How Should Congress Respond to Obama's Manned Spaceflight Budget?

The Constellation program was supposed to return America to the Moon-- to stay. But in the words of President Barak Obama on April 15 "Now, I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before.” So the President Obama makes it pretty clear that he sees no value in a permanent human presence on our closest neighbor in space.

So under President Obama's new plan for NASA:

1. There's no manned return to the Moon
2. The Space Shuttle program will be terminated by 2011
3. Private industry will receive approximately $1.2 billion a year over the next 5 years to help develop their own manned spaceflight capability. And there will be no domestic spaceflight capability until private companies have developed their own manned spaceflight capability
4. The ISS program will continue and funding will actually be increased from $2 billion a year up to $3 billion a year by 2015 even though the US will have no domestic vehicle to access the ISS and will have to use Russian spacecraft
5. A heavy lift vehicle won't have to be decided on until 2015
6.There might be a mission to an asteroid by 2025
7.There might be an orbital mission to Mars sometime in the 2030s
8. And there might be a Mars landing after that

With a NASA budget that will increase to more than $20 billion a year by the year 2019, the President proposes spending approximately $200 billion in tax payer money over next 10 years pretty much staying at LEO and then another $100 billion over the next 5 years to finally visit an asteroid.

So what should Congress make out of budget that spends so much to achieve so little?

First of all, there are some aspects of the NASA budget presented by President Obama administration that I think the Congress should be strongly in favor of:

1. Congress should agree to support the Obama administration's total-- monetary-- NASA budget expenditures from 2011 to 2015. This is an approximately $2 billion a year increase from the 2009 budget.

2. Congress should support funding for the private commercial manned spaceflight companies at the same monetary level as proposed in the Obama administration budget. The US needs private industry to have its own manned spaceflight capability if US manned spaceflight is to grow beyond a government funded manned space program

3. Congress should support funding the robot precursor programs at the same monetary level as proposed in the Obama administration budget.


However, contrary to the Obama administration proposals, Congress should:


1. Continue the Space Shuttle program until a manned successor vehicle is ready. This is a matter of both national pride and strategic importance. Being solely dependent on a fledgling Democracy for our access to space is just not a good idea. Also, we have no idea when US private industry will be ready to launch humans safely and routinely into space

2. Immediately provide funding to use the Space Shuttle to deploy inflatable space station modules into an appropriate orbit as way-stations for future manned beyond LEO missions. There is already an American company designing such modular space stations which they plan to sell for about $100 million each.

3. Immediately provide funding for the development of a Space Shuttle derived Sidemount HLV to be completed within 5 to 7 years. Buzz Aldrin has advocated building such a shuttle derived vehicle designed to lift payloads into orbit for beyond LEO missions.

4. Immediately provide funding for the development of an EDS (Earth Departure Stage) to be completed within 5 to 7 years. The EDS will enable us to launch large payloads beyond LEO.

5. Immediately provide funding for the development of a reusable manned space plane plus MAX LAS (launch abort system) that can be launched on the Sidemount and on man-rated inline boosters to be completed within 5 to 7 years. The development of such a reusable spaceplane would also be extremely attractive to the military and to private commercial manned spaceflight companies. It could also be used as an escape vehicle aboard a space station.

6. Immediately provide funding for the development of a man-rated shuttle derived NLS-2 booster to be completed within 7 to 10 years. As originally proposed in the 1990s, the NLS-2 would use 6 expendable SSME (space shuttle main engines). This will be a single stage to orbit booster that drops four of its heavy engines before achieving orbit while the remain two continue to push it into orbit. This would probably be the simplest and safest rocket booster ever developed and would be capable of placing at least 22 tonnes into low Earth orbit. The NLS-2 booster plus HL-20 type space plane would finally serve as the successor to the Space Shuttle allowing NASA to finally retire the shuttle before the year 2020.

7. Immediately provide funding for the development an Altair single stage ascent/descent stage to be completed within 7 to 10 years. Using the LH2/LOX descent stage for cargo flights to the lunar surface and as both a descent and ascent stage for manned missions would substantially reduce development cost. For manned missions, a simple crew transport module could be placed on top of the Altair landing platform.

