Where will we be in terms of Space exploration in 10 years? (Very Optimistically)

[fredinno]

49 minutes ago, tater said:

Shuttle didn't cost 450 M$ per launch, it cost closer to 1.5 B$ each (cost of program/135 launches) at an average of 4.5 launches per year (135/30).

SLS/Orion will not cost 500 M$ per launch, either. The two are slated for ~4 billion this year. Shuttle averaged 6.96 B$/yr (209 B$/30 years). If their claim of 35B$ total to 2025 is correct, and they launch in 2018, the 1 per year, that's 8 launches. So the cost will be 4.475 B$ per launch. If the nominal cost to have the program in service, plus 1 launch a year is 500 M$ (it isn't), then even at 100 launches the dev cost is still 350 M$ per launch in addition to that. There is no possible way to do the math so that SLS makes sense.

I'm using NASA internal numbers, which probably exclude development costs and fixed costs (marginal costs). And about 5 or so years of the Shuttle program was idle spending (after the Challenger and Columbia disasters). The SLS also has far lower fixed costs- unlike the Shuttle, it's designed only to launch max 3-4 times a year, so much of the infrastructure is not needed, and fixed costs are lower. All HLVs have deadly development costs (Saturn V was very bad too).

 

48 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

That's like your boss insisting you do 'x', but gives you no time to do 'x' and actually acts overtly to prevent you from doing 'x' - and then reaming you a new one for not having a plan for accomplishing 'x'.

The Senate Launch System is a jobs-and-pork program, and these 'demands' are nothing more than a pair of Texas congresscritters (both of whom are up for re-election this year) grandstanding for the cameras.  Note especially the Party the first Congresscritter, the one acting as though the Administration is at fault, belongs to.

Note that the SLS program will look very stupid if it becomes operational in 2021-2 with nothing to launch aside from Europa Clipper and ARM.

[tater]

8 minutes ago, fredinno said:

I'm using NASA internal numbers, which probably exclude development costs and fixed costs (marginal costs). And about 5 or so years of the Shuttle program was idle spending (after the Challenger and Columbia disasters). The SLS also has far lower fixed costs- unlike the Shuttle, it's designed only to launch max 3-4 times a year, so much of the infrastructure is not needed, and fixed costs are lower. All HLVs have deadly development costs (Saturn V was very bad too).

Those "marginal" costs grossly exceeded the "launch" costs. All those people have to stay on the payroll, all the time. This is not piece work. All that matters is total program cost/launches. Any other numbers are just nonsense. SLS is on track to cost substantial more per launch than shuttle unless they run it for 30 years at 3-4 launches per year (then it actually beats shuttle in cost/launch, and substantially in cost/kg to LEO, assuming we're not counting the orbiter itself as payload).

3-4 launches per year, OTOH, is utter fantasy. NASA has settled on 1 per year because they are forced to have the system, and it costs about as much to use it once as to not and just pay the overhead. Twice is money they don't have, and payloads they don't have. 

If they needed a HLV, and needed such a thing multiple times per year, then it's a different story---but they don't need one.

[fredinno]

4 hours ago, tater said:

Those "marginal" costs grossly exceeded the "launch" costs. All those people have to stay on the payroll, all the time. This is not piece work. All that matters is total program cost/launches. Any other numbers are just nonsense. SLS is on track to cost substantial more per launch than shuttle unless they run it for 30 years at 3-4 launches per year (then it actually beats shuttle in cost/launch, and substantially in cost/kg to LEO, assuming we're not counting the orbiter itself as payload).

3-4 launches per year, OTOH, is utter fantasy. NASA has settled on 1 per year because they are forced to have the system, and it costs about as much to use it once as to not and just pay the overhead. Twice is money they don't have, and payloads they don't have. 

If they needed a HLV, and needed such a thing multiple times per year, then it's a different story---but they don't need one.

They are saying AT LEAST once a year, since they don't have payloads for the thing. A repeatable payload, like Lunar landers and Lunar Space station turnover is realtively cheap in comparison to the one-off stuff NASA has to launch on SLS now, and would allow them to launch multiple times per year. We actually had the budget to launch 6 Saturn IB + 2 Saturn V per year with the Shuttle budget- minus payload development.

