Henry Spencer takes a look at the increasingly public problems with NASA’s Ares I and Ares V boosters, which are designed to carry the agency’s new Orion spacecraft to Earth orbit and the moon, respectively.
NASA thought it could easily adapt legacy shuttle hardware to the task. Not so much. Considerable upgrades were required, especially after Orion began to gain weight. That, in turn, caused the weight and cost of the rocket to grow as the schedule slipped. Meanwhile, Ares V might not be as cost effective to fly as NASA has stated.
Spencer believes that NASA’s savior could be its investment in the COTS program, which is providing funding to Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corporation to develop commercial transportation to the International Space Station. SpaceX is developing a human and cargo-rated versions of its Dragon spacecraft, which Musk says could also fly to the moon. Orbital’s program is building a robotic freighter.
“If COTS works out well and Ares continues to blunder on, I expect that Congress will quickly run out of patience and force NASA’s hand by cutting off Ares funding,” Spencer writes.
“The one ray of hope for NASA is that with the White House about to change hands, there will almost certainly be a new NASA administrator next year. Immediately upon assuming office, he or she might declare the Ares programme a write-off and order a major change of direction, blaming the problems on the previous administration. But this would have to be done quickly, while it’s still plausible to blame his or her predecessor.”
In a possible blow to NASA’s own COTS program, the space agency is considering purchasing the Japanese HTV cargo freighter to aid in the resupply of the International Space Station, The Yomiuri Shimbun reports.
“The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration has begun unofficial negotiations with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency on purchasing units of the H-2 Transfer Vehicle (HTV), an unmanned cargo transfer spacecraft developed in Japan, as the successor to its space shuttles, which are to retire in 2010, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Saturday.
“Behind the move is NASA’s concern that the retirement of its space shuttles will make it difficult for the United States to fulfill its responsibilities to deliver water, food and materials for scientific experiments to the International Space Station.”
Space X and Orbital Sciences Corporation are currently developing commercial ISS resupply vehicles under NASA’s COTS program. It’s possible that NASA’s efforts are part of a contingency plan to guard against delays in the COTS effort.
UPDATE: NASA has released a statement denying the story:
“Contrary to news reports, NASA has not officially or unofficially been discussing the purchase of H-II Transfer Vehicles (HTV) — uninhabited resupply cargo ships for the space station — from the Japanese Space Agency, or JAXA.
“NASA is committed to domestic commercial cargo resupply to the space station and does not plan to procure cargo delivery services from Japan. As part of our original agreements as compensation for common system operating costs NASA has limited cargo capability on the Japanese and European cargo vehicles. NASA has recently issued a request for proposal for the cargo needs of International Space Station beyond those supplied by our current international agreements. NASA has chosen to depend on commercial resupply of cargo delivery to the station.”
Falcon 1 lifts off on its second test flight. Credit: SpaceX
Third Time’s the Charm?
Geoffrey Little
Air & Space Magazine
“For [Elon] Musk, it’s a critical moment in his second career. A co-founder of PayPal with a personal fortune estimated at more than $300 million, the South African native has sunk more than a third of that amount into his 470-person space company. This is not a hobby; SpaceX’s manifest lists 14 launches through 2011, all with customers who have contracted for low-cost launches on Falcon 1 and the much larger Falcon 9, which is being built and tested for launch early next year.
“Musk aims to use these rockets and their variants to smash the current price to reach orbit. A Falcon-1 launch costs under $8 million, about half the industry average; the Falcon 9 goes for less than $37 million to lift 7,700 pounds to low Earth orbit; a planned Falcon-9 Heavy will be able to lift 62,000 pounds for $94.5 million.”
SpaceX has delayed the scheduled third test flight of its Falcon 1 launch until at least the end of July amid conflicting reports amid conflicting reports from founder Elon Musk as to why…..
SpaceX pushes back target date for next Falcon 1 launch
Spaceflight Now
23 June 2008
“Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Space Exploration Technologies Corp., said the U.S. Army range at Kwajalein Atoll will be busy with other activities for the next month.
“‘Launch is no sooner than late July to early August,’ Musk said. ‘We will use the time to do additional checkouts.’
Minute Defect Delays SpaceX’s Falcon 1 Launch Again
Space.com
30 June 2008
A tiny weld defect discovered in one of the Falcon 1’s engine nozzles as the rocket was being readied for a late June launch contributed to Space Exploration Technologies’ (SpaceX) decision to postpone its third attempt to put the rocket into orbit by at least a month…
“One Kwajalein official told Space News the range would be open and available throughout July with no launch activity on the schedule ‘unless there’s a black program going on that I don’t know about.’
“[Army Missile Command spokesman John] Cummings confirmed that the range would remain open throughout July, but said he did not know whether it is available to SpaceX sooner than July 29. ‘We haven’t looked because they did not ask for it,’ he said.”