8. Immediately provide funding for the development of lunar base modules and lunar base vehicles and infrastructure to be ready within 7 to 10 years. Yes, despite what the President said, we should return to the Moon to set up a permanent lunar base. A Moon base would be an essential key to establishing a similar base on the surface of Mars sometime during the 2020s, which would be much earlier than the Obama administration's proposed orbit to Mars. The Moon would also be the ultimate destination for the emerging space tourism industry.

But how much would all of this cost?

As I said, this should be funded under the Presidents current budget levels over the next 5 years and by the same budget level over the next 10 years. So no budget increase over what President Obama is already proposing.

In 2009, NASA spent $3 billion funding the Space Shuttle program and $2 billion funding the ISS program. $3.4 billion was spent funding the Constellation program. The Obama budget increases NASA funding above the 2009 level by an average of $2 billion a year over the next 5 years. So if we continue the space shuttle and ISS programs at their current levels plus the robot precursor program at about $600 million a year and the private commercial manned spaceflight companies at about $1.2 billion a year, that still leaves us with $3.6 billion a year, $18 billion over 5 years, $36 billion over ten years, for manned spaceflight development projects.

NASA estimates that a SD-HLV will cost $6.9 billion to develop and an EDS stage will cost an additional $2.5 billion to develop. Congress estimated that an HL-20 type of space plane would cost about $3 billion to develop in today's dollars. If you add another $1 billion for the MAX-LAS, you've still only spent $13.4 billion for a new heavy lift vehicle, earth departure stage, and a space plane. Not bad!

Longer term projects like the NLS-2 booster and the Altair lunar lander would still get some significant funding, but would get a lot more funding after the SD-HLV, EDS, and space plane are completed. The SD-HLV, EDS, and space plane would then be funded under the Space Shuttle budget by reducing Space Shuttle flights to two per year while reserving at least 3 flights per year for SD-HLV test launches. The Altair and NLS-2 and lunar base development could then receive heavy funding until they are completed sometime between 2017 to 2020.

Once the development projects are finally completed and the ISS program finally ended in 2020 there should be at least $10.4 billion dollars a year available to operate the lunar base program (perhaps $8 billion a year) in addition to funding the additional architecture development program for a Mars program over the next decade.

So under this proposal, and under the President's total NASA budget, we could return to the Moon before the end of the decade and even have money left over to fund the additional infrastructure needed to establish a manned presence in orbit around Mars and on the Martian surface before the end of the following decade.

Ares vs the Sidemount and the Augustine Commission

by Marcel F. Williams

During Space Shuttle manager John Shannon's presentation of the Side-mount Shuttle (SD-HLV) concept to the Augustine Committee, he showed the committee figures that indicated that a SD-HLV with an EDS (Earth Departure Stage) could place approximately 39 tonnes of net payload into lunar orbit per launch. However, just a week later, a subsequent, more thoroughly analyzed NASA study, indicated that up to 47.8 tonnes of net payload could be placed into lunar orbit per SD-HLV launch with an EDS.

Unfortunately, in the Augustine commission's final report, a SD-HLV architecture that could only deliver 39 tonnes to lunar orbit was presented to the President. And this lower mass estimate led to the following conclusion by the committee:

"Among the other notable differences between the Ares V family and the more-directly Shuttle-derived launcher family is the mission-launch reliability. Since the latter requires three launches for each planned Constellation lunar mission,there would be a somewhat lower reliability in any given time window than would be provided by the Ares V, which only would require two launches in the same time window."

• Single launch plus EDS stage
• Net payload to lunar orbit:
• 47.8 tonnes
• Net payload to LEO:
• 100.8 tonnes
• Maximum Altair lunar lander mass:
• 47.8 tonnes
• Maximum Orion mass plus EDS payload to lunar orbit:
• 22 tonne Orion plus 25.8 tonnes of EDS net payload
  

Credit NASA

This is clearly an erroneous conclusion by the Augustine Committee since a single SD-HLV/EDS launch can deliver a full sized Altair vehicle (45 tonnes plus) to lunar orbit, while a second SD-HLV/EDS launch could deliver an Orion vehicle plus at least an equal mass of additional payload to lunar orbit. So if anything, a two launch SD-HLV scenario (47.8 tonnes plus 47.8 tonnes) would exceed the two launch Ares I/V scenario (22 tonnes plus 49 tonnes) in total mass delivered to lunar orbit. In fact, a single SD-HLV/EDS launch could, in theory, deliver a 22 tonne Orion vehicle into lunar orbit plus a 25 tonne lunar landing vehicle (more than 50% more massive than the 16 tonne lunar module of the Apollo era).