[DerekL1963]

8 hours ago, fredinno said:

Note that the SLS program will look very stupid if it becomes operational in 2021-2 with nothing to launch aside from Europa Clipper and ARM.

I know that, you know that...  But Congress doesn't care because it's NASA that looks stupid rather than Congress.   If NASA looks stupid (because of Congressional effups), then that's a chance for Congresscritters to grandstand about how wasteful and stupid NASA is.  That's how NASA works in American politics - the great unwashed masses are neither particularly for it nor particularly against it, so it can be praised or pilloried at need.

[DerekL1963]

8 hours ago, tater said:

Those "marginal" costs grossly exceeded the "launch" costs. All those people have to stay on the payroll, all the time. This is not piece work. All that matters is total program cost/launches. Any other numbers are just nonsense.

I really can't express how wrong you are without resorting to language that would get me banned, but really you are that wrong.

If you're looking to cost out a new flight (that is, adding a flight to the manifest), then yes, only marginal* costs matter and fixed costs are completely irrelevant because you pay them whether you fly that mission or not.  Total program cost/launches only matters when costing out the total program.  This is Accounting 101 stuff.

 

* Y'all have marginal backwards - marginal costs are the additional costs to add a flight, fixed costs are those that are fixed, that you pay regardless.

[tater]

53 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

I really can't express how wrong you are without resorting to language that would get me banned, but really you are that wrong.

If you're looking to cost out a new flight (that is, adding a flight to the manifest), then yes, only marginal* costs matter and fixed costs are completely irrelevant because you pay them whether you fly that mission or not.  Total program cost/launches only matters when costing out the total program.  This is Accounting 101 stuff.

 

* Y'all have marginal backwards - marginal costs are the additional costs to add a flight, fixed costs are those that are fixed, that you pay regardless.

I'm not an accountant, I'll take your word for it, I just sign where the "sign here" post it notes are placed (used to be placed, everything is electronic now, lol).

Regardless, I think the bottom line number is the total cost of creating and maintaining the program, divided by launches. If NASA says it's 500 M$ a launch, but they are ignoring 90 billion in other costs that if not incurred would result in no launch, then I think that's nonsense. I'm not particularly concerned with the specifics of the accounting, just that that's what the cost is at the end of the day. The Shuttle program cost 209 billion over 30 years. They flew 135 times. 

Edited February 9, 2016 by tater

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Regardless, I think the bottom line number is the total cost of creating and maintaining the program, divided by launches. If NASA says it's 500 M$ a launch, but they are ignoring 90 billion in other costs that if not incurred would result in no launch, then I think that's nonsense. I'm not particularly concerned with the specifics of the accounting, just that that's what the cost is at the end of the day.

If you don't care about the specifics of accounting, that's fine.   You're free to believe that the world is flat if that's your thing.  But please don't presume to lecture the rest of us when we treat the world as round.

[tater]

Sorry if this is accounting 101 stuff, the following are real questions.

Why is that figure not valuable as a comparison, as long as you use the same metrics for all systems you are comparing?

If we have 2 possible programs, and one has a 200 B$ total cost over 30 years for launches, and another puts the same payloads into orbit over that same timespan, and the total program cost is 100 B$, isn't the latter cheaper? 

I think it has to do with the finite nature of the job in question being done.

If it was like an airliner, where for this calculation you'd have effectively infinite flights (say 1000s), then the 200 B$ program could spend all the money on startup, with subsequent per-launch costs being tiny. The 2d example, could be the extreme opposite, where almost none is startup cost, and it's a huge, throwaway system that's 1B$ a launch for 100 launches. In that case, as long as both programs end with the same tonnage of payload in orbit, the latter is cheaper. If the program can continue into the future, the former starts becoming cheaper while the latter has the same price per launch, never getting cheaper.

Serious question, BTW, is that what you are getting at (only with my example obviously being 2 extremes)?

If that is so, then doesn't the cost comparison need to include thinking about the total lifespan of the program, and how many launches you might see? If it turns out to be something like Atlas, used for many decades, then yeah. If it turns out to be used  only relatively few times, then I think it doesn't make sense to invest vast amounts in startup if there is another option (and again, NASA doesn't actually need an HLV).

