My letter to the Augustine Commission’s subgroup on exploration beyond LEO

Dear Augustine commission and members of the Exploration Beyond LEO subgroup:

We should be a society that exists on more than one planet.  Humanity can determine our own destiny, unlike the vast majority of species that have come and gone on this planet – But we have not yet proven this. We should make Mars our immediate focus and develop the means to go there in an incremental, series of progressive steps that capture the publics interest and maintain it. With major mile stone events in an evolving architecture with Mars firmly established as this generation’s challenge. This and this alone will restore NASA to it’s rightful place in humanities consciousness, as an institution that Inspires.

Mars is the most compelling target for manned space exploration – but a sortie styled unsustainable architecture would be unacceptable. One of NASAs priorities should be to bring the private sector along every step of the way to fill in what NASA can never do alone, and that is levee the creativity and resourcefulness of the most productive nation in the world towards opening up the next frontier and developing space. It would be ashame for NASA not to learn from the greatest error of the Apollo flights, the lack of follow up, the fact that US policy wasn’t to catalyze the amazing capabilities of industry and private human enterprise to tackle the challenge of space flight. The 2nd industrial revolution awaits with untold potential for wealth and economic growth. NASA can begin this by funding more COTS like programs, and integrate these into the path to Mars. So that when the political environment changes with respect to space as it unfortunately and maybe inevitably does, commercial interest can further humanities interest in developing space. NACA did amazing things for commercial aeronautics and developed a real industry that could continue without an overwhelming, unsustainable federal expenditure. This can be done for space. And the US is still in a position to fully exploit this and lead in this emerging industry, an industry that in my humble opinion is still in its infancy with respect to its unbound potential.

Do we want humanity to fight over the scraps of what remains of Earth or do we want to infuse ourselves with the renewed vigor of a challenge worthy of humanities ability to do anything. Transform our world, save it, by giving our society this challenge that unites us, one more time.

I am just a freshman mechanical engineering student and father of a 2 year old boy. I’m in no way an expert with all of the facts in front of me I humbly submit my thoughts to you with a grain of Hope. I’m inspired by people like the Apollo 11 Astronauts, engineers like Robert Zubrin, and space enthusiast like Ross Tierney, to do what I can while I can. More over I’m taking the time to share my thoughts because I believe we have an opportunity for positive change in the course of history at this time. Good luck & may reason guide you hearts and hope steer your minds.

Interesting ideas from more skilled and capable people here:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/strategies/AdvisoryGroupReports/iaa_report.pdf

Now if you were to ask me what some of those first steps beyond LEO should be and how we could achieve them, my best guess would be something like this.

We are in the process of developing a heavy lift capability to go to the moon and enter the first phase of the Vision for Space Exploration.  Continue this.  But the Ares I and V don’t seem to be the best means vs cost, capability and time frame.  I’d have to say the best alternative is the DIRECT shuttle derive launch vehicles the Jupiter130 and Jupiter246, one rocket plus an earth departure upper stage that levees what we already know, the people and skilled labor we already have and the hardware we’ve already characterized and operate.  Modify the EDS to serve as a phase I LEO propellant depot, and contract commercial providers like SpaceX and ULA and our international partners to refuel the depot.  Fund Commercial Orbital Habitat Services, Commercial Orbital Propulsion Services and Commercial Orbital Power Services competitions and leverage NASAs capabilities to integrate these new ventures into a phase I Orbital Transfer Vehicle that can move mass and crew between orbits and to the moon.  Fund a Commercial Orbital Propellant Depot Services competition to develop a better propellant depot based on the EDS technology that you can share with private companies to place a more capable PD at EML-2 and SEL-2 and investigate human NEO and Phobos missions.

I imagine you can throw an inflatable transHab module from Bigelow Aerospace a solar electric power system and VASIMR propulsion system from AdAstra Rocket into orbit on a series of SpaceX Falcon9 heavy rockets within 5-10 years as a means to get Astronauts back and forth between the Earth and the moon.  While NASA begins its moon missions based on the Altair/Orion baseline.  Once the technology for the Orbital transfer Vehicles are fully vetted NASA may want to switch to a Commercial Orbital Transfer Services program and use the program savings from utilizing lower cost commercial providers to perform its current operations to develope the technology to spear head the next step.  This will involve more commercial competitions to evolve the OTVs into a phase II Interplanetary Transfer Vehicle from witch NASA can contract for missions to NEOs and Phobos.  All of thise while NASA works the most difficult, long poll, development item.  The Mars EDL system for landing heavier loads on the martian surface.

