Why Orion’s heat shield problems give Jared Isaacman the perfect justification to cancel all of SLS/Orion
Damage to Orion heat shield caused during re-entry in 2022,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”
In yesterday’s press conference announcing new delays in NASA’s next two SLS/Orion Artemis missions to the Moon, agency officials were remarkably terse in providing details on why large chunks of Orion’s heat shield material broke off during its return to Earth in 2022 during the first Artemis mission. That damage, shown to the right, is one of the main reasons for the newly announced launch delays.
All they really said was that the damage was caused during re-entry, the atmosphere causing more stress than expected on the heat shield.
Today NASA finally released a more detailed explanation.
Engineers determined as Orion was returning from its uncrewed mission around the Moon, gases generated inside the heat shield’s ablative outer material called Avcoat were not able to vent and dissipate as expected. This allowed pressure to build up and cracking to occur, causing some charred material to break off in several locations.
…During Artemis I, engineers used the skip guidance entry technique to return Orion to Earth. … Using this maneuver, Orion dipped into the upper part of Earth’s atmosphere and used atmospheric drag to slow down. Orion then used the aerodynamic lift of the capsule to skip back out of the atmosphere, then reenter for final descent under parachutes to splashdown.
[Ground testing during the investigation showed] that during the period between dips into the atmosphere, heating rates decreased, and thermal energy accumulated inside the heat shield’s Avcoat material. This led to the accumulation of gases that are part of the expected ablation process. Because the Avcoat did not have “permeability,” internal pressure built up, and led to cracking and uneven shedding of the outer layer.
In other words, instead of ablating off in small layers, the gas build-up caused the Avcoat to break off in large chunks, with the breakage tending to occur at the seams between sections of the heat shield.
Unquestionably, this issue requires Orion to have a new heat shield, and NASA intends to design a new one for the Artemis-3 mission. It however has also decided that it can still fly Artemis-2 first, with this flawed heat shield design, by changing Orion’s angle of return through the atmosphere. Agency officials have decided that this risk is worth taking — with four astronauts on board Orion — in order to avoid the significant delays creating and installing a new heat shield for Artemis-2.
If a private company wanted to fly NASA astronauts under these conditions on its own capsule, I can guarantee NASA would object, and say no. In fact, it did so only a few months ago, when Boeing’s engineers said astronauts could return safely on Starliner and NASA rejected that idea. Then, safety came first!
In the case of NASA’s own Orion capsule, however, the rules don’t apply, and NASA is going to proceed with Artemis-2, manned, despite using a heat shield that really does not work as intended. With NASA’s own capsule, scheduling overrides safety.
Ironically, NASA’s intellectual dishonesty about Orion’s heat shield was further underlined by another NASA press release that NASA released today, written to literally celebrate the tenth anniversary of the first test flight of Orion in 2014, in which NASA spent a fortune flying Orion on a Delta Heavy rocket to test a heat shield design it had already decided not to use on Artemis-1.
As is typical of NASA when it comes to its SLS/Orion work, today’s press release conveniently made no mention of this fundamental fact, simply saying “The 4.5-hour mission demonstrated Orion’s space-worthiness, tested the spacecraft’s heat shield during reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere, and proved the capsule’s recovery systems.”
This is a lie. The 2014 mission did not test Orion’s heat shield. If it had, it would have likely discovered, in 2014, the heat shield problems that occurred eight years later, on the 2022 Artemis-1 mission. What had happened is that NASA had already decided to replace the first heat shield design, because it was too costly and slow to install. It flew the 2014 mission with that abandoned design, not to test the heat shield, but to fly a PR stunt in order to convince the press and politicians that funding SLS and Orion should continue, that the program was on schedule and would fly Artemis-1 around the Moon in 2017.
That certainly didn’t happen as promised.
This data strongly suggests that NASA’s new administrator under Trump, Jared Isaacman, should take a really really hard look at the entire Artemis-2 manned mission now scheduled for April 2026. Though political pressure is making this mission hard to cancel, the technical issues say otherwise. The entire history of Orion’s heat shield, beginning in 2014, illustrates the underlying corruption in the program.
