Briefs: Fooling with numbers; Go boldly but not blindly

Like a good lawyer coming up with a plausible defense for even the most obviously guilty client, an ATK manager argues that a solid rocket booster for a manned vehicle is the safest possible way to fly: "Nature cannot be fooled": Crew safety must be paramount concern - Washington Times.

I think Richard Feynman would find it highly ironic that ATK now uses his statements to bolster its claim that a SRB based rocket that's at least 6 years from flying must be safer by calculation than two currently operational rockets (Delta IV and Atlas V), neither of which has yet had a catastrophic failure (Delta IV launch history, Atlas V launch history), are used for billion dollar payloads, and will have flown dozens more times by 2015. And, of course, how ATK or MSFC knows that Ares I is 3 to 5 times safer than Falcon 9 is anyone's guess.

When a MSFC representative during the Augustine panel hearing gave a four decimal place estimate on the safety of the Ares I/Orion, I thought he must have missed the first lesson in his freshman physics lab course in which the difference between precision and accuracy was explained.
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I know these guys mean well - www.GoBoldlyNASA.org - but I can't support giving more money to an agency that would waste it on absurdly expensive projects like Ares I/Ares V. If the cost of access to space cannot be reduced substantially from currently levels, it is pointless to continue with human spaceflight. These projects neither lower space access costs nor lay a technology development path towards lower costs.

Other commentary about their site:
/-- Compelling reasons, or lack thereof - Space Politics
/-- Send More Money - Transterrestrial Musings

Posted 09/27/09 | 16:33:30 by TopSpacer | Filed under: Space policy

Comments

the washington times piece is such a lie it is stunning. ares I is a theoretical rocket unlike any ever built. who can believe this stuff? only someone who wants to.

no one has ever flown on top of a solid motor like that, or built a solid motor that big, or built a launch escape system just like that...

and to make matters worse?

ask yourself if anyone at nasa or atk has EVER built a rocket to fly people.

Posted by donnie at 09/27/09 18:00:13

I think maybe a better comparison (instead of using every vaguely SRB-ish LV to justify the safety of Ares-I) would be as follows:

Ares I successful Launches: 0
Falcon 9 Successful Launches: 0

Ares I number of engine failures allowable for successful mission: 0

Falcon I number of engine failures allowable for successful mission: 1-2

Posted by e. spengler at 09/27/09 21:13:26

I posted this next msg over at the Washington Post site, but I thought I'd copy it over here also for discussion. Sorry for the length!

Posted by w1ntermute0 at 09/27/09 21:20:26

As program manager for the CxP program, I don't think anyone is surprised by your article's suggestion that Ares I is the best safest way to get crew to LEO, but that notwithstanding I have a few points I'd like to offer an alt opinion on:

1. "Fundamental considerations about mission, .... all seem to pull in different directions." I don't believe this is true. There's some kind of underlying mantra in much of the established US aerospace industry that you can't possibly offer any kind of orbital transport service, especially one which includes crew, for low cost. But if you look at Russia or the EU, these programs operate at tiny fractions of the cost of the US space program, and still deliver safe results. There are a number of smaller US companies that see this, and the big guys of course are all skeptical and say it can't be done, mainly because they don't want to lose their business or because it can't be done in *their* organization that way because of the sheer size and built in overhead in the way they approach these projects.

2. "The Columbia Accident Investigation Board report provides useful insight for moving forward..."

"Ares I was designed from the start with crew safety and mission reliability as key requirements. Multiple studies show that goal was achieved"

"Though commercial vehicles with a launch abort system may be safer than the shuttle, they still lag behind Ares I safety by a factor of 3 to 5.. Asking start-up companies ... fraught with multiple unknowns, ..."

Your entire article is effectively about safety, and you use the Columbia Accident Investigation Board as some sort of gold standard to which everything must adhere. I'm not really sure why you picked this accident investigation, I guess it suited your purposes, but there are hundreds of investigations, reports, tests, etc.. which as a whole should be used to guide our future space endeavors. From Challenger and Columbia we learned 2 concrete things from a design standpoint, namely that the o-rings in the SRBs were designed poorly and failed at low temperature, and that poorly adhered insulation coming off the ET has the capability to damage the shuttle's TPS. These things are empirical facts. Certainly these investigations revealed many other useful pieces of information about company culture, decision making, etc.., but to somehow make the jump from there that the Ares program is the only one that can take advantage of these findings makes no sense. Any company that plans on being successful will of course use all the information about past failures to help design a robust and safe system. If you read any of the information coming out of the "new space" companies, many of them make specific references to designing around these reports.

In the second quote you claim that the Ares mission reliability goal was achieved. I'm as big a fan of putting the cart before the horse as anyone, but really? It was achieved before a single launch? The stuff we hear in the news about Thrust Oscillation and launch abort system difficulties show that just like any other brand new launch system, Ares has it's share of problems, unknowns, and potential failure mechanisms. The difference is the price tag. I'm sure that these problems can be solved and Ares I can work safely. But like the Augustine commission said, even if the whole program was delivered working perfectly *today*, it would have to be canceled immediately because of cost. I'd like to see NASA get a boost in budget as much as any space enthusiast, but the "new space" guys are working on systems that are orders of magnitude cheaper. Sure they face problems too, but I don't think you can show that somehow the problems the new-space guys have are so much different than the Ares problems that they are impossible to solve. I have no idea how you can calculate the safety of multiple never-flown and not even completely designed launch systems, so I feel pretty safe in discounting the "3 to 5" times safer comment. I fail to see how the "unknowns and risks" you mention the COTS/CRS guys having are any different than the Ares unknowns and risks.

Let me offer one final scenario for consideration. Lets suppose that to get to IOC on Ares I it takes 20 Billion USD. I think the real number is much higher, but lets use 20. So after 20B of taxpayer money is spent, you have flown the Ares I-X and now you have an Ares I ready for its first launch. Now lets say that you could also take that same 20B, and give it to one of the new-space guys. With that money they are able to complete development on their launch vehicle, and also give the government 20 cargo launches to LEO. These guys probably could deliver 150 launches for 20B, but lets say 20. During the first 6, there are 2 failures which cause some re-design, but the last 14 launches are successful. Now, you have a choice of which LV you want to ride on to go to the ISS. Which one do you choose?

Posted by w1ntermute0 at 09/27/09 21:22:08

EELV can be improved for a billion.

New pad, some minor reduncancy added.

What else would you neeed.

Posted by anonymous at 09/27/09 23:12:31

<i>If the cost of access to space cannot be reduced substantially from currently levels, it is pointless to continue with human spaceflight.</i>

<p>I'm glad this point is being reinforced. The goal of space programs is not to spend money, not to keep standing armies consuming federal funds, but to advance toward ends that are actually useful. If a road doesn't get there, it's pointless to take even the first step on it.

Posted by Paul at 09/28/09 11:26:33

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