Thru this entire development process you’ve involved the private sector more and catalyzed new economic growth and capability towards space exploration and development.  While at the same time the incremental process has allowed opportunities to capture the publics attention with milestone flights, landing and events – critical for continued political support and funding.

One of my favorite quotes, “It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.” – Robert H. Goddard

Respectfully and hopefully yours
Eric Rivera

The weather is expected to remain 60% favorable for launch.  Thats as good as you can hope in the sunshine state on a summer afternoon.

The ET is being fueled right now.
from spaceflightnow ::

Follow Miles at http://www.milesobrien.com/

I spoke breifly with the 26-year broadcast news veteran and former CNN science, aerospace, technology and environment correspondent over twitter w00t

From http://twitter.com/milesobrien and http://twitter.com/engstudent
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milesobrienI am testifying before Congress tomorrow. Subject is “enhancing the relevance of space…” http://bit.ly/ZPbVJ Would love your thoughts.

engstudent@milesobrien good luck tomorrow. Is what NASA can do in the future within the scope of your testimony or just how its received by the public

engstudentThis 140 character limit is killing me!

milesobrien@engstudent both i think

engstudent@milesobrien If NASA could show incremental milestones in S.E.(space exploration)  http://bit.ly/ns4kX

engstudent@milesobrien I think this would help the most with keeping the publics short space attention span + a major event every say 4 years can help

engstudent@milesobrien again best of luck tomorrow – ill stop spamming you now. CNN should never have to let you go.

milesobrien@engstudent not spam at all…thanks

_________________________________________

Okay very breifly – hope he does well in futhering the cause of the next frontier.  No preasure

SpaceX puts up its second successful Falcon I rocket this time with a real payload for the Malaysian government the RazakSAT.

Concedering the common hardware heritage between the F1 and future F1e, F9 and F9H this is a good technology and operations demonstration.  Another article of proof that they’re on thier way to thier described goals of improving access to space with respect to reliability and cost.

Next up for SpaceX?  The Falcon 9 Maiden Flight  from Cape Canaveral.

Ross Tierney answers questions and masterfully summarizes the STS derived DIRECT Alternative including what lead to the latest iteration, Plume-induced flow separation, PIFS which heats the base of any rocket accellerating thru the atmosphere.

Read the well illustrated AIAA Houston Horizons Summer 2009 Report :: Revisiting a DIRECT Approach here, it begins on page 8

Or Continue to the text bellow.

In our August 2007 issue of Horizons we included an article on the DIRECT STS derivative launch vehicle concept. A lot has happened in the intervening time, so we thought we’d include an up-date. We asked a few ques-tions of Ross Tierney — one of the “front office” people who serve as the public inter-face to the team.