In the case of Shuttle, do we know the breakdown of costs, or was it largely the continuous staffing of several thousand people that made up the bulk of the cost? In that case, perhaps they could have launched many more times, and reduced the per-launch cost, right?

Edited February 9, 2016 by tater

[Hannu2]

On 6.2.2016 at 11:54 AM, KSK said:

Yes, which is why I included numerous statements to the effect of 'not going to happen but it would be nice if it did.'

Did people miss the 'optimistic' part of this thread title? Or did somebody rename it 'post your optimistic ideas about space flight and have them dumped on from a height' whilst I wasn't looking?

No, but I thought that there should be some realism in this discussion. Scifi fantasies are another story than real space exploration, in which 10 years is relatively short time. Most if not all missions which will fly in next 10 years have already been funded and in some phase of building or at least developing. It is not realistic to invent some fancy grand tour to all planets with superpower nervas and list it. If we are optimistic, we think that all missions will success. There will be JWST which will certainly give loads of real life science points in many areas of astronomy. BepiColombo will be launched and continue Messenger's job after about a decade. Juno will arrive to Jupiter in this year and give some science. Nasa will probably make SLS and Orion in some nerfed form but it will be far too expensive to be anything else than propaganda (and political corruption) spacecraft and they will be scrapped after couple of test missions. Or maybe SLS will be used to launch some huge spying satellites or other military stuff for US army. Army has an infinite budget but I do not know if they need huge payloads. Lisa Pathfinder will show that technology works and actual mission will be funded but it will not be launched before 2030. Some other planetary probes will be funded by USA, ESA, Japanese and Chinese but economical problems in these countries (including developing of SLS) decrease science funding so that we will not get anything spectacular. Europa Clipper will be nerfed and use Falcon heavy instead of ridiculously prized SLS. Any of them will not fly before 2016. Asteroid capturing craft will be sent but it does not get asteroid to Moon orbit before 2026.

Commercial side will also develop slowly. SpaceX begins to sell used rocket phases. First as a risky low cost alternative but later they can sell at least 2-3 full prized flight. Maybe they can use first stages 3-5 times and will decrease average prices to 1/3 from current level after 10 years. There will be some other company or two with same price level and payload capabilities. Space agencies will buy manned and cargo transports to ISS, which will be continued to at least 2026, but there will not be other private launches than communication satellites and some small cubesats. There will be some suborbital tourism flights at 20's and maybe couple of billionaires in ISS. Tourism will not be significant business or develop space technology. SpaceX will introduce Raptor at about 2020 but it will be smaller and more expensive than expected. They will begin to develop rocket stage for it but it takes more than a decade before first flight test.

There will not be any large scale change of international political attitudes. Chinese, ESA and some other countries fund some probes but launch mostly communication and military satellites. Russians lose their interests to space exploration and manned operations when commercial crew capsules of American companies take their Soyuz business. There will be much repurposed bovine waste talk about Moon and Mars missions from governmental agencies and private companies but nothing will be funded. Manned operations will be restricted to LEO except one circumlunar test flight with SLS and Orion. There will not be any new nuclear powered ion propulsion systems or other fancy stuff. Falcon Heavy will be the largest launcher (except SLS which is uselessly expensive for all scientific probes).

[DerekL1963]

2 hours ago, tater said:

Sorry if this is accounting 101 stuff, the following are real questions.

Why is that figure not valuable as a comparison, as long as you use the same metrics for all systems you are comparing?

If we have 2 possible programs, and one has a 200 B$ total cost over 30 years for launches, and another puts the same payloads into orbit over that same timespan, and the total program cost is 100 B$, isn't the latter cheaper? 

I'm not saying total program costs/flights isn't a useful metric - only that it's a one dimensional metric that doesn't take into account a number of variables (such as flight rate, and the time value of money).   The latter program might turn out to be the more expensive when you take inflation into account if the costs of the former are front loaded.

