Why did the Constellation program go over budget while the SLS is still on budget?

[ScallopPotato]

Apparently the mission elements of the constellation program were way too over budget and behind schedule to be recovered. Apparently the Ares I wouldn't be ready until 2017-2020 or so, Ares V wouldn't be available until the late 2020s, and the Altair lunar lander was a whole mess in itself. I guess NASA was trying to do too many things with too little of a budget.

Fast forward to 2014. Orion is going to be tested later this year, and the SLS seems to be on budget and ahead of schedule. However, NASA has said that trying to make another lunar landing would "take everything back to square one". So I can say "we're going back to the moon, but we aren't landing on it". That'd make for funny dinner table conversations.

What's the difference between the two, both technical and management wise? It seems odd that the SLS is doing better than the Ares I, considering they seem very similar (ie SSMEs for first stage).

[sojourner]

You are confused. SLS is analogous to Ares V, not Ares I. Ares I used a solid fuel first stage based on the space shuttle solid boosters.

[Nibb31]

Constellation was an actual program, with a goal and multiple vehicles being developed simultaneously with a specific purpose in mind.

SLS is a rocket with no mission and no payloads. Of course it's cheaper.

Constellation wasn't over budget. There wasn't a budget to begin with. Constellation was a presidential initiative for which Congress never actually voted the budget increase that it required. So it was canned.

[Kryten]

You are confused. SLS is analogous to Ares V, not Ares I. Ares I used a solid fuel first stage based on the space shuttle solid boosters.

Although Ares I was part of constellation, and was responsible for most of the cost overruns.

[JedTech]

A previous Party started Constellation, and then another party took over. Therefore the current party needed to make the previous program look like a failure and then rebrand it to make it look like their idea.

MPCV = Orion

SLS = Ares IV (with white paint)

Edited March 27, 2014 by JedTech

[Tommygun]

Just give it time, when they actually try building it to completion, I'm confident they will find ways to go over budget.

[NASAFanboy]

Ares V and Orion were the only ones to be saved, but with heavy modifications.

Constellation was also cancelled because it had such a wide timespan.

From the time it was announced, it would take 15 years to return to the Moon, as opposed to the SLS and Asteroid Missjons mere 7 years. I have a rule, called the 10-20 rule.

It's that for every 10 years tacked onto a programs timeframe for an significant precursor mission to be accomplished, then that has 90% chance less of getting through.

The SLS, I'll give a 95% chance of survival. We got Republican POTUS candidates who have major NASA centers in their home states running for President, and the Democrats are rallying in support of the ARM. Few in power want the SLS dead, and once NASA achieves that BEO human rating capability, Congress would have to be idiots to abandon it with Chinese advancements in space making the public pressure ensure than any Congressman who kills the SLS is probably not going to get reelected.

Most Congressmen also serve around 15-20 years in office, so the SLS likely will not face opposition from freshmen senators and representatives.

[ScallopPotato]

What was the problem with Ares I? Whatever it was, it doesn't matter, as commercial crew has replaced it in the LEO taxi role and SLS/Orion for BEO missions.

[NASAFanboy]

What was the problem with Ares I? Whatever it was, it doesn't matter, as commercial crew has replaced it in the LEO taxi role and SLS/Orion for BEO missions.

It was wholly underpowered to reach orbit (Seriously? ONE SRB is supposed to get them high enough for a J2X to take over? HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE) it ran into hundreds of issues, and was unstable.

[Nibb31]

A previous Party started Constellation, and then another party took over. Therefore the current party needed to make the previous program look like a failure and then rebrand it to make it look like their idea.

Actually, Constellation was a presidential initiative from the Bush administration with pretty Powerpoint slides but no funding from the start. Obama appointed the Augustine Commission to audit the project. The commission found that it simply wasn't possible to return to the Moon with current funding levels, so Obama cancelled Constellation and put an end to any lunar spending.

The idea behind SLS and Orion was to build an infrastructure which would enable exploration missions in the future, but again, without providing any funding for those missions.

What was the problem with Ares I? Whatever it was, it doesn't matter, as commercial crew has replaced it in the LEO taxi role and SLS/Orion for BEO missions.

It didn't have the performance to put Orion into LEO, which led to Orion being gutted from most of its BEO capability. It also had that infamous "thrust oscillation" problem, which required adding heavy dampers and other dead weight just so that it would shake the astronauts to death. Of course, that extra weight added to the performance problem. It was simply unworkable.

Edited March 28, 2014 by Nibb31

[Javster]

I'd assume they might be banking on a budget increase once they send an Orion capsule around the Moon.

[tychochallenge]

It was wholly underpowered to reach orbit (Seriously? ONE SRB is supposed to get them high enough for a J2X to take over? HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE) it ran into hundreds of issues, and was unstable.

Oh come on I liked the Ares 1 because it looked cool

[KASASpace]

Well, one of the BIG reasons Constellation tanked was.......

*drum roll please*

Loiter time!

You see, the plan was to launch a stage into orbit, and then rendezvous with it.

Now, this would be fine, but it would have boil-off, as they were using cryogenics.

So, the risk analysis guys came in, and judged that (based on number of events) the Constellation Program should be cancelled.

Or something like that.

[Nibb31]

I'd assume they might be banking on a budget increase once they send an Orion capsule around the Moon.