In fact, maybe that defective heat shield gives Isaacman the best justification to scrap the entire SLS/Orion portion of the Artemis lunar program. How can anyone ask him to take the responsibility of flying four astronauts around the Moon using a capsule whose heat shield cannot be trusted upon return?
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So, the same problems SpaceX has to work through to make Starship re-entries viable are a reason to cancel Orion. Got it.
Murcek, I don’t think you understand what is being said. I see a contrast of repetitive testing and transparency versus non-testing and word games, along with several big dashes of hypocrisy.
Might want to try comparing apples to apples with this one. Orion is a capsule. Compare to Dragon, Progress, EU ATV, Kunotori or Cygnus, none of which are costing billions to perfect or appear to have similar problems to Orion. Compare Starship with Shuttle (tiles). Heat shield work is a lot cheaper also. Cheers –
Orion vs. Starship
Number of test flights remaining before first re-entry with human crew:
Starship: many
Orion: none
Well, I’m talking about Starship, not Dragon. Apples and oranges, eh? No Dragon capsule is going to the moon. Starship still had burn through on it’s most recent mission. Word is SpaceX is going in a different direction from tiles in the future.
Murcek, is the next Starship going to carry astronauts? No? Then you’re comparing apples to dingbats. Do try to keep comparisons of like to like.
The choir is predictable. Probably one more reason the “short” fundraiser for the site “sadly” had to be extended.
Murcek:
The flaw of your comparison is that Starship is being designed to be re-usable, with the ultimate objective actually RAPID re-usability as in just hours. That drives quite a different set of requirements for the thermal protection system.
In contrast Orion is a use once and throw away design that builds on a lot of existing experience. That it is facing issues is still not that surprising, as the article notes the re-entry profile used by Artemis I was new and unique. But it is still disturbing to see NASA so willing to cut corners in certifying a man rated platform. Remember, they also intend to send Artemis II all the way to the moon for the first time with a life support system on this flight. Would YOU fly on this mission with two such important sub-systems still to be proven flight ready?
Ablative heat shield doesn’t ablate. Well it does, just in large chunks all at once. They had the explanation a long time before today. Those in the know probably expected it to some degree. The organization may be corrupt as a whole, but not everyone there is ignorant or stupid.
It seems obvious to me this thing needs to fly again unmanned, just like Starliner needed to do, and Starship is going to do a lot.
They said numerous issues were resolved with the life support system during ground testing. Those problems were not planned (duh), and neither will be whatever crops up during flight. Nobody needs to explain to them that launch and flight are entirely different animals that can not be fully simulated on the ground.
Also, is canceling or flying the whole system the only option? I can imagine heat shields flown on surrogates, unmanned Orion on a Falcon or Falcon heavy to low earth, etc.
Murcek,
The reason to consider cancelling Orion isn’t that it’s got a flawed heat shield. Heat shields are engineering problems, and they have engineering solutions. And given enough time and money, yeah, NASA and LockMart ought to be able to come up with a solution.
No, the reason to consider killing it is hinted at in the ludicrously long process described by Mr Zimmerman by which it got to this point. It’s a conservative capsule design that has been in development since 2006, costing nearly $30 billion (and counting). Because it’s a cost-plus procurement with thousands of contractors in both the US and Europe with a vast standing army of 30K workers and an even bigger standing army of NASA regs and procedures that makes even touching this vehicle time consuming and worth Croesus’s ransom. It just isn’t sustainable. And Bob is right: if this had happened to a Commercial Crew vehicle, NASA wouldn’t let it fly astronauts again until they fixed it and flew another (successful) uncrewed test flight. But NASA is going to put crew on its next flight anyway!
If Apollo had worked this way we wouldn’t have reached the Moon until 1985.
“Word is SpaceX is going in a different direction from tiles in the future.”
Just to touch on this point: Elon did hint in a tweet several days ago that the Starship team might be taking another look at transpirational cooling for reentry. But it’s hard to unpack that – we don’t know how serious that process is, or whether it would merely supplement the tile shield or replace it if they do pursue it.
