The Space Review: Two SLS to Jupiter: The motivations and ramifications of the Europa mission’ Comments

Egad

Sun, 24 Jul 2016 19:42:46 +0000

> So the next time somebody says that Congress should listen to engineers--they DID. Jeff Bingham used to say that on nasaspaceflight.com a lot. Details about who the engineers were and what, exactly, they said were not forthcoming. Nor was it clear whether other views were presented to the Congress. If Mr. Guest could fill some of that in, it would be useful.

Guest

Fri, 22 Jul 2016 22:12:55 +0000

The July 11, 2016 Space Review article by Cody Knipher liad out solid technical reasons behind the choice of SLS. Yet that author ended his piece by saying that "Congress (was) playing engineer." I can assure you that no one in Congress ever sat on the drafting table on SLS. Congress did in fact listen to engineers engineers who backed Shuttle-derived Heavy Lift Launch Vehicles that is. Engineers like Mike Griffin, who--after all--wrote an AIAA textbook on spacecraft design. That Cody Knipfer left that fact out of his article makes me question his intellectual honesty. There is support for HLLVs like SLS in engineering circles. Now there may be engineers who dislike SLS. Engineers who work at ULA perhaps, who would rather sell many costly EELVs to do the job of a few SLS launch vehicles, as Josh Hopkins explained in his Space Review article "Doubts about Depots." There are individuals in Planetary Science circles who will benefit from SLS missions to Europa--many of them individuals who would have opposed having to share any funds with pro-HLLV engineers, who have been on the outside looking in for far too long. I once called C-SPAN to talk with Dan Goldin, former NASA Chief. I questioned the wisdom of the (now failed) X-33 winner (the Rockwell entrant was more sound)--and its Venture-Star follow on. Mr. Goldin also said that that decision should be "left to engineers." The engineers I know supported HLLVs, that are of simpler build than Venture Star ever would be. If there was ever a poor political decision that triumphed over engineering--it was Venture Star, or SLI for that matter. NOT the Space Launch System. I would dare say that President Obama's decision to kill Ares/Constellation was political. An example of the fix being in--so to speak--was the inclusion of Jeff Greason of the NewSpace ROTON debacle. New-spacers also salivated over the possibility of killing off SLS in order to raid its budget for their own pet projects. HLLV advocates have never had it easy. The USAF/ULA lobby would rather have EELVs, or Space X launchers in the case of New Spacers--who forget the fact that no Falcon has liquid hydrogen capability--useful for its higher specific impulse. Some planetary scientists would have been perfectly happy to keep using Delta IIs to the end of time. Support HLLVs, and you make a lot of enemies, whose objections--in my estimation are more heat than light. Mr. Knipfer himself acknowledged the advantages of SLS in his own article. SLS frees up payload and shroud constraints that are the true bane of anyone who wants more in depth exploration than current LVs allow. ATLAST and other space telescopes are more do-able with SLS. Webb is compliocated and expensive--more than an SLS launch in fact--because of the limited size of its LV. The technical reasons in defense of HLLVs like SLS are sound. But dare to point them out--and the nay-sayers simply dismiss it as cheerleading, or "pork" (as if JPL isn't Pasadena's "pork.") Yes, SLS is expensive. So are Large Hadron, LIGO and a lot of other things. Compared to the 1.5 trillion dollar life-cycle budget for F-35--SLS is a bargain. A return to heavy-lift has been advocated since the mistake of killing the Saturns. Shuttle-derived HLLVs have gone by many names: ALS/NLS, Magnum, CaLV, Ares V, DIRECT, and now SLS. Augustine himself called for such. So the next time somebody says that Congress should listen to engineers--they DID. That Mr. Knipfer and the poster above don't like what those engineers had to say to Congress is their problem.

Guest

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 19:58:01 +0000

The SLS is a dead space ship flying. The FH has grown from 80000 to 120000 lb in Non-crossfeed mode. Crossfeed mode ads 50% to payload capability. This means that a falcon heavy could lift 180,000 lb or 80 tonnes. This is 10 tonnes more than SLS. Since spaceX depends on NASA it won't announce this until FH has been flying for a while. But this is closer than the SLS. If a politician wanted to kill the SLS they could put in a J-2X on a crossfeed FH as a Second stage and have a lift capability of more than 100 tons. Such a second stage could even be reusable.

Skeptic

Sun, 17 Jul 2016 18:32:49 +0000

"... is far more important than national pride." I see the issue as more of maintaining national industrial capability than national pride.

Statisticus

Sat, 16 Jul 2016 02:57:47 +0000

Some years ago I read former JPL director Bruce Murray's book "Journey Into Space", in which he recounted the history of unmanned probes to explore Mars and Venus and the other planets. One of the things I recall is that large missions to the planets to be launched atop the Saturn V. Like the proposed Europa missions discussed here these would have allowed for large spacecraft to be launched on fast trajectories. He described these as being largely politically motivated in order to manufacture a use for a vehicle which the scientists did not require - nice to have, perhaps, but the exploration program was getting on just fine without it.