You also have to be careful of avoiding falling into the "subcompact vs. pickup truck" fallacy the Capsule Cabal indulged in throughout the late Shuttle era* and make sure you're comparing costs and capabilities like-to-like or you can end up with a right nasty mess trying to correct your figures so that you are.  If your $200 billion program is a 200 ton launcher, while your $100 billion program is a 100 ton launcher - there's all kinds of side effects, tangible and intangible.

And I'm not even going to get into the nasty mess that is the "broken window" fallacy and sunk costs.
 

2 hours ago, tater said:

In the case of Shuttle, do we know the breakdown of costs, or was it largely the continuous staffing of several thousand people that made up the bulk of the cost? In that case, perhaps they could have launched many more times, and reduced the per-launch cost, right?

Spot on.   Shuttle's total cost per annum was dominated by the "standing army".   While the cost-per-launch (the marginal costs, the costs to add a launch to the manifest) remained more or less invariant regardless of the number of launches - the cost-per-flight (that is (fixed costs+marginal costs)/number of flights) drops radically the more you fly.

Accounting is complicated, and it's something I wish more space fanbois studied as assiduously and treated as agnostically as they do physics and engineering - numbers matter, whether they're in the bean counter's ledger or the engineer's drawings.

* Comparing the raw cost per seat of a Shuttle to Soyuz.   Such a simple minded comparison does make Shuttle look more expensive, but when you add back in the costs of the boosters (even at Russian rates) required to carry the cargo that Shuttle also carried the picture becomes much murkier and nowhere near as clear a victory for Soyuz.  (Especially when you consider the less tangible benefits such as the reduction in overall programmatic risk and the assured simultaneous arrival of installation crew and equipment.)

[tater]

I get that it's complicated---my remark regarding signing the accountant's post-its wasn't a dig at accounting, it was me explicitly saying that I let specialists do their jobs  .

I also understand that you have to compare actual capability, but by the same token you need to make sure that the capability isn't only used because of that system. We designed a lot around using Shuttle, because that's what we had. SLS is sort of hoping for the same thing, I guess. "If I build it, they will come." LOL.

So when they quote launch costs, what are they including? Do they only count the labor to stack it, launch it, then the 15 minutes until it's in orbit, then turn the payroll clock off? Or do they divide the annual expense by the number of launches, or perhaps a number of launches they could do (maximizing the workforce) theoretically?

[Frozen_Heart]

2018: Russian space agency completely defunded due to their economic troubles.

2018: ULA completely folds due to no longer being competitive with other companies.

2021: After continual budget cuts, cost overruns, and with no clear mission the SLS is cancelled.

2024: Without support the ISS is cancelled and deorbited. With nothing larger currently ongoing or even planned NASA budget reduced to 0.1% of the budget leaving them unable to launch.

2030: SpaceX running the Falcon 9 and Heavy at a combined 15 launches per year, while still going on about Mars plans which will never happen. Losing customers fast due to ever growing launch queues and inability to meet a schedule.

 

Yes I'm a pessimist.

Edited February 9, 2016 by Frozen_Heart

[tater]

7 minutes ago, Frozen_Heart said:

2024: Without support the ISS is cancelled and deorbited. With nothing larger currently ongoing or even planned NASA budget reduced to 0.1% of the budget leaving them unable to launch.

NASA's budget has been remarkably constant, and they have facilities in FL, TX, CA, NY (are you seeing a pattern?). NASA doesn't lose substantial budget.

Another way to look at it is that the SLS proponents are Republicans, and the Democrats never cut funding for anything, so who is going to cut it?

[fredinno]

16 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

I really can't express how wrong you are without resorting to language that would get me banned, but really you are that wrong.

If you're looking to cost out a new flight (that is, adding a flight to the manifest), then yes, only marginal* costs matter and fixed costs are completely irrelevant because you pay them whether you fly that mission or not.  Total program cost/launches only matters when costing out the total program.  This is Accounting 101 stuff.

 

* Y'all have marginal backwards - marginal costs are the additional costs to add a flight, fixed costs are those that are fixed, that you pay regardless.

Yes, I was talking about marginal costs- cost per launch, excluding development and fixed costs.