In any event, the day when human beings (let alone ones working for NASA) actually strap into a crewed version of Starship for launch and return to terra firma – as opposed to the version that will only land on and launch from the Moon – is several years and hundreds of Starship flights in the future. That’s the benefit of a hardware rich program and vertical integration: You can learn and iterate it. And you can derive economies of scale. SLS and Orion have none of that.
Speaking of the Orion heat shield, Eric Berger has a new article up, with some intriguing insight into how the review process of the shield worked, and who is criticizing it.
Notably the chair of the [Independent Review Team] a former NASA flight director named Paul Hill, was not present at Thursday’s news conference. Nor did the space agency release the IRT’s report on its recommendations to NASA.
In an interview, Camarda said he knew two people on the IRT who dissented from its conclusions that NASA’s plan to fly the Orion heat shield, without modifications to address the charring problem, was acceptable. He also criticized the agency for not publicly releasing the independent report. “NASA did not post the results of the IRT,” he said. “Why wouldn’t they post the results of what the IRT said? If this isn’t raising red flags out there, I don’t know what will
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/12/former-flight-director-who-reviewed-orion-heat-shield-data-says-there-was-no-dissent/
However, NASA allowed Eric to interview Hill, and he comes across as persuasive. There were two dissenters, he concedes, but in the end the work that NASA engineers did was so impressive that it brought them on board, too. In the end, the one criticism conceded is the lack of public transparency on the situation by NASA. We still don’t have the IRT report, after all.
A crew would have survived the Artemis I reentry just fine, and there’s reason to think that a crew will survive the modified Artemis II shield and reentry profile, too. But that doesn’t obviate the concern that under any other circumstances, you’d fly this thing uncrewed in at least one more test flight. Because there’s just no substitute for actual real world data. But we all know why that is an option that would be very difficult for NASA to take: They have so little hardware to work with that it would set the whole program back years, and several billion dollars, to do that.
Meanwhile, old NASA hand Homer Hickam quips: “Put ol’ Paul in one of the seats.”
Richard M: Very soon there will be a new sheriff in town, who will be looking at things from a complete fresh perspective.
Hello Bob,
Indeed!
Can anyone explain the proposed work around to allow the heatshield to be used in A II?
In the press conference they described the originally planned lunar return trajectory as similar to Apollo’s skip trajectory reentry. They said they were changing the trajectory to allow them to use the heat shield as is without changing it.
I did not understand what the trajectory was to be changed to.
Doubting Thomas: My understanding was that the return would be at a different angle so as to reduce the heat during that middle portion after coming out of the skip. This action is a compromise because it changes the launch windows, providing fewer launch opportunities.
At least, that’s how I understood it as a layman.
The Starship heat shield as designed, or even the proposed redesign, is only intended to be for re-entry from low Earth orbit (LEO).
Does anyone have an opinion whether there is a potential for a redesigned Starship to be able to re-enter from a Lunar or even interplanetary orbit? How about re-entry to LEO, rather than to the Earth’s surface?
With the crewed Starship designed for orbital refilling, wouldn’t it be best to regard it as a vehicle that would never land back on Earth, and to have crew ferried to and from it in LEO rather than ever again land it? Obviously the tanker versions would be designed for surface-to-surface ops, but need not be crewed.
Ray Van Dune asked: “Does anyone have an opinion whether there is a potential for a redesigned Starship to be able to re-enter from a Lunar or even interplanetary orbit? How about re-entry to LEO, rather than to the Earth’s surface?”
This may not be high on the priority list. They may be waiting until they understand the needs for reentry from low Earth orbit (LEO) before they adapt it to the more stressful reentries from lunar or interplanetary distances. The velocities from these distances are about 1.4 times greater, and the energy to be dissipated is about twice as much.
___________________
M. Murcek,
Your response is predictable. Sadly, you ran out of arguments and resorted to ad hominem attack. You lost your argument.
Robert compared Orion and Starliner. You are the one to bring the Starship-reentry / Orion-reentry comparison to the discussion. Others noted that, despite Starship’s eventual need to return from lunar and interplanetary distances, it has very different reentry needs than Orion, including a need that it be rapidly reusable, dramatically reducing cost and dramatically increasing availability for the next launch. Somehow, you are unable to comprehend the difference.
