Author Topic: Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration - The Universe is Timeless  (Read 176896 times)

cray

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Baby elephants wearing platform shoes under hangliders!

no-one could think of a 'good reason' to be able to loft 10K tons into space ...  :'( :'( :'(

Well, those two problems solve each other. :)
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rebs

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The next Administration will try to terminate SLS and not because of politics.

SLS (and Orion MPCV) flight safety projections are coming out worse than the Space Shuttle, which two prior Administrations terminated because of safety issues.

SLS can't do humans to Mars.  Its flight rate is nowhere near high enough to support the tonnage needed for NASA's own reference missions for human Mars expeditions. 

Congress just proposed terminating the Asteroid Retrieval Mission, the only other human target on the books for SLS besides Mars.

Multiple NASA, industry, and university studies show that SLS is not needed for human lunar missions, if the next Administration goes that route.

It costs more to use SLS than saved in shortened mission operations for robotic planetary missions.

SLS development schedule has slipped multiple years and development costs keep going up with no end in sight.

NASA has no handle on SLS's upper stage beyond the first demonstration launch.

Hundreds of millions of dollars and months of schedule have been lost to basic errors and bad management of ground facilities.

I could go on, but you get the idea.  FWIW...



Phooey!   ;)

Well, I did have my own concerns about the recycling of old space shuttle tech.  But those huge old boosters are still sitting there, and they could be used to make any sort of launch vehicle.

As for Orion, I was never overly keen on the idea of regression to a space capsule.  Even if it was going to be the Lexus of space capsules.  Perhaps a more aerospace specific system is under way.  And I've read plenty about the military's new robotic space shuttle replacement. 

There are things afoot.  And as well there should be.  Other nations on the rise could surpass us, which would be a travesty.  New frontiers being explored and conquered tend to spell doom for older, complacent powers.  We need to be there, one launch device or another.

« Last Edit: 17 June 2016, 10:40:25 by rebs »
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I'd hardly call a return to a more efficient spacecraft shape a regression.
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kato

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I'd hardly call a return to a more efficient spacecraft shape a regression.
Spheroids vs Aerodynes, with about the same advantages and disadvantages...

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Well, I did have my own concerns about the recycling of old space shuttle tech.

This is a perennial problem in the space sector.  Overly optimistic assumptions are always made about the reliability and costs of using existing/old components/designs, but those components/designs were intended to be used in a particular system.  Move them to a new system with different requirements, and reliability usually plummets and costs/schedule usually skyrocket.

A good example is the use of the old Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs) in SLS.  The SSMEs were designed to use incoming propellant (liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen) at a certain temperature.  But that temperature has changed on SLS, because the distance between the cryogenic propellant tanks and the SSMEs on SLS is different from the Shuttle.  So heaters have been added to SLS between the propellant tanks and the SSMEs, and now the main propulsion system on SLS is reliant on heaters that were never present on Shuttle.  That adds a new failure mode -- if a heater fails, an engine could stop working -- which drives down reliability.  And it also drives up cost and schedule as those heaters are over-engineered like crazy to minimize the chance of heater failure (which will never go to zero no matter what you do).

The SSMEs were also recovered, refurbished, and reused on Shuttle.  SLS will expend its SSMEs, necessitating a new SSME production line.  But the old SSMEs were very labor-intensive and expensive to produce, so the new SSMEs will be manufactured using different methods and not-unsubtle changes to the SSME design to try to keep costs manageable.  At that point, NASA is better off with new, clean-sheet engines and vehicles, rather than twisting itself in knots to maintain the old Shuttle workforce.

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But those huge old boosters are still sitting there, and they could be used to make any sort of launch vehicle.

Again, the devil is in the details.  Like the SSMEs, the Shuttle's Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) were recovered, refurbished, and reused.  Detailed inspections were made of the recovered SRB segments to track burns and damage, prevent failures, and project future reliability.  The SRBs on SLS will be expended, so many of the benefits they had in terms of reliability will be lost.  Worse, the old SRBs used an asbestos liner.  The new ones cannot, and there are now issues with voids appearing between the new liner and the solid rocket propellant used in the SRBs.  Voids are bad -- they cause unstable combustion, which can lead to bad things in the SRBs.

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As for Orion, I was never overly keen on the idea of regression to a space capsule.

It's not a matter of old versus new.  It's a matter of where you're going.  If you're just going up and down to Earth orbit or a space station, engineering trades often favor something with wings or a lifting surface.  But if you're going farther (the Moon, near-Earth asteroids, Mars), you're better off with a capsule.  Dragging the mass of those wings or lifting surfaces beyond Earth orbit (and back) is a major consumer of the limited mass available for such missions.