SPACEX PRESS RELEASE
McGregor TX – Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) conducted the first five-engine firing of its Falcon 9 medium to heavy lift rocket at its Texas Test Facility outside McGregor on Thursday, May 29. At full power the engines generated almost half a million pounds of force, and consumed 1,750 lbs of fuel and liquid oxygen per second. This five engine test again sets the record as the most powerful test yet on the towering 235-foot tall test stand.
The test of the five Merlin 1C engines, arranged in a cross pattern like the Saturn V moon rocket, is the last step before firing the full complement of nine engines, scheduled for this summer. With all engines operating, the Falcon 9 generates over one million pounds of thrust in vacuum - four times the maximum thrust of a 747 aircraft.
“This is the first time that we’ve added more than one engine at a time, and all phases of integration and testing went smoothly,” said Tom Mueller, Vice President of Propulsion for SpaceX. “As with previous tests, we saw no unexpected interactions between the engines, and are on schedule for adding four more engines.”
The first Falcon 9 will arrive at the SpaceX launch site at Cape Canaveral by the end of 2008. The next flight of SpaceX’s smaller Falcon 1 rocket is scheduled for late June or July of 2008.
Officials in Hawthorne, California are hoping that SpaceX will help bring the city back its aerospace glory days, the Daily Breeze reports. Elon Musk’s company is now building Falcon rockets and Dragon spacecraft in the same building where Boeing once assembled 747 fuselages.
“I think SpaceX will basically bring Hawthorne back to the aerospace heydays,” Hawthorne councilman Gary Parsons tells the newspaper. “You have a major anchor like SpaceX, and then you’ll have other smaller companies coming to Hawthorne to serve SpaceX. It’s sort of returning to the aerospace renaissance of the good old days when Hawthorne was a central hub of aerospace activity.”
Bloomberg.com has an interesting profile of SpacX founder Elon Musk, the California-based entrepreneur who is trying to make access to space cheap and routine with his Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets.
“I personally wonder if Musk doesn’t want to be Time Man of the Year,” says Strategic Space Development CEO James Cantrell. “He wants recognition for changing the destiny of man.”
The main thing standing in his way is a couple of successful launches. Both Falcon 1 flights failed; a third is scheduled for June from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Falcon 9 has yet to fly.
In addition to trying to conquer space, Musk is making his mark in the automotive industry through his investment in Tesla Motors, which is making a $98,000 electric car that runs on laptop batteries. The main obstacle there has been the inability to find a decent transmission. Tesla is now producing one vehicle per week at a plant in England using an interim gearbox.
Below is an excerpt from a GAO Report titled, “NASA: Challenges in Completing and Sustaining the International Space Station,” that was presented to Congress last week. The except offers a succinct explanation of NASA’s COTS program and the challenges it faces over the next few years. As you will see, GAO is not real optimistic…
“NASA is working with the commercial space sector through its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program to develop and produce vehicles that can take equipment and crew to and from the space station. NASA expects that these vehicles will be ready for cargo use in 2010 and crew use in 2012. However, these vehicles have yet to be successfully launched into orbit, and some NASA officials have acknowledged that their development schedules leave little room for the unexpected.
“Under the COTS program, NASA has pledged $500 million to promote commercial opportunities for space transportation vehicles. Using Space Act agreements instead of traditional contracting mechanisms, NASA will make payments to companies based on the achievement of key milestones during the development of their vehicles. These agreements are both funded and unfunded. For the two funded agreements that have been reached, NASA stated that the commercial suppliers for space transportation services will have customers outside of ISS, including NASA’s Constellation program, which plans to send humans back to the moon and eventually Mars. The COTS program will occur in phases. In the first phase companies will demonstrate the vehicle launch and docking capabilities with the ISS. The second phase is the procurement of services for transportation of cargo and crew to the ISS, which is scheduled to begin sometime in the 2010 time frame.
Continue reading ‘Construction Ahead: Expect Delays’
Celestis will launch the ashes of 208 people into orbit aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket in June. The flight, which will be launched out of the Marshall Islands, will be the seventh and largest memorial flight undertaken by the Houston-based company. There is more information at the Space Frontier Foundation website.
SpaceX, based in El Segundo, Calif., is hoping that the third time is a charm for their low-cost rocket. Two previous Falcon 1 launch attempts have failed; the first exploded shortly after takeoff, while the second reached space but failed to put its payload into orbit.
NASA PRESS RELEASE
WASHINGTON — NASA has awarded Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, a NASA Launch Services contract for the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 launch vehicles.
The NASA Launch Services contracts are multiple awards to multiple launch service providers. Twice per year, there is an opportunity for existing and emerging domestic launch service providers to submit proposals if their vehicles meet the minimum contract requirements.
The contract is an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract where NASA may order launch services through June 30, 2010, for launches to occur through December 2012. Under the NASA Launch Services IDIQ contracts, the potential total contract value is between $20,000 and $1 billion, depending on the number of missions awarded.
Continue reading ‘SpaceX Wins NASA Contract for Falcon Launches’