NASA SLS/Orion/Payloads

[tater]

Oops, wrong thread!

 

[Bill Phil]

6 hours ago, MinimumSky5 said:

I've often wondered why NASA were told to use the RS25's, surely using RS68's would make more sense. Yes they don't have the same efficiency, but they're cheap and expendable. 

RS-68s have an issue with clustering. Probably solvable, but RS-25s don't have that issue.

All the same they're way too complex for an expendable booster like SLS. Probably had more to do with keeping Shuttle jobs than anything else.

[mikegarrison]

SLS was always going to be a failure. Wrong concept from the start, replacing another wrong concept, which replaced another wrong concept.

I wish for Boeing's sake that Boeing hadn't gotten involved with it, but as a giant defense contractor they are pretty much hardwired to always bid on everything.

[Bill Phil]

16 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

SLS was always going to be a failure. Wrong concept from the start, replacing another wrong concept, which replaced another wrong concept.

I wish for Boeing's sake that Boeing hadn't gotten involved with it, but as a giant defense contractor they are pretty much hardwired to always bid on everything.

Boeing's having a good time. Easy money. And if there sre huge delays? More money. Big contract, decades long. Boeing is really having a good time.

[tater]

https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-19-001.pdf

So from what I can tell, RS-25 engines NEW, cost the Shuttle program ~$40 million each, yet refurbishing 16 of them cost over 2 billion $ (that's where the 127 million a pop number comes from).

How can anyone look at that and decide it makes sense?

[Nightside]

1 hour ago, tater said:

https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-19-001.pdf

So from what I can tell, RS-25 engines NEW, cost the Shuttle program ~$40 million each, yet refurbishing 16 of them cost over 2 billion $ (that's where the 127 million a pop number comes from).

How can anyone look at that and decide it makes sense?

Its bizarre even from the perspective of a "rocket scientist employment program", since they aren't even developing new tech or innovating anything. It could be forgivable if they were trying to develop a next-generation RS-25 or achieve even partial reuseability.

Let the private companies build cost effective, reliable launch systems, NASA should be trying to do new things that aren't cost effective.

[tater]

All those people at Stennis need to keep testing the same RS-25s over and over so that they look busy, I guess.

[AeroGav]

5 hours ago, Nightside said:

Let the private companies build cost effective, reliable launch systems, NASA should be trying to do new things that aren't cost effective.

Boeing is a private company.

What NASA have been perfecting, for the past 30 years,  is an arrangement that combines the very worst aspects of government institutions (conservatism, bureaucracy, make-work g) with and private greed (profiteering,  doing the absolute bare minimum)  on monopolistic, open ended cost plus contracts that reward failure.

NASA should either do thing in house, "in source" like SpaceX is doing,   or tender them out on dollars per ton  contracts.   I wonder where we'd be right now if the SLS and Constellation money had gone to SpaceX and Blueorigin instead.

[Xd the great]

F1Bs will probably be waaaaaay cheaper, and sts booster with a saturn 5 style will be real fun. Those solid rockets are cheap, as long as they do not refurbrish it.

[wumpus]

4 hours ago, AeroGav said:

NASA should either do thing in house, "in source" like SpaceX is doing,   or tender them out on dollars per ton  contracts.   I wonder where we'd be right now if the SLS and Constellation money had gone to SpaceX and Blueorigin instead.

NASA has basically no abilities to do *anything* "in house" like SpaceX.  Look closely at the people who "work for NASA" (and actually do work, as opposed to go to meetings and hand out funding) and you will notice an intermediary employer on their contractors' badges.  Not only are they more or less incapable of directly producing anything (this hasn't changed since Mercury), but they don't really have any "GS-nn" employees who can do the work.

Note that in practice all those contractors effectively work for NASA: every few years the contracts change and the joke is somebody takes the old badge with the old company off of you and somebody else puts the new badge and new company on you.  Technically, this is supposed to change how management happens, but such is only likely to come up in the worst of situations.

But even Apollo had lots of contractors each trying to get the biggest piece of the pie, witness the famous "towing bill" changed by Grumman to Rockwell (Grumman was upset at not getting the fancy "command module" and had to make due building the LM lander).

Realistically, the US Congress isn't happy handing out billions to Bezos and Musk (both have much more powerful enemies than friends) and love to throw money at Boeing, Lockheed, and to a lesser extent Northrup (i.e. Orbital).  In these situations I tend to describe ULA as "the space wing of the Military Industrial Complex" (although Northrup has charged into the feed trough as well).  While they have been successful at launching rockets, their main competency is making sure the pork flows from Congress into their budget, and have the appropriate lobbyists, cushy jobs for former staffers, military, and ex-NASA employees, and diversified structure (an office and/or factory in every Congressional district).

[tater]

^^^

Yeah, NASA has always been just an extremely involved customer. Sort of like annoying clients of an architect and builder, constantly making change orders, etc (anyone who has had remodeling done knows what this does to cost, as well).

 

5 hours ago, Xd the great said:

F1Bs will probably be waaaaaay cheaper, and sts booster with a saturn 5 style will be real fun. Those solid rockets are cheap, as long as they do not refurbrish it.

No. The issue is that the usual suspects would have been the ones to make the F-1N(n for new). They'd have charged more than the "bargain" we're getting on reusing Shuttle engines.

