The End Of US Manned Spaceflight Looms Ever Closer

Space Daily ^ | Honolulu - Jul 10, 2003 | Jeffrey F. Bell

[alnitak]

Once again, NASA has proposed to develop a replacement for the troubled Space Shuttle. This year's project goes by the ungrammatical moniker "Orbital Space Plane". An interim version of OSP called the CRV (Crew Rescue Vehicle) to be developed by 2010 will take over the International Space Station lifeboat task now done by Soyuz. An improved OSP called the CTV (Crew Transfer Vehicle) will assume the ISS crew exchange task now done by Shuttle in 2012. To minimize development costs, the OSP will be launched on one of the new EELV family of expendable boosters, Delta 4 or Atlas V.

Sound familiar? It should. The OSP is only the latest of many "Shuttle replacement" programs that have all failed dismally. A close look at OSP shows that this program is also doomed to failure due to fundamental technical defects. It's no surprise that such usually reliable NASA boosters as "Space Coast" Congressman Dave Weldon and aerospace lobbyist Lori Garver have publicly attacked OSP.

Most critics have focused on the suspiciously low development costs, or the embarrassing gap between 2006 and 2010 in which no ISS lifeboat is planned. In fact, the basic concept of the program is so stupid that every knowledgeable person involved in it must be perfectly aware that it will never fly.

The basic problem is that the OSP, as currently defined, must carry such heavy mass penalties in the form of wings, wheels, and various escape systems that its performance will not be much better than the Dyna-Soar design of 40 years ago.

Because it cannot carry any of the supplies needed to sustain its passengers once they arrive at the ISS, it will not reduce the number or expense of Shuttle missions needed to support the International Space Station, and will not provide "assured access to space" as NASA claims.

Instead OSP will force NASA to simultaneously fly two very expensive man-rated vehicles at a time when it is financially unable to support even one, and will double the risk of long stand-downs in ISS operations due to lack of either replacement crewmen or the supplies needed to keep them alive.

The Shrinking Spaceplane Mystery: The original OSP concept envisioned a 7-seat vehicle which could rescue or exchange the entire ISS crew in one sortie. (NASA's proposed Budget Amendment of 14 November '02 said "as many as 10".) The Level I requirement document reduced this to "at least 4" persons.

This major decline in the OSP's basic performance measure was widely criticized. Although I have not seen an official justification for the 4-seat requirement, it appears to be based on an agreement among ISS users that NASA will be responsible for escape and exchange only of the non-Russian ISS crew members, with the RSA continuing to support 2 or 3 Russian crewpersons with 2-3 Soyuz TMA flights per year.

However, a later NASA document "interpreting" the Level I requirements (online reference) has gone mostly unnoticed. In this 'interpretation" the requirement for "at least 4" seats in OSP has been changed to a "system requirement" that can be reached using multiple spacecraft instead of only one! Presumably, proposals for 2-seat or even 1-seat spacecraft would be now considered acceptable under this bizarre "interpretation" of the "at least 4" requirement.

I know of no other aerospace program in which the basic performance goal has been lowered by a factor of FOUR in the first few months! This isn't just a question of being "a step backward from Shuttle" (or even from Soyuz), but fundamentally wrecks the economics of the program. Even in the CRV mode, a 2-seat OSP is an extremely dubious proposition.

The normal configuration of the station would then be one in which two OSPs and a Soyuz would occupy three docking ports, oriented in such a way that all three lifeboats could be manned and pull away from the Station in any desired order, while leaving other ports free for CTV or supply vehicle docking.

In the CTV mode, the 2-seat OSP would be heavily burdened by the irreducible overhead of basic nav, comm, and docking equipment that cannot be scaled down. So by cutting the seating in half, NASA has much more than doubled the annual cost of rotating ISS crews.

NASA has not given any reasons for this extraordinary lowering of the bar that the three competing contractor teams have to reach. The most likely explanation is that preliminary studies have revealed a 7-seat or 4-seat spaceplane turns out too heavy to be launched on Delta 4 or Atlas V, when all necessary requirements are met.

[alnitak]

Good article. There's a lot more at the site if you follow the link.

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[Joe Bonforte]

The article is not bad, but had one glaring omission. The US is the only country with a fledgling private space program, and I'd say they are much more likely to come up with an innovative way to make space travel practical than any government bureaucracy.

So why not invest the bucks into prizes for them to compete for? Offer up about $10 billion with a reasonable goal (say one that would cost NASA $30 billion) and see what happens.

[alnitak]

The US is the only country with a fledgling private space program

Er, not quite Joe. A fledgling industry maybe, but not a program.

While there are lots of interesting things going on around the X-prize, doing sub-orbital cruises is very different to putting 15000kg into LEO. It's gonna be a long time before we see a shuttle replacement.

One thing that often goes unnoticed to the casual observer though, is that the US has accumulated a lot of knowledge and experience over the years in space related activities, and it is spread around - originally in NASA, US airforce, Boeing (etc), but now increasingly the universities, small startups (often populated with enthusiasts or ex-NASA personnel) and new companies. That's what the X-prize is tapping into, and it is an advantage that no other country has.

Regards, alnitak.

"Let's crash the International Space Station and spend the money saved on solar system probes!"

[The_Victor]

Bump to read later.

[PatrioticAmerican]

Considering the way NASA has been spending OUR money, we could do without them.

[Physicist]

Self-ping.

[Search4Truth]

Man's future is in the cosmos.

It is man's nature to always look beyond the horizon, and wonder. We are explorers by nature, a nature that must be honored, or it will metamorphose into something destructive.

Cosmologists are already able to detect the presence of planets around other solar systems. Soon, we will able to detect solar systems like our own. When we do, we need to send probes to scout those new worlds as potential new homes for mankind. Probes could, in effect, take all of mankind with it on that epic journey.

A documentary of such an adventure would be the world media event of all time.

[mvpel]

I think the author may be missing something - there's proposals out there for Shuttle-Derived heavy-lift vehicles. Robert Zubrin covered a few different options in the book "The Case For Mars."

Getting the big stuff up there doesn't require a manned mission. Send the crew up on the dinky ship, and the heavy stuff up on an unmanned SDHLV.

[hopespringseternal]

NASA is an organization in the final stages of senility. They long ago bought into a vision of the future where they would be funded on the same level as the defense department or some entitlement. They are still waiting for the fulfillment of that vision, and probably always will wait in vain.

Developing cheap access to space would let the air out of that vision. They will never do it, and are doing everything in their power to hold cheap access hostage until they get the funding they want.

Of course they don't think of things this way, but try bringing up real research into lowering the cost of access to space, and just about any NASA employee will get real defensive real quick.

NASA was supposed to build the road to space, but they just ended up erecting a permanent construction zone.

[jammer]

Thanks, but it may be that the title should read, "The End of taxpayer supported Manned Spaceflight Looms Ever Closer." Seems some private people in the Mojave think they can do it. If so, we know they can do it cheaper and better.

[anymouse]

Space ping

[CyberAnt]

Well ... As long as the earth remains there will be people who will be willing to risk their life to go into space.

Like the recent disaster proves - the wives all said their husbands were doing what they loved to do; knowing the risk.

[Republic If You Can Keep It]

I've yet to hear a convincing reason that the manned space program should continue.

[irv]

"The End of taxpayer supported Manned Spaceflight Looms Ever Closer."

That should read "The end of American taxpayer supported Manned Spaceflight ..."

The Chinese have a thriving space program with the goal of putting humans up there. They'll do it eventually.

[jammer]

Right. How did I forget the "American" qualifier. Although, technically, do Chinese pay taxes? ~:)