In addition, Starship is still in development, but the next Orion launch is an operational flight. Another important difference that you cannot grasp. Development tests are supposed to have some amount of “failure” so that limits can be determined and new methods can be explored so that the best methods can be found. Hmm. That sounds like exactly how NASA is treating the previous flight and the next flight, the operational one. Their new heat shield seems to be in the development phase, not the operational phase.
So, let’s make that comparison. Starship in development phase is being flown unmanned, otherwise it would be unsafe. Orion in its heat shield’s development phase is about to be flown manned, not with one test pilot risking his life but with a full compliment of astronauts risking their lives. This comparison may not show us that Orion or SLS should be cancelled, but it does show us that Orion is not yet ready for prime time.
We could make a price comparison between SLS-Orion and Starship. Up to now, SLS-Orion costs are approaching $100 billion, where major portions of the infrastructure has existed for decades, but Starship development and its entire infrastructure — and the development of that infrastructure — have cost only $6 billion, up to now. It looks like there is an order of magnitude difference, yet Orion cannot land on the Moon and Starship can, and will for Artemis. In addition, the Starship development costs are not costing the taxpayer anything, except for the Artemis Moon-landing version. The cost comparison looks to me like a good reason to cancel SLS-Orion.
Perhaps we could make an availability comparison between the two. SLS-Orion should eventually fly once a year. Each Starship should be able to launch within hours, or perhaps a day. The plan is for multiple Starship launch pads so that there can be several, or dozens, or scores of Starship launches daily, worldwide. An annual launch does not seem like it can support a sustainable Moon base or lunar outpost. Several daily Starship launches seem like they can support multiple Moon bases as well as a Martian colony, and several LEO space stations, a few L5 or L4 space colonies, asteroid mining, plus space manufacturing. SLS-Orion is not looking so desirable, and its lack of availability alone seems like a good reason to abandon them in favor of the several other launch vehicles and spacecraft that can launch scores of times a year.
My conclusion is that even if a comparison with Starliner is not sufficient to see the deficiencies in SLS-Orion, the comparisons with Starship might be.
Back to your point, M. Murcek: This isn’t the first time we all have been called dumb, and it won’t be the last. It doesn’t scare us, or we would stop discussing space issues.
Edward
This paragraph is the key to me.
“ Perhaps we could make an availability comparison between the two. SLS-Orion should eventually fly once a year. Each Starship should be able to launch within hours, or perhaps a day. The plan is for multiple Starship launch pads so that there can be several, or dozens, or scores of Starship launches daily, worldwide. An annual launch does not seem like it can support a sustainable Moon base or lunar outpost. Several daily Starship launches seem like they can support multiple Moon bases as well as a Martian colony, and several LEO space stations, a few L5 or L4 space colonies, asteroid mining, plus space manufacturing. SLS-Orion is not looking so desirable, and its lack of availability alone seems like a good reason to abandon them in favor of the several other launch vehicles and spacecraft that can launch scores of times a year.”
Why pursue technology which will not support more than a “look at us, we did it” program. Pursue the technology which allows you to build an expanding presence.
As an experienced aerospace executive and pilot, and a two-time Mission Commander, it would seem that NASA Director-to-be Isaacman has the credibility to make a definitive assessment of SLS / Orion’s crew safety. If after review of the program, he says “I would not fly on it, and will not ask any other astronaut to do so” that should be the end of the matter.
In that event, with SpaceX being capable of completing a mission to establish a moon base, it should be called upon to do so.
If however the assessment results in a positive finding of SLS / Orion fitness for human flight, and Trump fails to persuade Congress to change course, we can prepare to watch the Chinese begin the process of claiming the moon and its resources, while we continue to spend staggering amounts of money to come in second!
Ray Van Dune wrote: “If after review of the program, he says ‘I would not fly on it, and will not ask any other astronaut to do so’ that should be the end of the matter.”
Actually, that is the start of the matter. I think it will be a no-brainer for Isaacman to cancel SLS/Orion, and that the political momentum to do so is finally building within the swamp. The real issue is what to do next. How will Artemis be reshaped to use private enterprise to get to the Moon and beyond?
