific policy, and greater societal concepts such as "you cant just pick the thing you dont like (immigrants) and say that it takes money directly from the thing you do like (space) because thats not how any of that works." so I'll just point out that threads tend to get locked when those subjects take over, which they are wont to do.

 

But this is economy and since politicians decide how much money ESA gets how you can not talk about this too? I didn't pick migrants only, I've also said about social programs.

1 hour ago, Canopus said:

You do understand that they aren‘t taking money from ESA or CERN and giving it to those pesky immigrants? 

Guys, that is how it works, budget is limited, so if you spend more money on one thing, other things are going to have less money from budget.

EDIT: One last word, if on forums like in here we are not allowed to talk about economy, priorities and budget spends on science and space programs, then don't be surprised those programs are getting cuts. Social programs have huge budget because non-scientific people talk about them EVERYWHERE.

Edited March 15, 2018 by Cassel

[tater]

The argument that ESA should not have crew spaceflight because others do that could literally apply to every space program. Why should NASA bother trying to get crew back, when Russia does it, or Russia could say that China is working on it, they don't need to.

If you want to send people into space for whatever reason, you should have a manned space program, and make spacecraft, IMO. As someone paying for NASA, when "international partners" are discussed, I want them to "show me the money." If NASA were to do a lunar program, I am entirely uninterested in weak contributions from other countries resulting in it being "international," I'd rather spend more dollars on it, and have one flag on the side. The size of any other flags should be scaled to the relative dollar value of their contribution. Anyone wanting to send a crew memeber better pony up an equal share of total cost.

[Canopus]

Of course there should be contribution but i don‘t see the need for duplicate capabilities. ATV made sense and something like ATV for LOP/G would make sense ( they entertained the idea for a HALL thruster equipped supply vessel) but crew access seems to be covered.

Edited March 15, 2018 by Canopus

[Green Baron]

ESA never had a strong affinity to manned space programs, besides thought experiments and mockup technology demonstrators. A manned space program is strongly connected - and this can even be read from the voices in this thread - to a national identity. Europe does not have such a thing, it is a conglomerate of different nations all with their cultural specialties and many different voices.

Nevertheless, with a relatively limited budget, ESA is contributing a lot to the scientific community with research in many fields, probes, earth observation and telescopes. Just look at the VLT, Gaya, comet missions. The first two produce an incredible number of papers and knowledge.

Edited March 15, 2018 by Green Baron

[tater]

25 minutes ago, Canopus said:

Of course there should be contribution but i don‘t see the need for duplicate capabilities. ATV made sense and something like ATV for LOP/G would make sense ( they entertained the idea for a HALL thruster equipped supply vessel) but crew access seems to be covered.

Well, if people are working on a common goal explicitly, then no, duplication makes little sense. If we have no real goal... lol

Edited March 15, 2018 by tater

[DerekL1963]

5 hours ago, tater said:

Clearly it makes more sense to decide what the goal/mission is, then design a SM to achieve that goal.

Which ends up in the Apollo Trap - an expensive vehicle that really isn't useful for any mission that isn't the mission it was originally designed for.

At the other end is the Shuttle Trap - a jack of all trades useful for a number of different missions, but too expensive to use for any of them.

And I'm not sure there is a happy middle.

[Cassel]

5 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

Which ends up in the Apollo Trap - an expensive vehicle that really isn't useful for any mission that isn't the mission it was originally designed for.

At the other end is the Shuttle Trap - a jack of all trades useful for a number of different missions, but too expensive to use for any of them.

And I'm not sure there is a happy middle.

I would suggest two vehicles. One to send people to orbit and return after mission. Second that would be space-only-vehicle, waiting for people on orbit, to send them to Moon or Mars orbit, space stations.

[tater]

1 minute ago, DerekL1963 said:

Which ends up in the Apollo Trap - an expensive vehicle that really isn't useful for any mission that isn't the mission it was originally designed for.

At the other end is the Shuttle Trap - a jack of all trades useful for a number of different missions, but too expensive to use for any of them.

And I'm not sure there is a happy middle.

Yeah, this is indeed true. I suppose a flex architecture could work. The trouble is SLS is such a beast. What I mean is a small SM for orbital use, then perhaps a larger one for direct to LLO use. Again, that doesn't work SLS-wise, as the mobile launcher, and VAB would likely need to be reconfigured as the diameter and height might change. It's sort of a mess, really. The system of commercial crew, with CST-100 (which had gunned for the Orion spot in a past life, anyway) and D2 means that many roles might in fact be better served by smaller crew spacecraft (capable of EDL on Earth), and something like SLS lofting pure spacecraft exclusively. SLS launches an upper stage with a lightweight space hab, CST-100 or D2 docks with crew, SLS US with the whole crewed stack now goes wherever.

Orion might still have a role in such a system, particularly if it's the only vehicle capable of direct entry from BLEO, but perhaps it's not wed to SLS.

 

5 minutes ago, Cassel said:

I would suggest two vehicles. One to send people to orbit and return after mission. Second that would be space-only-vehicle, waiting for people on orbit, to send them to Moon or Mars orbit, space stations.

LOL, basically what I just said, but you ninjaed me. No more likes today!

[tater]

Here's a role for ESA, and crew vehicles. Not for launch. Pure space vehicles.

It is an entirely unfilled niche.

A lightweight crew vehicle (like an ISS module) with docking ports on both sides. It could then dock with something like ACES to be moved wherever. Crew vehicle docks on one end for crew transfer, ACES (or an ESA analog) docks on the other end for propulsion to destination. A tank version of the ACES with fuel transfer , but no engines might be a thing as well. One tug with engines, a few full tanks of props, and a hab unit at the front with a capsule for EDL on Earth. The SM for such a capsule would be minimal (like commercial crew). Dragging the capsule adds a lot of mass, but provides abort options (free return buys you nothing if once "home" you can't land, and require a propulsive orbital insertion, and you took the return because of engine issues).

Edited March 15, 2018 by tater

[Canopus]

Seems like Orbital ATK are looking to fill that niche with a Cygnus derived Hab.

[tater]

4 minutes ago, Canopus said:

Seems like Orbital ATK are looking to fill that niche with a Cygnus derived Hab.

Yeah. that has the SM attached, right?