11poiuy11

Thu, 14 Jul 2016 06:40:28 +0000

"it's better that Congress mandate that NASA flagship missions fly aboard US launchers" to be honest, if the choice is between launching the jwst on an ariane 5 or not launching at all, i will take the foreign launcher any day of the week (even if it was a russian or chinese launch vehicle). for me, personally, actually achieving the scientific goals is far more important than national pride.

Localfluff

Wed, 13 Jul 2016 14:38:53 +0000

I think that Mr. Cumbersome has made a great contribution to space exploration. -<" How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the SLS ">- SLS is very fit to do robotic missions to the outer planets which need speed and radiation shields. Even a rover on Mars costs $3bn so the few hundreds of millions of launch costs don't matter much for such missions. SLS seems to me unfit to do any crewed launches, because of the risks of new and rarely launched rockets, so planetary probes, and maybe giant space telescopes, should be its market (and maybe they have a giant spy satellite up their sleeves). Crew should instead be launched on small proven rockets, where Soyuz still excels extraordinarily. But SLS still has its potential niche market: The Congress. They'll make up uses for their monster, and a thorough investigation of Europa is not a bad idea at all.

Coastal Ron

Tue, 12 Jul 2016 20:35:22 +0000

Launching an operational mission on only the second launch of a developmental system (and first launch of the upper stage) is risky. No humans are involved, so it's just money (and pride) that are at risk, but since it's U.S. Taxpayer money, and there is no immediate need for this mission, it reeks of an unnecessary risk. Instead, NASA could rely upon commercial launchers that use dual launch strategy. The first launch to put an Earth departure stage in orbit, and the second launch with the payload and potentially an additional departure motor. ULA's planned Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage (ACES) would be perfect for this. This would provide for a far less expensive option for getting a low-priority science mission to it's destination in a reasonable amount of time. U.S. Taxpayers would be happy. Even with these two science missions the manifest for SLS launches is still looking rather bare, and there is still no evidence that NASA truly requires sending large amounts of mass into space on a yearly basis for decades to come. Which is why these Europa missions are pretty transparent attempts to justify the SLS... and I don't think it's working. Luckily the science payloads can still be launched by commercial launchers when the SLS is cancelled, so the science can continue...

oldengg

Tue, 12 Jul 2016 18:13:15 +0000

"A Boeing study, presented at the 46th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in 2015, concluded that “SLS performance enables larger payloads and faster travel times with reduced operational complexity when compared to original concept studies.” " Duh--obviously. For the mid-1970s Viking 1 and 2 missions to Mars, the Voyager 1 and 2, and the Helios mission, NASA arranged with the USAF and Martin Marietta to purchase the Titan IIIE ELV with the Centaur-D and Star 37- E upper stages, the most powerful ELV configuration at the time for planetary missions. No mystery why NASA did this. Big spacecraft need big ELVs. It was only in 1990s and following that NASA embraced the "faster, better, cheaper" idea, which forced NASA's Space Science Directorate to downsize the science spacecraft to fit on smaller, cheaper ELVs. Now, NASA and Congress are looking furtively for rationale to justify the immense cost of the SLS. So the space science community can benefit from the gift of increased payload capability. Their spacecraft can come off their two decade diets and the scientists and engineers can splurge on more massive payloads for their projects. Good for them. It's about time.

BYEMAN

Tue, 12 Jul 2016 16:20:57 +0000

NASA has no need to "urgently" know about volatiles. Nor finding these volatiles would automatically lead to lower transportation cost. NASA's job is exploration and not exploitation.

J_R_S

Tue, 12 Jul 2016 05:57:28 +0000

Now I get it... SLS stands for "Slow Launch System" -- meaning that by the time the thing ever files, other systems with have eclipsed it. It will then be deemed "to expensive to fly" and junked. More than 50 years ago we were able to go from the little Redstone rocket to the first launch of the Saturn V in six years... and there were *people* sitting on top of them. Given that the SLS is basically just a slightly larger Saturn V with some existing left-over Space Shuttle boosters tacked on, I find its 10-year development trajectory to be underwhelming.