[tater]

https://www.fbo.gov/index.php?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=ecd6a1e57e71e38bbcd2b7b4ade5436f&tab=core&_cview=0

[Ultimate Steve]

8 minutes ago, tater said:

https://www.fbo.gov/index.php?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=ecd6a1e57e71e38bbcd2b7b4ade5436f&tab=core&_cview=0

So basically CRS for the Gateway?

[tater]

Yeah. It's a call for logistical delivery to the Gateway.

(which will take this off topic for this thread, lol, as most of the work will be done by not SLS/Orion, lol.)

Edited October 24, 2018 by tater

[Cassel]

I read an article about Orion and I wondered if NASA is already training any astronauts for Orion's mission? And how long does it take train them?

[Nibb31]

42 minutes ago, Cassel said:

I read an article about Orion and I wondered if NASA is already training any astronauts for Orion's mission? And how long does it take train them?

A number of NASA Astronauts have been actively working at Boeing to develop human interfaces, cabin layout, and procedures. These tasks need to be done before training can start.

Training is the major part of the job of being an astronaut (aside from the above development tasks and public outreach) and most astronauts spend several years training while waiting for a flight assignment. They typically train on systems more than on specific missions. For ISS operations, specific mission training usually takes a couple of months (preparing for specific EVA tasks, running experiments, testing equipment...).

The first astronauts to fly on Orion will most likely be those most experienced with its development, like Young and Crippen were the first to fly Columbia after spending years working on the Shuttle program to develop systems and flight test Enterprise.

Edited October 24, 2018 by Nibb31

[Cassel]

5 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

A number of NASA Astronauts have been actively working at Boeing to develop human interfaces, cabin layout, and procedures. These tasks need to be done before training can start.

Training is the major part of the job of being an astronaut (aside from the above development tasks and public outreach) and most astronauts spend several years training while waiting for a flight assignment. They typically train on systems more than on specific missions. For ISS operations, specific mission training usually takes a couple of months (preparing for specific EVA tasks, running experiments, testing equipment...).

The first astronauts to fly on Orion will most likely be those most experienced with its development, like Young and Crippen were the first to fly Columbia after spending years working on the Shuttle program to develop systems and flight test Enterprise.

So none? And each will have to train for several years, well than slowed don't my hype train for Orion :-/

[Nibb31]

9 minutes ago, Cassel said:

So none? And each will have to train for several years, well than slowed don't my hype train for Orion :-/

You don't need training on the procedures when you are the one writing the procedures. As I said, the Astronaut Corps is heavily involved in the Orion development process. Systems training goes along with systems development.

The actual mission training is about 10 months (but depends on the actual work to be done) and starts when a crew has been assigned an actual mission. Unless it is cancelled or postponed, EM-2 is still 4 years away, so they have plenty of time and you can keep your hype train in the station.

Edited October 24, 2018 by Nibb31

[NSEP]

11 hours ago, tater said:

https://www.fbo.gov/index.php?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=ecd6a1e57e71e38bbcd2b7b4ade5436f&tab=core&_cview=0

Cargo Dragon on Falcon Heavy, period. 

[tater]

6 minutes ago, NSEP said:

Cargo Dragon on Falcon Heavy, period. 

Dragon is 6000 kg of cargo. The call is for 7.6 tonnes.

This is presumably still possible, the trick is that station cargo is likely volume limited, so 5 tonnes of pressurized supplies likely don't fit inside Dragon (either version).

This is an ATV level of cargo (ATV has 4.8X the volume of Crew Dragon).

[Cassel]

7 minutes ago, tater said:

Dragon is 6000 kg of cargo. The call is for 7.6 tonnes.

This is presumably still possible, the trick is that station cargo is likely volume limited, so 5 tonnes of pressurized supplies likely don't fit inside Dragon (either version).

This is an ATV level of cargo (ATV has 4.8X the volume of Crew Dragon).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_Chaser  ?

[SuperFastJellyfish]

10 minutes ago, tater said:

Dragon is 6000 kg of cargo. The call is for 7.6 tonnes.

This is presumably still possible, the trick is that station cargo is likely volume limited, so 5 tonnes of pressurized supplies likely don't fit inside Dragon (either version).

This is an ATV level of cargo (ATV has 4.8X the volume of Crew Dragon).

 

I didn't realize that ATV was that big. 

[Ultimate Steve]

37 minutes ago, NSEP said:

Cargo Dragon on Falcon Heavy, period. 

Well... Maybe, but the margins would be slim. A fully loaded Dragon is 10 tons and an empty Dragon is 4.2 tons according to Wikipedia. A fully reusable Falcon Heavy can do, what, 22 tons to orbit?

Assuming the dry stage 2 is about 4 tons (random figure from google) then some math later...

Falcon Heavy/CD can barely reach TLI with no payload from a Delta-V calculator. And we still need to have the fuel to get into NRHO where the Gateway will be. It looks like we have to go at least partially expendable for this.

[Nibb31]

ATV had pretty much half the internal volume of Salyut and was actually bigger than Tiangong-2 or ESA's Columbus module. It could practically have been its own mini-space-station. It really is a shame they only built 5 of them.

In fact, instead of launching Columbus on a Shuttle, ESA could have outfitted an ATV and permanently docked it to the Russian side.

HTV is missing from that graphic. Especially as it is still flying for 2 more years at least. It fits between Progress and ATV in terms of size, but trades off internal volume for unpressurized cargo.

Edited October 24, 2018 by Nibb31

[kerbiloid]

As we can see, ATV is TKS-sized.
But not so cute.