Horizons: The DIRECT team presented DIRECT v3.0 at ISDC recently. Can you explain what the major differ-ences are in this new revi-sion, and why the changes were made?
Ross Tierney: Early in 2008 the Ares-V develop-ment team encountered a serious issue with their de-sign where the exhaust gasses from the rocket engines recirculate around the bottom of the launcher, which then ex-periences particularly high temperatures. The recirculat-ing effect is well documented as “Plume-Induced Flow Separation” or PIFS – there is a famous picture of Apollo 11 flying which shows how PIFS often engulfs the entire aft area of any rocket – and early pictures of the white STS-1 External Tank falling away clearly show the ’scorching’ on the aft dome, again caused by PIFS.
Well, the high tempera-tures around the base of the vehicle caused by PIFS, are known as “Base Heating”. It seems that Ares-V’s Base Heating environment is par-ticularly nasty, due to four main reasons:
a) The large 10m diameter Core Stage punches a very large hole through the air, which creates a very large low-pressure region trailing the Core – and the hot PIFS gasses collect in this region,
b) Being 37.5% larger than the current SRB’s, the Ares-V’s 5.5-segment SRB’s produce an awful lot more hot exhaust gas to recir-culate,
c) With 6 x RS-68B main engines, they produce a great deal of hot gas which recirculates around the base of the Core too, and
d) The RS-68’s use a gas-generator cycle, and dump the exhaust from that overboard – directly into the immediate proximity of the base of the vehicle, which contributes to even greater heating.
In short, the Ares-V pro-ject found that the Base Heat-ing environment is simply untenable for the Ablative Nozzle material which was to be utilized. The only solution is to switch to a Regenera-tively Cooled Nozzle which pumps cryogenically cooled liquid hydrogen fuel through the nozzle wall to keep it cold. The problem is that the RS-68 was never designed to use a Regen nozzle so the engine will require extensive development to integrate this new feature.
DIRECT’s Jupiter launchers use a fairly similar approach to Ares-V, although all Jupiters use a smaller 8.4m diameter Core Stage, smaller 4-segment SRB’s and half the number of RS-68’s – so our PIFS and Base Heating effects are considerably less taxing than Ares-V’s. But still, this issue was serious enough to concern us. We spent almost a year investi-gating alternatives because we did not want to suddenly require a 6-year development program for the RS-68 Regen interfering with closing the “gap” after Shuttle. We wanted a solution which we could guarantee could be fielded operationally some-where around 2012/2013.
When we examined all of the potential options we could think of, one stood out head-and-shoulders above the rest: Using the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME). Yes, they are more expensive than the RS-68, but when put into large, regular, production runs the cost is not all that different from the expected cost for the upgraded RS-68 Regen variant. There is no new development work needed for SSME and they do not require human-rating work because they are al-ready fully qualified for hu-man use. That significantly reduces both near-term costs and development schedule impacts. Eliminating billions in near-term development work more than makes up for the few tens of millions in per-unit production cost differ-ences later.
When we completed our analysis, we also found a significant performance ad-vantage courtesy of the SSME in this configuration. Whereas the old RS-68-based Jupiter-120 could loft around 45mT to ISS, the new SSME-based Jupiter-130 can loft more like 70mT, which is quite an impressive feat given the fact that the Core Stage propellant capacity has not changed. This substantially improved performance is all due to the magic of the high-efficiency 452 sec vacuum Isp produced by the SSME.
For Lunar missions, we found something even more impressive: where the older RS-68 configuration needed a very large and powerful 2-engine Upper Stage, an opti-mized SSME-based Core does not. The SSME Core Stage burns longer and pro-duces greater velocities and altitudes before staging. That leaves less work for an Upper Stage to do. And that means the Upper Stage can be made significantly smaller, lighter and doesn’t have to be as powerful to still serve the same functions. More impor-tantly; reducing the mass of the Upper Stage has massive impacts on Lunar TLI per-formance. For every kilogram of extra mass in the Earth Departure Stage mass, you essentially lose 3 kilograms of useful payload mass which can be sent through TLI. So, not only could the tanking be made smaller, but the pair of heavy J-2X engines were no longer required. We have a number of different designs in DIRECT v3.0’s proposal, but one which we think of as ‘best’ is a configuration using a cluster of 6 x RL-10B-2 engines (as used by Delta-IV) to make a Jupiter-246 con-figuration. It makes for a highly efficient (459 sec vac Isp), yet very light-weight design which also has a great deal of engine-out capability. All of our current perform-ance analysis for these con-figurations assume a worst-case scenario where one of the six engines fails to start at all during the ascent portion of the launch and then a sec-ond of the engines also fails to start for the TLI burn – that would be a pretty bad scenario when you think about it, but even in that situation, this configuration can still exceed the Constella-tion Program’s TLI perform-ance requirements (71.1mT thru TLI) by more than 11% (79.1mT thru TLI) while meeting all of Constellation’s Ground Rules & Assump-tions. This engine is already in production today and only requires human-rating, which we recommend be done as part of a program to human-rate the Delta-IV Heavy as a second human launch system.
As I mentioned, there are a variety of different Upper Stage configurations for Jupi-ter which are also viable: We have a Jupiter-241 which uses a single J-2X, a Jupiter-244 which would use a clus-ter of 4 x RL-60’s and we also have a Jupiter-247 con-figuration which uses the slightly less powerful RL-10A-4-2 from the Atlas-V. All offer sufficient perform-ance and safety, so the decid-ing factor really comes down to cost and schedule, and that (Continued from page 9)
is a decision which we intend to leave to NASA if they adopt DIRECT for them-selves.
We really like having lots of options to choose from “down the road”. All we really need to decide to build today is the Jupiter-130 — which is the foundation for everything later. But it isn’t urgent to decide what con-figuration the Upper Stage will be. That decision could actually wait a few more years.

Horizons: Was the DIRECT team contacted by the Obama transition team?

Ross Tierney: We made a Presentation to the Transition Team in early January. We have chosen not to comment on those discussions.

Horizons: Can you re-mind us of who constitutes the DIRECT team?

Ross Tierney: Currently the DIRECT Team consists of 69 anonymous NASA/Contractor engineers & man-agers from across the nation and across the industry. They form our “back office” team who do all of the serious number-crunching for us. There are currently 9 more people on the team who form the more public “front of-fice”, of which Chuck Long-ton, Steve Metschan and my-self are probably the best-known.