Isaacman can’t simply give the job to SpaceX. Nor should he. What he must do is redesign the architecture of the program to both use the resources now available as well encourage needed but unavailable resources to be developed by the private sector as fast as possible.
For example, the new program must incorporate what both SpaceX and Blue Origin are already doing with their manned lunar landers. It must also incorporate available lift capability from the entire American launch industry.
I would be very interested in my readers thoughts on this, because I am not the engineer and need such guidance. I wish to write about this, but need some ideas to build on.
Robert – Thanks. Yes, you are right. My dim understanding is that if you choose a shallower reentry angle, you get to lower peak temperatures slowly but a longer period of heating. Steeper trajectory, gets you to higher peak temperatures quickly (and higher G load). Either way the system (heatshield) gets the same total amount of heat (BTU, Megajoule, whatever) put into it, as long as it survives.
In Apollo there was always discussion of the “reentry corridor”.
The (to me) undiscussed risk of a shallower angle is that your reentry corridor must be much narrower than even Apollo since you run a higher risk of skipping completely out of the atmosphere (as heard in the discussion that never really happened in Apollo 13 movie) and ending up in some highly eccentric earth orbit with no way back.
Heard no discussion of this by NASA at all and I waited for the more technical reporters to ask that question but never heard it.
Going to follow up with another post to follow up on great remarks by Edward, Ray Van Dune and Gary.
Thanks
Robert Writes:
“If a private company wanted to fly NASA astronauts under these conditions on its own capsule, I can guarantee NASA would object, and say no. In fact, it did so only a few months ago, when Boeing’s engineers said astronauts could return safely on Starliner and NASA rejected that idea. Then, safety came first!
In the case of NASA’s own Orion capsule, however, the rules don’t apply, and NASA is going to proceed with Artemis-2, manned, despite using a heat shield that really does not work as intended. With NASA’s own capsule, scheduling overrides safety.”
Hummmm. One may remember the Challenger disaster, in which “scheduling” also overrode safety concerns.
Also,
“The real issue is what to do next. How will Artemis be reshaped to use private enterprise to get to the Moon and beyond?
Isaacman can’t simply give the job to SpaceX. Nor should he. What he must do is redesign the architecture of the program to both use the resources now available as well encourage needed but unavailable resources to be developed by the private sector as fast as possible.
For example, the new program must incorporate what both SpaceX and Blue Origin are already doing with their manned lunar landers. It must also incorporate available lift capability from the entire American launch industry.”
All of this seems logical and to the point. What (safe and cost effective) resources do we have at this point for going back to the moon, what new resources need to be created, and what is the best way to deploy them? Not exactly rocket science*, but NASA has seemed congenitally incapable of employing such a straightforward, real world-oriented management approach for the last several decades.
Aided and abetted, of course, by our “best that money can buy” Congress.
*Any successful business enterprise does this as a matter of course.
Edward, Ray Van Dune, Gary and Milt
Great discussions. I have long wondered about the feasibility of just using Starship for a Lunar program. As one of you said, Starship heatshield is intended for reentry from earth orbit not lunar missions. Of course, Starship as HLS has NO heatshield as it never returns to Earth.
Using a great online calculator site, Atomic Rockets (https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/calculators.php) I tried to answer this simply using the ideal (or Tsiolkovsky) rocket equation to try to address my question.
Boiling it down to data on Wikipedia about Starship and plugging it into the “Delta V Calculator” and second checked on the “Rocket Equation Calculator” I found that a fully refueled Starship (with heatshield) could generate enough delta V of the base Starship 100,000 kg payload to break LEO, enter LO and enter a landing burn to surface. (Yes, yes yes…Raptor engines landing etc, etc, – just trying to do a little math.)
Such a ship DID NOT have enough Delta V to return to lunar orbit. Great cargo mission.
Then I reduced the base 100,000 kg payload to about 18,000 kg or 20 US tons (I have list of what I would pack and weight wise it is about 1 1/2 X greater than the dry weight of the CSM+LM Ascent weight of an Apollo mission).
Such a 20 ton mission has enough Delta V to get from LEO to LO to LS to LO BUT NOT ENOUGH Delta V remains to return to LEO never mind landing on Earth.