• Ares I/V dual launch configuration to lunar orbit

• 22 tonne Orion plus up to 49 tonne Altair lunar landing mass
  
• Ares I
  
• 25 tonnes to LEO
• Ares V:
• 188 tonnes to LEO

Credit NASA

NASA also concluded that an SD-HLV plus EDS stage could be developed in just 66 months at an estimated cost of $9.4B which is dramatically lower than NASA's estimated cost for the development of the Ares I/V which they conclude would cost over $30 billion. (Neither of these figures include the developmental cost of the Orion and Altair vehicles.)

The committee also made an obvious conclusion about the SD-HLV concept vs. the inline shuttle derived concept (DIRECT):

"While the Committee did not examine the technical trade between the side-mount and inline variants in detail, it observes that the side-mount variant is considered an in-herently less safe arrangement if crew are to be carried, and is more limited in its growth potential. "

However, they also noted the following:

"Historically, vehicles with heritage derived from prior demonstrated systems have shown greater reliability in early usage than newly developed systems. The process of converting an established cargo launcher into a human-rated launcher results in improved reliability, as was demonstrated in the early U.S. human spaceflight programs where modified ICBMs were employed as launch systems. History has shown that the early flight period is of much higher risk than would be expected later in flight history."

The Augustine Commission declared the current Space Shuttle as the most reliable U.S. heavy-lift vehicle ever built, judging the Titan HLV and Delta IV heavy as less reliable heavy lift vehicles. Since the DIRECT concept's Jupiter rocket would be a brand new booster, this would make the DIRECT Jupiter rocket a less reliable launch vehicle than the SD-HLV-- at least in its early stages. The DIRECT concept also requires 18 new technological developmental starts while the SD-HLV requires only 8; Ares I/V requires 35 total developmental starts.

If the Obama administration wisely decides to terminate the development of the Ares I/V configuration in favor of the SD-HLV-- while also adding $3 billion additional dollars to the NASA annual budget, NASA should have enough money to continue Space Shuttle flights until the Orion CEV and SD-HLV are ready for flight. NASA is currently spending more than $3.5 billion on Constellation development programs; that should be plenty for the Orion and related program integration and operations development. And the additional $3 billion a year should be plenty of money to develop the SD-HLV ($6.9 billion), EDS ($2.5 billion), and Altair ($4.2 billion) over the next 6 years. Plus any delays and additional cost in developing this space architecture could be easily met by the annual $6.5 billion NASA budget solely dedicate towards developing the SD-HLV, EDS, Orion, and Altair. That's up to $32.5 billion in additional funds if it takes NASA all the way to 2020 to finish the new space architecture. Once the new launch architecture is completed and the Space Shuttle program finally retired and we're back on the Moon setting up permanent modular settlements, NASA is going to have several billion dollars a year in surplus funding on its hands-- perhaps to utilize in developing the next space architecture to get us to Mars!

Links and References

1. NASA Sidemount Shuttle Report June 25, 2009
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/space/orl-alternative-rocket-pdf,0,7079469.htmlpage

2. NASA Sidemount Shuttle Report June 17, 2009
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/361842main_15%20-%20Augustine%20Sidemount%20Final.pdf

3. Augustine Commission Final Report
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/396093main_HSF_Cmte_FinalReport.pdf

4. Daily Kos Poll (Which nation will be first to establish a permanent base on the Moon?)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/11/8/802191/-Ares-vs-the-Sidemount-and-the-Augustine-Commission

Funding NASA's Future

Credits: NASA

by Marcel F. Williams

The Augustine Commission testified before the Senate and the House of Representatives last week and were greeted with both praise and criticism by some of the legislators. Ironically, the commission was not criticized for reaching the conclusion that NASA would require a $3 billion increase in its annual budget since the legislators already knew that since our civilian space program has been underfunded for years-- if not decades. But they were rather critical about was the rather nebulous elevations of the alternatives to the Ares 1/Ares V architecture to return the US to the Moon-- especially since the commission appeared to conclude that all of the alternatives were almost equally as expensive as the Ares 1/Ares V architecture.