Horizons: Has NASA formally reviewed the Direct concept? If so, what were their conclusions?

Ross Tierney: NASA conducted a Performance Analysis of DIRECT v2.0 back in 2007. The results of that report were not published for a year, until WIRED magazine obtained a copy of the report. The report con-cluded that DIRECT would
not work. However, upon review the analysis was deeply flawed in a lot of dif-ferent ways. We recently wrote a 100 page Rebuttal to this analysis, identifying all of the mistakes and attempt-ing to show how they each negatively affected the final results of that analysis. A corrected analysis has not been performed by NASA at this time, although we are hoping that the Augustine Commission will conduct a fair assessment this time.

Horizons: At this point does it make any sense to “change horses” to another architecture after so much work has already been done?

Ross Tierney: You touch on an extremely important point with your question, a point which is so often over-looked by most people:-
Today, we are currently on the Space Shuttle horse, not the Ares horse.
It seems to me that Ares is actually the scenario which requires us to ’switch horses’. DIRECT is really just an evo-lution of the current Shuttle design, not a replacement with a completely new design.
DIRECT plans to re-use most of the things which have already been done so far. All of the development teams we need are currently in-place and are up-to-speed, so they are ready to hit the ground running on DIRECT. DI-RECT’s plans still need Lock-heed Martin to build the Orion spacecraft. Jupiter still requires an Instrumentation Unit, so Boeing’s efforts there will not go to any waste. We still require an Upper Stage, so why not modify Boeing’s existing contract for that task too? The new & refurbished test stands, Launch & Mis-sion control refurbishment and work already carried out in modernizing facilities like the Operations & Checkout building at Kennedy are all facilities we intend to use just as fully as Ares did. We even have uses for the new Launch Tower currently being con-structed for Ares-I. And if there is a political need to build the 5-segment SRB’s and the J-2X engine, Jupiter can still use them later in the program – as ‘upgrades’. We have constructed our proposal in order to minimize the ‘waste’ all throughout the program.
So I would prefer to re-frame the question: Should we still plan to switch horses to Ares, or should we stay on the horse we are currently riding and focus our efforts on improving it and making it safer, more capable and more affordable?
Setting technical difficul-ties with Ares aside for a mo-ment, the current architecture is actually in serious jeopardy for a variety of reasons, but primarily the problems are fiscal. When the Vision for Space Exploration was first proposed back in 2005, NASA was promised a vi-brant budget which would be increased to the tune of bil-lions of dollars per year in order to help pay for this new Vision. The agency pro-ceeded to design an architec-ture which fitted that prom-ised budget. However, that extra funding never tran-spired. In real terms, NASA’s budget has actually reduced, twice, since then. Today we find ourselves in an economy which isn’t what it was just four years ago and even fur-ther squeezes on NASA’s discretionary budget alloca-tion are expected over the coming years. What this means is that NASA’s origi-nal plans are simply not af-fordable any longer. The bot-tom line is that we must find another, more affordable, path to pursue or we will be faced with having to give up the Exploration program alto-gether.
The most logical ways to reduce costs are to reduce requirements. The critical question which started DI-RECT in the first place still applies today: “Why build two new launch systems if you can build one which can do the same job?”. As a cor-ollary to that, I would also add: “Why spend the extra money developing any new launcher which requires all-new boosters, all-new stages, all-new engines, all-new
manufacturing and all-new launch infrastructure if there are options which can use existing equipment in all those areas?”.
If you ask those two questions, then factor in the political requirements to save the Shuttle workforce and the performance requirements for the missions which NASA intends to fly, we are quite convinced that any reason-able analysis of the situation will end-up following a path very similar to DIRECT’s. That is, after all, how we put this proposal together in the first place and it is also what drove NASA to precisely the same conclusions in 1991 during the NLS program. The only difference today is that Shuttle is going away — very soon.

Some good reading about the current state of human space flight and what itll take to break out of LEO and move out further, with potentially a much greater pay off than what it’ll take to startoff at the SpaceRef’s going beyond LEO.

And at the IEEE’s spectrum a number of great articles about the technical and economic challenges of a Mars Mission, at this time.  Included is an article written by Robert Zubrin of the Mars Society about how to go – Right Now.

Should I stay or should I go?…

GO.  It is my opinion that humanity is doomed to a pathetic death and waste of universal proportions if we don’t take on the challenge of exploring, developing and eventually settling other worlds.  We waste away and fight over trivia with grave immeasurably horrific consequences without challenges.  We grow and evolve with them.  This mission to explore and go to other worlds is the challenge Humanity needs to survive and break free of its current grim, status quo.