 

6 hours ago, Hannu2 said:

No, but I thought that there should be some realism in this discussion. Scifi fantasies are another story than real space exploration, in which 10 years is relatively short time. Most if not all missions which will fly in next 10 years have already been funded and in some phase of building or at least developing. It is not realistic to invent some fancy grand tour to all planets with superpower nervas and list it. If we are optimistic, we think that all missions will success. There will be JWST which will certainly give loads of real life science points in many areas of astronomy. BepiColombo will be launched and continue Messenger's job after about a decade. Juno will arrive to Jupiter in this year and give some science. Nasa will probably make SLS and Orion in some nerfed form but it will be far too expensive to be anything else than propaganda (and political corruption) spacecraft and they will be scrapped after couple of test missions. Or maybe SLS will be used to launch some huge spying satellites or other military stuff for US army. Army has an infinite budget but I do not know if they need huge payloads. Lisa Pathfinder will show that technology works and actual mission will be funded but it will not be launched before 2030. Some other planetary probes will be funded by USA, ESA, Japanese and Chinese but economical problems in these countries (including developing of SLS) decrease science funding so that we will not get anything spectacular. Europa Clipper will be nerfed and use Falcon heavy instead of ridiculously prized SLS. Any of them will not fly before 2016. Asteroid capturing craft will be sent but it does not get asteroid to Moon orbit before 2026.

Commercial side will also develop slowly. SpaceX begins to sell used rocket phases. First as a risky low cost alternative but later they can sell at least 2-3 full prized flight. Maybe they can use first stages 3-5 times and will decrease average prices to 1/3 from current level after 10 years. There will be some other company or two with same price level and payload capabilities. Space agencies will buy manned and cargo transports to ISS, which will be continued to at least 2026, but there will not be other private launches than communication satellites and some small cubesats. There will be some suborbital tourism flights at 20's and maybe couple of billionaires in ISS. Tourism will not be significant business or develop space technology. SpaceX will introduce Raptor at about 2020 but it will be smaller and more expensive than expected. They will begin to develop rocket stage for it but it takes more than a decade before first flight test.

There will not be any large scale change of international political attitudes. Chinese, ESA and some other countries fund some probes but launch mostly communication and military satellites. Russians lose their interests to space exploration and manned operations when commercial crew capsules of American companies take their Soyuz business. There will be much repurposed bovine waste talk about Moon and Mars missions from governmental agencies and private companies but nothing will be funded. Manned operations will be restricted to LEO except one circumlunar test flight with SLS and Orion. There will not be any new nuclear powered ion propulsion systems or other fancy stuff. Falcon Heavy will be the largest launcher (except SLS which is uselessly expensive for all scientific probes).

What? Not even Earth Observation sats will be launched in your future? And I would hope for a much larger smallsat buisness, and a OrbitalATK Solid EELV at this point, along with a whole new generation of rockets across the board.

US Army has stated they will not use SLS, as they have no use for it- not surprising, it's not the cold war anymore. Europa Clipper was too big for FH on a direct trajectory to Jupiter on the "basic" version without sacrificing significant margin, and the addition of a lander means SLS is the only thing that ca  launch the probe without at least 1 Earth Flyby, even with 0% margin. Also, planetary funding surprisingly seems to be increasing more than anything- New Frontiers was restarted after a hiatus, and Europa Clipper was (at least partially) funded. SLS' current "manifiest" has 3 test flights, Europa Clipper and ARM (likely to be cancelled). 

3 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

I'm not saying total program costs/flights isn't a useful metric - only that it's a one dimensional metric that doesn't take into account a number of variables (such as flight rate, and the time value of money).   The latter program might turn out to be the more expensive when you take inflation into account if the costs of the former are front loaded.

You also have to be careful of avoiding falling into the "subcompact vs. pickup truck" fallacy the Capsule Cabal indulged in throughout the late Shuttle era* and make sure you're comparing costs and capabilities like-to-like or you can end up with a right nasty mess trying to correct your figures so that you are.  If your $200 billion program is a 200 ton launcher, while your $100 billion program is a 100 ton launcher - there's all kinds of side effects, tangible and intangible.

And I'm not even going to get into the nasty mess that is the "broken window" fallacy and sunk costs.
 