My own criticism of the Augustine Commission preliminary report was their odd treatment of NASA's Sidemount-heavy lift vehicle (SD-HLV) concept and the DIRECT concept for returning America to the Moon. For some reason, the Augustine Commission lumped them both together as so called shuttle derived concepts even though they are two significantly different concepts as far as complexity, development timelines, and cost. The SD-HLV only requires 8 new system starts for its development while DIRECT requires 18 and the Ares 1/ Ares V requires 35 new vehicle structural development starts. Secondly, they extended shuttle flights for 5 years onto the cost the shuttle derived concepts. There's nothing wrong with that since it would eliminate the gap between the old shuttle and the new manned space launch system. But no such financial burden was added to the Ares 1/ Ares V which would have inflated the cost of the Ares programs even more. Then in their budget analysis of the shuttle derived concepts, they required NASA to pay currently nonexistent commercial space companies to transport NASA astronauts into orbit even though both the Sidemount and DIRECT concepts are capable of transporting an Orion spacecraft to LEO just as the Ares 1 is capable of doing. Why?

The Orion vehicle is currently being funded at about $1.4 billion a year, a budget that's supposed to be increased to approximately $2 billion on average during the course of its development over the next 5 or 6 years starting in 2011. The Ares 1 is currently receiving over a billion dollars in annual funding with a budget that is set to increase up to another billion on average during the course of its development. Program integration and operations is supposed to add an additional billion on average to the cost of the Ares 1/Orion development starting in 2011. That's about a $2.6 billion dollar increase in the annual NASA budget with no funding for the development of the Ares V or the Altair lunar landing vehicles until the Ares1 and Orion vehicles are completed in 2015 or 2017. So that would mean no Moon landings until after 2020.

The current shuttle program cost about $3 billion annually. So a $3 billion dollar increase might could fund the shuttle until the Orion/Ares 1 vehicle is ready. Unfortunately, the Orion/Ares 1 would still be underfunded by about $2.6 billion. So only by canceling the shuttle program and raising the NASA budget by $2.6 billion could we fund the Orion/Ares 1. But if the space shuttle is decommissioned after 2010, this could leave NASA without a manned space vehicle for up to 5 to 7 years.

But NASA has argued that the SD-HLV could be developed for just $6.9 billion dollars over 5 to 6 years. An EDS (Earth Departure Stage) would be required to transport payloads beyond LEO at an estimated cost of less than $2.5 billion. NASA estimates the cost of developing the Altair lunar landing vehicle to be less than $4.2 billion. So in total, the cost of developing the SD-HLV plus EDS and Altair vehicles should be less than $13.6 billion. Over a 6 year vehicle development period, that would be less than $2.3 billion per year. So if the NASA's annual budget was increased by $3 billion and the Ares 1 program was canceled, there would be at least $4 billion dollars in extra funds. $600 million a year of this on average would go to the Orion program to raise its total budget close to $2 billion annually. $2.3 billion a year would go for the development of the SD-HLV, EDS, and Altair. That would leave over $1 billion a year of increased funding for program integration and operations. If the DOD (Department of Defense) has some interest in a heavy lift vehicle for launching larger satellites into polar orbit and maybe in having their own manned launch vehicle, maybe Obama can get even more funds for Orion and SD-HLV development from the military.

The main advantage of the SD-HLV over the Ares 1/Ares V architecture is that the heavy lift vehicle would be developed immediately and would be utilized for both the manned Orion and unmanned Altair launches. Additionally, there should be enough money to fully fund the development of the Altair lunar lander starting in 2010 instead of waiting until 2015 to 2017 to begin developing a lunar lander as would be the case with the Ares 1/Ares V scenario.

But what if these NASA estimates are significantly underestimated during the course of the vehicle development? Well approximately $5 billion a year in total funds would be annually committed to the development of the Orion, Altair, SD-HLV and EDS and associated infrastructure. Since all of these vehicles would be simultaneously under development and if one or more vehicles weren't ready by 2015 or 2016 then an additional $5 billion dollars would be available every year afterwords until all the vehicles are ready. That's up to $20 billion dollars in additional development funds if the vehicles are delayed until 2020 (the date when NASA is supposed to return to the Moon). So developing all of the vehicles simultaneously has clear timeline and budgetary advantages.