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Even if it was going to be the Lexus of space capsules.

Orion's size is a big problem.  It's an upsized Apollo capsule.  That's fine structurally, but the old Apollo heat shield and launch abort system do not scale well.  After trying a monolithic shield like Apollo on Orion's first flight, NASA is moving to tiles like on Shuttle but still using Apollo's Avcoat material.  Unknown how that will turn out. 

Similarly, a launch abort system that can lift something the size of Orion away from a launcher fireball is massive, complex, and a big drag on performance and reliability.  Worse, it also has to get clear of the SRBs, which will keep on burning and thrusting even after a launch accident.  More mass and complexity and less performance and reliability.

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Perhaps a more aerospace specific system is under way. 

There's nothing else in the US human space flight pipeline besides what the private players like SpaceX and Blue Origin are pursuing.  Moreover, what NASA designs next will depend on what direction the next White House wants to go in (stick with the International Space Station and Earth orbit for the foreseeable future, go back to the Moon, try for Mars for the fourth time in three decades, focus on enabling and lower-cost technologies to support future decisions, etc.)

It's also quite possible that the next White House will do little or nothing and let SLS and Orion continue to meander.  NASA is not exactly a top priority, and there are big congressional rice bowls involved that may not be worth tipping over given everything else on the next Administration's to-do list.

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And I've read plenty about the military's new robotic space shuttle replacement. 

Space Shuttle was both a launcher and space plane.  X-37 is just a space plane.  If you scaled X-37 up and stuck astronauts in it, it would still need a bigger, TBD launcher.

If you have a penchant for wings and lifting bodies, I'd say Sierra Nevada's Dreamchaser (based on the old HL-20, which itself was reverse-engineered from a Russian test-spaceplane) has a better chance of becoming a human vehicle.  It's already at the right scale and recently won an award for space station cargo delivery, which will require a certain amount of human-rating right out of the gate.

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There are things afoot.  And as well there should be. 

For better or worse, the momentum is with private efforts like SpaceX and Blue Origin.  How far they get in the next decade or two will probably have a bigger impact on future human space flight than NASA's public efforts.  The former is not hamstrung by congressional rice bowls like the latter.

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Other nations on the rise could surpass us, which would be a travesty.

Doubtful for the foreseeable future.  China's human space program is a very slow burn.  They've only launched like five times in the past 13 years.  Russia is a basket case.  No one else has a independent government human space program on the horizon.

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New frontiers being explored and conquered tend to spell doom for older, complacent powers.  We need to be there, one launch device or another.

I think it remains to be seen whether human space flight ever becomes a sustainable, expanding effort regardless of nationality or private efforts.  Our species' biology is fundamentally incompatible with space environments in ways that Earth's frontiers (like the New World) never were.  We've spent something on the order of a half-trillion taxpayer dollars on NASA's human space flight efforts to date with very little tangible return to show for it.  Apollo was an historic achievement, and everyone has a soft-spot for the Space Shuttle.  But neither have left a sustainable legacy or a clear justification for continuing that level of spending.

The space cadet in me says try better.  The analyst in me says dump human space flight and stick with and expand on the much more successful robotic efforts.

Obviously, my 2 cents.  YMMV...

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rebs

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Indeed.  Politics aside, I am a dreamer fueled on my own hope that we do find ways to sustain our human space flight endeavors.  The resources of the earth cannot last forever.  I love all space exploration missions, manned or not, but I want to see the steps toward a future of continued expansion for the human race begin to coalesce in my lifetime.
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kato

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China's human space program is a very slow burn.
It's actually simply underfunded - like most of China's space program, to the extent that they can't fly the missions they actually want.

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Indeed.  Politics aside, I am a dreamer fueled on my own hope that we do find ways to sustain our human space flight endeavors.  The resources of the earth cannot last forever.  I love all space exploration missions, manned or not, but I want to see the steps toward a future of continued expansion for the human race begin to coalesce in my lifetime.
Well said, and seconded!

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Juno performs its orbital insertion for Jupiter on 4th July. Despite the NASA history of over-achieving on mission lifespan, this one is expected to only last 20 months, due to radiation-induced damage. Near-Jovian conditions are nasty.

(Waiting for a sci-fi story which taps Io's ionised gas torus for destructive purposes ... )

W.
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Lazarus Jaguar

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It's actually simply underfunded - like most of China's space program, to the extent that they can't fly the missions they actually want.

Just like all space programs
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Charlie Tango

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 [copper]

Just a reminder to not broach into the realm of real-life politics, please.

Thanks!

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rebs

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Reminder appreciated.