A budget increase isn't enough. You also need time to develop any meaningful mission hardware. For example, something like a lunar lander would require 7 to 10 years to develop. That is 7 to 10 years of watching the SLS sitting around gathering dust and burning dollar billions of dollars for nothing.

[bigdad84]

Can we just all agree that NASA needs more funding.

But I personally liked the Constellation program. Launching crew and cargo separately seems to be the best way to go. Plus, with SLS it's not like you can go visit the ISS without ridiculous waste. (Yes, I know, commercial space programs will handle this, but just saying it would be nice for NASA to have a way to the station themselves.).

[Rocketscience101]

Honestly the constellation program was within its infancy. They had one rocket launch, which went very well, but then as political power was moved, the budget change caused issues. One of the issues of having a government space program, and a democracy. Nothing wrong with a democracy, my personal favorite when it comes to government system, but with that, interests can change, someone could be in power, and be ready to go, and is pushing tons of funding into the space program. But then come 4 years, he doesn't get re-elected, and his replacement is horrible about allowing funding, shutting down many programs, and only allowing very little funding to keep them going.

[Tommygun]

I wish they had kept some version of Altair going.

Even a smaller more basic version.

At least SLS would potentially have something more to do.

[metaphor]

I wish they had kept some version of Altair going.

Even a smaller more basic version.

At least SLS would potentially have something more to do.

Even the Altair lander had some technical problems. For one, it was way too big. That was because its lower stage was designed to do both the Lunar Orbit Insertion burn (for the Altair and Orion together) and the actual landing on the Moon. That resulted in too much delta-v needed on a single stage, which made it considerably overweight. The large mass of the Altair was one of the reasons the Ares V design had to be upgraded to carry 180 tons to LEO, which resulted in even more cost and schedule slips. The Constellation program had to have 2 launches with together almost twice the mass to LEO of a Saturn V, for a single Moon landing which had only a bit higher capability than the Apollo landings.

We do need funding for a lander or deep-space habitat so the SLS can start doing some interesting missions, but it shouldn't be the Altair. There's some designs for a reusable lander which could go from a L1 station to the Moon's surface and back up which is looking promising, much smaller than the Altair.

[check]

It was wholly underpowered to reach orbit (Seriously? ONE SRB is supposed to get them high enough for a J2X to take over? HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE)

Ares I did have a ton of issues, but I don't think being underpowered was one of them. It would have used a 5-segment SRB compared to the shuttle's 4-segment SRB.

[Nibb31]

Ares I did have a ton of issues, but I don't think being underpowered was one of them. It would have used a 5-segment SRB compared to the shuttle's 4-segment SRB.

It still had performance issues. SRBs are heavy beasts and it required a lot of heavy dampening and mitigation hardware so that it wouldn't shake apart.

A 5-segment SRB burns longer than a 4-segment SRB, but the thrust is the same and it weighs 25% more. In KSP, adding more fuel to an underperforming rocket is a mistake that most newbies make.

[check]

A 5-segment SRB burns longer than a 4-segment SRB, but the thrust is the same and it weighs 25% more. In KSP, adding more fuel to an underperforming rocket is a mistake that most newbies make.

It depends almost entirely on how they shape the core. Sure, they add 25% more propellant, but then they can adjust the shape of the core to get the desired thrust.

[Nibb31]

Of course, but in turn that thrust had to be dialed back so as not to shake the entire vehicle apart. I'm not saying that NASA engineers didn't do their homework. Just that the 5-segment would have been a whole new booster and that adding a segment to the old Shuttle SRB did not necessarily imply a huge increase in performance.

The original reason for the Ares-I to exist was that it kept ATK Thiokol building 4-segment Shuttle-derived SRBs while Ares-V was being developed, which made Constellation look cheaper than a clean-sheet design. However, as the 4-segment SRB was quickly found to be underpowered, requiring a totally new 5-segment SRB, and because Ares-V no longer used SSME's, there was nothing "Shuttle-derived" about Constellation at all.

In the end, even with a 5-segment SRB, the Ares-I was underpowered and Orion was overweight. The result was that Ares-I was going nowhere. Without Ares-I, the economics of Ares-V made no sense either, so the whole thing was rightly canned.

Edited March 31, 2014 by Nibb31

[Kryten]

The 5-segment srb is more powerful as well as longer-burning, and had already been developed as part of a shuttle upgrade program. It just simply wasn't good enough.

[Moar Boosters]

The Ares-1 might have been successful if it had a suitable capsule to match it. If they'd built something soyuz sized, it could be ferrying people and supplies to the ISS right now, and the Ares-5 and Orion pairing would still be on track.

[Nibb31]

The Ares-1 might have been successful if it had a suitable capsule to match it. If they'd built something soyuz sized, it could be ferrying people and supplies to the ISS right now, and the Ares-5 and Orion pairing would still be on track.

Orion was (and still is) overweight because it isn't just a LEO taxi. Its requirements were (and still are) to be capable of keeping 4 people alive for 21 days, performing contingency EVA, and reentering from a lunar trajectory. Soyuz can't do any of that, and neither can Dragon, CST-100, or DreamChaser. In the days of Constellation, it also had to land on solid ground with airbags and be reusable.

Ares-I would probably have been capable of launching a Block-1 LEO version of Orion, which had a cut-down SM. It was underpowered for launching the full-blown lunar Orion.