So in my opinion, President Obama and new NASA administrator, Bolden, need to:

1. increase the annual NASA budget by $3 billion
2. cancel the Ares 1 program
3. choose NASA's SD-HLV program to launch the Orion and Altair vehicles
and
4. begin fully funding the development of the Altair lunar landing vehicle as soon 2010

After the Orion, Altair, SD-HLV and new EDS vehicles are finally developed (perhaps as early as 2016!), the current shuttle can finally be retired and its $3 billion a year budget transferred to Orion and Altair HLV operations. But what will NASA do with the extra $5 billion a year in extra funds? Hopefully some of these extra funds will to used to build a continuously growing settlement on the Moon. But the rest should be utilized to develop the next generation of space vehicles designed for sending humans and habitat structures to Mars to begin the settlement of the Martian surface and for the exploitation of the natural resources of the moons of Mars.


NASA Budget info

Obama's NASA Decision

NASA's Ares Alternative: The Sidemount Shuttle

Obama's NASA Decision

by Marcel F. Williams

The Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee (the Augustine Commission) recently concluded that NASA's Constellation return to the Moon program is running $50 billion over the current budget through the year 2020. They also concluded that cheaper alternatives such as the NASA's Side-mount shuttle and the DIRECT concept would also exceed NASA's budget by at least $20 billion to $30 billion.

So it appears that the Augustine commission will recommend a $3 billion dollar increase to NASA's annual budget if the US is to return to the Moon or a termination of the Moon program in order to stay within NASA's current $17 billion dollar a year budget.

So what should President Obama do?

At the height of the Apollo program, the NASA budget reached $33 billion a year in today's dollars, nearly twice as large as NASA current budget. NASA's $17 billion annual budget represents less 0.6% of the total Federal budget while the US Federal government is spending nearly a trillion dollars annually on defense related purposes. So a $3 billion annual increase to the NASA budget would be extremely tiny relative to the overall Federal budget.

I believe that President Obama needs to raise the NASA budget while also choosing the fastest and the cheapest return to the Moon architecture. That's why President Obama needs to raise the annual NASA budget by at least $3 billion while choosing NASA's SD-HLV (Side-mount shuttle) concept in order to return to the Moon to set up a permanently manned lunar facility.

Terminating funding for the Ares 1 combined with a $3 billion annual increase should give NASA an extra $4 billion dollars a year to work with without immediately terminating the current Space Shuttle program or the ISS.

At least $700 million of that should go to finance the development the Orion (CEV) over the next 5 years which is currently being funded at nearly $1.4 billion a year. That would raise Orion funding to $2.1 billion a year over the next 5 years.

NASA has preliminarily estimated that the cost of developing the SD-HLV vehicles should cost $6.6 billion and could be ready for full testing in 4 and a half years. So 1.5 billion a year over the next 5 years should be more than enough to develop the SD-HLV vehicles.

That leaves another 1.8 billion a year to immediately start funding the development of the Altair lunar landing vehicle over the next 5 or 6 years so that America could be ready to return to the Moon by 2016. Why wait until 2020 to return to the Moon when the shuttle derived heavy lift vehicles could be ready by 2015 or 2016?

Additional funds for the development of the Moon program could be garnered by terminating the Space Shuttle program and US ISS involvement a year or more before the Orion-HLV and Altair-HLV space craft are ready. That would be $5 billion in additional funds if both the Shuttle and the ISS were terminated a year early and $10 billion if they were terminated two years early.

2016 should also be a time when NASA should have plenty of extra funds from both the termination of the Space Shuttle and ISS programs and from the completion of the Orion, Altair, and SD-HLV development programs: plenty of money for a continuously growing lunar base program and beyond.

The US space program has always been the ultimate symbol of America's scientific and technological achievement. And NASA has contributed far more to the economic wealth of the US than it has consumed. The expansion of humans into the rest of the solar system is essential to the long term survival our species and towards the continued economic growth of human civilization. That's why President Barack Obama needs to strongly commit the US towards leading that expansion of humanity into the New Frontier.

1. Augustine Commission
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2009/08/augustine-commission-recommends-that.html

2. NASAs-Ares-Alternative:-The-Side-mount-Shuttle

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/7/16/753191/-NASAs-Ares-Alternative:-The-Side-mount-Shuttle

3. Robots could build a base on the Moon

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/5/19/733423/-Robots-Could-Build-a-Base-on-the-Moon

© Marcel F. Williams
New Papyrus