Juno's path may not take it overly near the moons of interest, but it will have plenty to watch for during its orbital passes.  The Hubble has been scoping things out, too.  Check out this lovely image, courtesy of ESA and NASA and all the rest who deserve credit:



The article can be found here.  https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1613/
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It looks like Gozer the Gozerian got REALLY lost...
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Blackhorse 6

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Has NASA given any pertinent on the Centauri system and possible planets?  I can't seem to get a clear picture (ha ha) of why or why not.  With all the explainers being discovered hundreds of light years away, not much seems to be released on on about four out from us.  I find that odd.

Paul

worktroll

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Currently we can only spot planets that a) are big enough,, and often close enough, to cause visible wobbles in the star's motion; or b) which orbit so that they pass between us and their sun, causing blips in the light curve.

Now firstly, binaries are - depending on the age of the astronomer - largely considered unlikely to have planetary systems. The angular momentum which spins off planets gets stuck in the other component instead.

That said, observation of Alpha Centauri B in the last few years produced something which looked like a transit event (b). The body involved would have been a tightly orbiting gas giant planet - with a 15 day orbit, meaning it'd be red hot, and not terran-compatible. More evidence needed to confirm this definitely though.

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kato

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Pretty simple reason actually: The overwhelming majority of planet detections are made by the Kepler space telescope, which is looking in the "wrong" direction to observe Alpha Centauri. Kepler is pointed at the northern celestial hemisphere, specifically Cygnus, while Alpha Centauri is located in the southern celestial hemisphere.

CNES' Corot also looks in the wrong direction i think. Observation from space has been performed by MOST, a microsatellite sent up by CSA looking for characteristic "wobbles" (not transits), and the system is within the scope of ESA's Gaia - if there's transits occuring between 2015 and 2020, we can fish them out of the 200 TB data produced later on. NASA will launch TESS in 2017 or 2018 (been pushed back a couple times) which will look in the right direction.

The singular supposed transit at Alpha Centauri B was observed by the HARPS team at ESO in Chile, and has since been evaluated as a likely mathematical artifact, i.e. not an actual object.

Blackhorse 6

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I didn't know any of that, thanks or the update!

P

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Good news! Juno successfully went into orbit round Jupiter and is already sending back data :)
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Good news! Juno successfully went into orbit round Jupiter and is already sending back data :)

There will be a 22-minute burn in October to achieve the final science orbit.
« Last Edit: 06 July 2016, 08:47:17 by Natasha Kerensky »
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I'm glad got the go ahead to maintain the missions in deep space they have.  With New Horizon on it's way to that asteroid. They keep finding new stuff from the Pluto flyby every day thankfully.

I head on the radio, that NASA is entering period of where no new space probes will be launched out beyond Mars.  Which i think is bad, they cited the issue with the 2013 cuts all the government agencies went under.  Hopefully something will turn up soon.  I heard thou the US Congress has signed law for NASA to launch a probe to Europa using the SLS, which would make the trip in 3 years, if the SLS get funded enough to get built pass it's initially test flight.



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Rather quiet lately.

SpaceX's latest supply run to the ISS has arrived.   What interesting is the delivery IDS docking port for the crewed Commercial spacecraft.

What's interesting about this article is talk about Mini-Space Stations being possibly built for lunar orbit as another stepping stone to Humans to Mars.   That's something new I haven't heard before. 

Have you folks heard of anything about this?
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SpaceX's latest supply run to the ISS has arrived.   What interesting is the delivery IDS docking port for the crewed Commercial spacecraft.
Good to hear.  IIRC, it was supposed to have been delivered by the Dragon that exploded last year.


Quote
What's interesting about this article is talk about Mini-Space Stations being possibly built for lunar orbit as another stepping stone to Humans to Mars.   That's something new I haven't heard before. 

Have you folks heard of anything about this?
A few times.  It's something that comes up from time to time in some form or another, but the people pushing hardest for Mars consider such a plan to be more of a detour.

kato

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IIRC, it was supposed to have been delivered by the Dragon that exploded last year.
ISS was supposed to get two. IDA-1 exploded with that Dragon, IDA-2 was delivered now (as scheduled since the beginning). NASA awarded Boeing a contract to build IDA-3 to replace IDA-1 in March. It's currently tentatively planned for delivery with CRS14 in early 2018, also a Dragon.

The IDA adapters are needed for NASA's commercial crewed spaceflight ideas, both CST-100 and Crewed Dragon require them to dock to ISS. Dreamchaser and Cygnus can also dock to the current CBM berthing adapters (DreamChaser to both). The linked article goes into why two are needed.