Spot on.   Shuttle's total cost per annum was dominated by the "standing army".   While the cost-per-launch (the marginal costs, the costs to add a launch to the manifest) remained more or less invariant regardless of the number of launches - the cost-per-flight (that is (fixed costs+marginal costs)/number of flights) drops radically the more you fly.

Accounting is complicated, and it's something I wish more space fanbois studied as assiduously and treated as agnostically as they do physics and engineering - numbers matter, whether they're in the bean counter's ledger or the engineer's drawings.

* Comparing the raw cost per seat of a Shuttle to Soyuz.   Such a simple minded comparison does make Shuttle look more expensive, but when you add back in the costs of the boosters (even at Russian rates) required to carry the cargo that Shuttle also carried the picture becomes much murkier and nowhere near as clear a victory for Soyuz.  (Especially when you consider the less tangible benefits such as the reduction in overall programmatic risk and the assured simultaneous arrival of installation crew and equipment.)

And the SLS "standing army" is only designed for 3-4, rather than the 30+ that Shuttle was, so the fixed costs will be a lot lower, despite the booster being quite similar. IN THEORY.

3 hours ago, tater said:

I get that it's complicated---my remark regarding signing the accountant's post-its wasn't a dig at accounting, it was me explicitly saying that I let specialists do their jobs  .

I also understand that you have to compare actual capability, but by the same token you need to make sure that the capability isn't only used because of that system. We designed a lot around using Shuttle, because that's what we had. SLS is sort of hoping for the same thing, I guess. "If I build it, they will come." LOL.

So when they quote launch costs, what are they including? Do they only count the labor to stack it, launch it, then the 15 minutes until it's in orbit, then turn the payroll clock off? Or do they divide the annual expense by the number of launches, or perhaps a number of launches they could do (maximizing the workforce) theoretically?

 

2 hours ago, Frozen_Heart said:

2018: Russian space agency completely defunded due to their economic troubles.

2018: ULA completely folds due to no longer being competitive with other companies.

2021: After continual budget cuts, cost overruns, and with no clear mission the SLS is cancelled.

2024: Without support the ISS is cancelled and deorbited. With nothing larger currently ongoing or even planned NASA budget reduced to 0.1% of the budget leaving them unable to launch.

2030: SpaceX running the Falcon 9 and Heavy at a combined 15 launches per year, while still going on about Mars plans which will never happen. Losing customers fast due to ever growing launch queues and inability to meet a schedule.

 

Yes I'm a pessimist.

Holy- This was supposed to be a place to put OPTIMISTIC plans, not pessimistic ones!

2 hours ago, tater said:

NASA's budget has been remarkably constant, and they have facilities in FL, TX, CA, NY (are you seeing a pattern?). NASA doesn't lose substantial budget.

Another way to look at it is that the SLS proponents are Republicans, and the Democrats never cut funding for anything, so who is going to cut it?

SLS is a pork program for the most part, and without it, they have to replace it with more pork, or face a good chance of just losing that NASA money altogether. That's why "cancel SLS to fund Planetary Sciences" doesn't work.

[Sanic]

2 hours ago, tater said:

Another way to look at it is that the SLS proponents are Republicans, and the Democrats never cut funding for anything, so who is going to cut it?

Political talk = thread closing soon.

IIRC George W. Bush wanted to go ahead with the Constellation program, but it was ill-conceived and just wouldn't work. Though the sad truth is petty politics are limiting humanity's ultimate destiny. Let's hope the original, extremely optimistic chart is as accurate as possible, ja?

plz leave it at that, else this thread is doomed

Edited February 9, 2016 by Sanic

[Exploro]

14 hours ago, Hannu2 said:

Or maybe SLS will be used to launch some huge spying satellites or other military stuff for US army. Army has an infinite budget but I do not know if they need huge payloads.

Military payloads would not require a lifter such as SLS. Typically national reconnaissance launches use rockets in the class of Atlas V, Delta-IV, or Falcon. Further when it comes to lofting military payloads; that is handled by the Air Force. Finally while US military budgets are deeper compared to NASA's, even that is not infinite. Consider that there are competing programs from all four major branches vying for funding. Simply put there would be no room for funding a SLS-class rocket.

Edited February 10, 2016 by Exploro