Finally, I looked at sending tankers to LO to refuel the crewed mission stuck in LO to return to LEO. I don’t need to fully refuel crew ship since I just want to get back to LEO to catch my Crew Dragon ride home. 4 Lunar Tankers carrying 100,000 kg of propellant each would do it.
Using Next BigFuture website ( https://www.nextbigfuture.com/) that has an ongoing “How Much Does Starship Cost” article that periodically updates based on the latest ravings from Elon plus independent rough checks, I priced the mission.
1 Lunar Ship – 5 Tanker Ships – 5 Super Heavy Boosters – 55 total Starship launches to get one crew on one Starship to the moon and back to LEO for pick up by Crew Dragon (Elon throws that ride home in for free).
Complex? Yes. Areas for failure? Multiple. Infinitely Repeatable ? Yes, if you got the money.
The Price: Rounded up: $2 Billion (less but I plugged in a hefty 50% uncertainty factor AND rounded up) using Next Big Futures most pessimistic of three price tags of Starbase factory output.
Artemis or the Doubting Thomas plan…it all depends on your assumptions and your base case mission scenario.
Thanks for your patience.
“Isaacman can’t simply give the job to SpaceX.”.
But he is going to have to. There is time for design, but not “redesign”. SpaceX will already have the components to do the job, with hard work and perhaps with BO’s help, but that is a secondary issue.
This is a critical national security issue.
The alternative is to watch the Chinese take the lead in space away from us. He is going to have to say “I didn’t start this fire, but at this point we have no choice… do we want to win or not?!”
Sorry for the large gaps between my posts… Life gets in the way sometimes…
It seems to me that a mock-up capsule launched on a falcon 9 would be a cost effective way to test a heat shield… But I guess that is way too common sense for NASA.
Regarding the new administrator at NASA (His name eludes me… Sorry..) from what I’ve heard so far I’m liking the cut of his jib… It seems like he is all “new” space… Can only be a good thing!
( Many of the other positions Trump has set out have us scratching our heads here in Europe… I only mention this to give you guys something to have a pop at me about… But really… A Kennedy anti-vaccer ( can’t remember his name either… That’s how important it is to us here!) , in charge of public health…. ??? )
Lee,
I’m not smart enough to comment on your idea other than to guess that maybe the angle and speed of reentry might duplicate that or a return trip from the moon. Would be glad to hear smarter folks.
One other very off topic. My bride and i fell in love with Stockholm this past summer. We have dear friends in Sollentuna and they hosted us for our first trip to Scandinavia. I had no expectations, but i will say it was a delightfully cultured and friendly city.
Orion’s expense baffles me.
Titan IIIs and IVs (expensive rockets that used solids) launched Cassini and other probes.
Allow the current SLS cores in the pipeline to go out as ice giant probes in place of MSR—hydrogen upper stages are best for those.
Nothing is as wasteful as throwing a rocket away *before* it even flies.
Even Paul Allen’s sister wasn’t that mean to Stratolaunch.
Mock-up capsules are called “boilerplates” and have been used since before Apollo.
_____________________
To rephrase Robert’s question: So, now that we may actually cancel SLS, which has been our lifelong dream since 2014, or earlier, how are we going to get back to the Moon so we can claim it for ourselves instead of the Chinese claiming it for themselves? Simply give the job to SpaceX?
Well, yes. SpaceX is clearly well advanced in its next powerful rocket and its lunar lander is coming along, so that is the natural choice.
But we also need to keep with the philosophy of having two venders, so rather than simply giving it to SpaceX, set up a competition, just as they did for Cargo Resupply Services and the manned transport to ISS, with at least two winners of the contracts. Each competitor or competing team has its own idea and plan for returning to the Moon, and each winner executes its own plan. Blue Origin is already working on its own lander, and there are other companies and teams that had vied for the lander contract a few years ago, so there are plenty of ideas out there. These two companies are best positioned to get us back to the Moon before the Chinese, but there could be a third company or team that could do it, too.
Isaacman need not do the redesign, but he can let three or five companies work on redesigns or wholly new designs.