Gerald Black

Tue, 12 Jul 2016 05:11:40 +0000

Great article. I wholeheartedly agree with the author that, although exploring Europa is a commendable goal, one of the biggest problems hampering NASA on Europa exploration as well as other issues is interference from congress. Congressional micromanagement of NASA by congress almost always turns out bad. Launching the Europa orbiter and lander on the SLS is a particularly bad idea. Since the plan now is to launch the orbiter and lander separately, a smaller and much less expensive launch vehicle such as the Atlas V or the Falcon Heavy would certainly be up to the task. Utilizing the SLS not only greatly increases the cost of the Europa mission but also increases the risk. A multi-billion dollar flagship mission such as the Europa mission should only be launched on rockets that have a proven record of reliability. However, if the Europa orbiter mission launches in 2022 as mandated by congress, it would likely be only the second launch of the SLS and the first launch of the SLS utilizing the Exploration Upper Stage - an upper stage that has never been flight tested before. This is just not a good idea. And the other problem is where does the money come from? NASA officials have already stated in testimony before congress that increasing the SLS launch rate to once a year will require a large increase in NASA's budget. Yet, there have been no indications from either the Clinton or Trump camps that this is in the cards. Without a large increase in NASA's budget, such a heavy emphasis on Europa would starve other NASA plans, such as robotic missions to Mars, astrophysics missions, or deep space human missions. There is also the real possibility, even likelihood that the SLS program will be cancelled before the Europa Orbiter is ready for launch. Already several experts who have been lifelong advocates of a strong space program, such as Buzz Aldrin, Christopher Kraft and others, have called for cancelling of the SLS. If SpaceX and Blue Origin continue having more and more success reusing their launch vehicles, as is likely, the SLS will look more and more obsolete. Calls for cancelling the SLS are only likely to increase due to its enormous expense compared to reusable commercial launch vehicles.

Robert G. Oler

Tue, 12 Jul 2016 03:47:25 +0000

the entire thing is goofy. its not only the use of SLS it is what does anyone expect a lander to prove?

richardmalcolm1564

Tue, 12 Jul 2016 02:46:30 +0000

Might as well mention the elephant in the room: Is it really such a sacrifice to allow NASA the liberty of using a Falcon Heavy for this? There are issues and compromises to be made, to be sure: A narrower faring will dictate adjusting the probe design; the upper stage question would have to be resolved; and it's unclear to me, without knowing more about the probe weight and said upper stage, whether the Venus-Earth-Earth gravity assist could be dispensed with (and I do appreciate the value in shaving a few years off transit time). But FH is going to fly within several months; it already has a commercial market to guarantee it will be flying; its payload (53mt to LEO, perhaps more) isn't all THAT much less than SLS Block I (70mt to LEO); and it will be a heck of a lot cheaper. It will also be a considerably more proven launch vehicle by 2022-24. Whereas SLS will have only a single launch under its belt, and that before a gap of four years or so.

Joe Rossini

Tue, 12 Jul 2016 00:15:19 +0000

I believe we need to find a use for SLS and for that matter further need for NASA. We need to go back to the moon and also go to Mars and it is the SLS that will lead us there. I do feel that the lag time between mission one and two is far too long and that this system should be tested.

Dwayne Day

Mon, 11 Jul 2016 23:43:30 +0000

You are talking about resource assessment missions, not science missions. The science community is very clear on their priorities. There is no community advocating for missions to conduct resource assessments.

Paul_Scutts

Mon, 11 Jul 2016 22:05:09 +0000

I, for one, applaud the efforts towards a Europa mission, that includes a lander, irrespective of the launch vehicle selected or mandated, so long as it is fully funded and that such funding does not adversely affect any/all other NASA programs. As stated within the article, the big unknown is what is going to happen, if anything, upon the change in administration. I hope that this program is seen through to it's successful completion.

Marcel F. Williams

Mon, 11 Jul 2016 21:55:27 +0000

I simply don't understand the urgency of any expensive unmanned missions to Europa when NASA still hasn't quantified how much water ice and other volatiles are at the lunar poles and how much water ice and volatiles are on the surfaces of the martian moons, Phobos and Deimos. These are the resources in very important places in within the solar system that NASA-- urgently needs to know about-- in order to lower the cost of future human space travel for both government and private space programs. Marcel

Skeptic

Mon, 11 Jul 2016 21:42:40 +0000

I don't recall the launch vehicle was mandated by Congress, but the Voyager unmanned probe (the original one---to Mars) was planned for a launch atop a Saturn V. It never flew. The Saturn V's operational life span---short---didn't allow for using it for unmanned probes. That the Saturn V was deemed "too expensive" to keep was the beginning of a very bad habit the US has fallen into, namely, building good, reliable launch vehicles, then deeming them "too expensive" to use, so we scrap them. SLS has such an uncertain future that odds are Europa won't make it to the launch pad either. It, likely, will be the next launch vehicle deemed "too expensive" and so may never reach the launch pad. But, at any rate, whatever happens to SLS, it's better that Congress mandate that NASA flagship missions fly aboard US launchers, rather than have the Webb Telescope launched by Ariane. That's just embarrassing.

Dwayne Day

Mon, 11 Jul 2016 21:20:55 +0000

Just to be clear: at the end of Europa Report it's a woman in the spacecraft, and it's not clear that the Europan octopi eats anybody. I think it was just trying to be friendly, in its own clumsy way.