What's interesting about this article is talk about Mini-Space Stations being possibly built for lunar orbit as another stepping stone to Humans to Mars.   That's something new I haven't heard before. 
Rather varied projects, and nothing solid or funded on NASA side. Has gotten some traction in recent times though; the last proposal from NASA itself was in 2012, before the commercial space hype. The current ideas mostly run within the scope of NASA's Nextstep pathfinder studie programme. Last one I think was a Orbital ATK study that proposed assembling three Cygnus-derived modules into a station in lunar orbit to have something for Orion EM-1 and EM-2 to actually go to.

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I keep forgetting how tight on money NASA is.  I think it will be up to the private companies for any subsubstant space development with huma n crews private space companies like SpaceX and Bigelow.
Bigelow could develop those private mini stations with there inflatable modules.
« Last Edit: 24 July 2016, 12:26:19 by Wrangler »
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BirdofPrey

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I'm not sure what their current plans are, but at one point, Bigelow wanted to make a space station made of a few inflatable modules.

cray

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I keep forgetting how tight on money NASA is.  I think it will be up to the private companies for any subsubstant space development with huma n crews private space companies like SpaceX and Bigelow.

SpaceX's manned spaceflight development is currently mostly funded by NASA. It gets some private funds, but only in the hopes of making a profit from NASA in the long run. That's how it's always been: NASA contracts private companies like Boeing, Lockheed, IBM, etc. to build its moon landers, Apollo V, shuttle, etc., and we go to space. 

Has NASA given any pertinent on the Centauri system and possible planets?  I can't seem to get a clear picture (ha ha) of why or why not.  With all the explainers being discovered hundreds of light years away, not much seems to be released on on about four out from us.  I find that odd.

Lots of people have tried, but - as Worktroll noted - the system doesn't appear to have planets where we can detect them. There's been some recent candidates, but they're being dismissed as errors when people give the system a closer look.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri#Planets
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BirdofPrey

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At this point, though, I kinda wish NASA would/could do more of that where they fund private companies but those companies are more or less still left to their own devices.
SLS and Orion are expensive and poised to underperform after the previous projects were canceled partway through because NASA's own work has restrictions and requirements placed on it that have little or nothing to do with the actual performance of the final product.

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SpaceX's manned spaceflight development is currently mostly funded by NASA.

Yes and no.  Dragon 2 development (crew capsule to LEO for ISS missions) is mostly funded by NASA's CCDev program.  But the 2018 Red Dragon demonstration mission (Mars lander capsule) is internally funded by SpaceX to the tune of ~$300m, with NASA contributing only ~$30m of in-kind services (DSN, etc.) in exchange for data on the performance of supersonic retropropulsion at Mars.  In terms of launchers, development of the Falcon Heavy that Red Dragon will launch on is internally funded by SpaceX.  But it builds on the Falcon 9 that was SpaceX developed with cost-sharing through NASA's old COTS program.

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It gets some private funds, but only in the hopes of making a profit from NASA in the long run.

Not really.  NASA is certainly a significant revenue stream for SpaceX through the end of ISS (mid-2020s).  But even now, commercial launches make up the majority of the SpaceX manifest, and NASA will become an even smaller piece of the SpaceX pie as SpaceX takes some of the military launch market from ULA in the coming years.

After ISS, NASA and SpaceX totally diverge in their approaches to manned interplanetary spaceflight.  NASA is going with the Apollo/Shuttle-derived Orion/SLS, while SpaceX is evolving Falcon/Dragon systems into the MCT.  It remains to be seen whether a private entity can sustain a manned planetary effort.  But NASA can't fire the old Shuttle workforce and contractors that Orion/SLS sustain in favor of funding SpaceX's (or any other) manned interplanetary solution.

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That's how it's always been: NASA contracts private companies like Boeing, Lockheed, IBM, etc. to build its moon landers, Apollo V, shuttle, etc., and we go to space. 

Not exactly.  Those old Apollo and Shuttle contracts were essentially military procurement contracts performed on a cost-plus basis under the FAR.  With COTS and CCDev, NASA has exercised its Space Act authorities to fashion more commercial-based contracts that require cost-sharing and pay-only-on-completion milestones.  Or NASA is only making in-kind contributions as a minor partner, as with Red Dragon.

NASA deserves credit for investing in some new ways of doing business that really got SpaceX off the ground and restored a native ISS resupply capability in the US at low cost.  But NASA is forced to rely on old ways of doing business beyond LEO, and as a result, SpaceX plays little or no part in those NASA programs and plans.  And it's not apparent that SpaceX's plans require heavy NASA involvement or funding after ISS, either.

[Disclosure:  In a past life, I worked the COTS program at NASA HQ.]
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