A decision to abandon Human space flight or leave it to future generations, is humanities death sentence.  We should choose to go.  We should choose to grow.

UPDATE :: After Ross Tierney unvieled DIRECT 3.0 at the ISDC convention in Orlando this weekend he sat down with Dr. David Livingston and The Space Show for this interview.

 Download and listen to the MP3 here.

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A preview of the ISDC2009 presentation is now available – found at the NASA space flight Exploration Alternative forums

http://www.directlauncher.com/documents/DIRECT_ISDC_2009_NSF_Preview.pps

Enjoy

To sumarize some of the most strongest selling points of the Jupiter DIRECT shuttle derived launch vehicle are that, 1 – it increases NASA capability to deliver crew, supplies and new exploration hardware and infrastructure into space.  2 – At a lower operating and developement cost, close to $8000/kg versus the current systems $31000 per kilogram on the STS, and it will cost more than 20 billion dolars less the develope than the current Constellation system, the Ares I and V.  And 3 – will eliminate the gap in our ability to launch and deliver crew to the ISS while maintaining the highskilled labor force at MSFC and KSC, a political requirement for any proposal of this scope.  All of this while fitting nicely into NASA current budget, who doesnt want to save 20 billion dolars?  Go watch the presentation.

 Go SpaceX!

The launch was delayed last monthafter SpaceX identified the potential for an unfavorable interaction between the satellite and the launch vehicle. After further analysis, SpaceX determined the implementation of a simple vibration isolation system would address this concern. SpaceX selected the SoftRide isolation system from CSA Engineering for this purpose, citing the system’s strong flight heritage and established success in addressing vibration concerns.

Falcon 1, a two-stage, liquid oxygen/rocket-grade kerosene vehicle designed from the ground up by SpaceX, will place the RazakSAT satellite, equipped with a high resolution Medium-Sized Aperture Camera (MAC), into a near equatorial orbit.

RazakSAT was designed and built by ATSB, a pioneer and leader in the design and manufacture of satellites in Malaysia. The satellite is expected to provide high resolution images of Malaysia that can be applied to land management, resource development and conservation, forestry and fish migration.

SpaceX’s Falcon 1 launch site is located approximately 2500 miles southwest of Hawaii on Omelek Island, part of the Reagan Test Site (RTS) at United States Army Kwajalein Atoll (USAKA) in the Central Pacific. Due to the location of the launch site, the Kwajalein local date at the opening of the launch window will be Tuesday, July 14th.

SpaceX will provide live coverage of the Falcon 1 Flight 5/RazakSAT mission via webcast at: www.SpaceX.com. The webcast will begin 20 minutes prior to launch and will include mission briefings, live feeds and launch coverage from the launch site. Post-launch, video footage and photos will be available for download on the Web site.

The DIRECT team unvieled the 3rd and best itteration of thier exploration alternative architecture at this years International Space Developement Conference in Orlando this weekend.  Expect thier website with the whole story to be updated within a few days and a new thread at NASAspaceflight forums to follow soon.  Goodluck DIRECT team, may the best course of action be selected at NASA going foward.

Enjoy the video introducing the concept on youtube here:

Obama’s administration has ordered a 90-day review of the situation at NASA with the hope of chosing the best way to move our space exploration and science foward.  A likely topic on the table is which mission architecture and space launch vehicles will get the job done – cheaper, better & faster?  

Its at this time – before the fact finding and investigating begins – that a new article appears explaining how NASA attempted to discredit the DIRECT  shuttle derived Jupiter launch vehicle proposal to replace the constellation programs Ares I and V rockets.  The fundamentals are pretty straight foward, and the engineers working on the proposal have done a lot of work to nail down the details.  It must have ticked quite a few of them off when NASA managers defending Ares tried to pull a fast one and misrepresent the DIRECT plan in thier official and initially internal analysis.

Get the whole story a nasaspaceflight.com where David Harris has an article on the subject, and download the DIRECT teams official rebuttal of the bogus 2007 NASA ‘analysis’ 

According to NASAspaceflight, “DIRECT anticipates being heavily involved in the upcoming Blue Ribbon review for human space flight – which will include an evaluation on NASA’s current exploration direction - and the team will be presenting their latest proposals at the Orlando ISDC conference at the end of May and will also have representatives there able to discuss the latest evolutions of the proposal.”

Lets hope NASA gets it right this time.