This allows us to have two or three independent methods of getting to the Moon to keep a sustainable moon base sustained.
Reshaping Artemis may not be the right solution, but if one or more of the competing companies/teams puts some of Artemis’s existing plans into theirs, that is OK, too.
Robert, I’m sorry that this isn’t an engineering solution but is more a philosophical solution, working on the philosophy of fixed-price contracts to companies that supply the service rather than delivering hardware for government ownership. This thinking allows the people who know and understand their own hardware and methods to work into their strengths rather than we Monday-morning quarterbacks kibitzing about what these companies and what NASA could do or should have done.
Edward: I am very interested in detailed thoughts about how to reshape America’s Artemis program. The comments so far have been very helpful.
More please. There are a lot of very wise space geeks who comment here who have not yet chimed in.
SLS and Falcon Heavy together could be a constellation 2.0
Starship’s TPS is as shaky as Orion’s…. let’s be honest.
And when it comes to intellectual honesty—let me show you what that looks like by throwing my own state under the bus for a moment:
The scuttlebutt is that the price of SLS’ death is for Space Command to go to Alabama at last. Remember—what became the civilian MSFC was the more lean ABMA—but I digress.
Now, what just struck me was—to whose benefit was this leak?
There are two options—
The Alabama delegation (likely the Rube Tubberville) had his own staff leak it out to spook the folks out west to do the opposite—-back SLS so as to keep Space Command before Donald can get sworn in. I think this likely—and if something gets floated in a few days we will know.
But there is another possibility—much more sinister.
Some spooky type type leaked the deal…which you would think Trump would keep under wraps so as to not sour things if this horse swapping really is a thing
This leaker likely has allegiance to the Pentagon—which means they are once again trying to undermine Trump before he can set foot back in the White House door.
Either possibility is dishonorable.
PS
Good to see some of the Lori Garver worshipers take a hit:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=61990.msg2646472#msg2646472
That is Dwayne Day, BTW.
By the way, I finally came across another tweet by Jared Isaacman, from October 2023 (responding to that brutal NASA OIG report on SLS), which constitutes both his most direct criticism of SLS, and a larger critique of how NASA does business, which I think we’ll all find encouraging. Somehow, I missed it at the time, even though I’ve been following him on X for a few years.
https://x.com/rookisaacman/status/1713213698557333976
Eh, none of this is a surprise to me. It’s part of the complicated picture of who Lori Garver is. Programmatically, she was and is profoundly in the right about what has been wrong with NASA, and we are the beneficiaries of her fight (against heavy odds) to move it in a better direction during her time at the agency. She also has apparently earned a reputation as someone who does not play well with others, who bears long grudges, and who is difficult to work for. Her memoir gives you insights into both of these insights into who she is and what she did.
She has, of course, zero chance of being offered a job by the Trump Administration at NASA, and she knows it. But that was true under the Biden Administration as well, albeit for a different set of reasons.
Sundance at the Conservative Treehouse wrote an article where he theorizes how DOGE will be used to slash the government.
The True and Visible Mission of DOGE – What to Expect
December 6, 2024 | Sundance
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/12/06/the-true-and-visible-mission-of-doge-what-to-expect/
My summary of Sundance’s article:
• The last Federal Budget that passed through Congress was 2008
• Since 2008 all federal spending has been ‘short-term’ or ‘stop-gap’ spending measures known as “Continuing Resolutions”
• “Continuing Resolutions” (CR) for the next year include everything in the previous year’s CR and adds new pork
• President Trump will submit a new budget to Congress on February 1, 2025
• The Republicans in Congress don’t have the courage or political capital to cut out 17 years of fat from the spending process
• Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and DOGE will expose the fat and take responsibility for it being cut
Ok…. I don’t want to come across as a doubting Thomas… But..
I am very skeptical of Starships ability to land on the moon…. At least any time soon. It is one thing to be able to land on a smooth surface, it is a whole different game to be able to land on a rocky, airless wilderness. ( How are those fins gonna work in a vacuum?)
Apollo 11 only just made it … ( Good work Niel and your steel ‘nads! ) And the Apollo landers were made of tissue paper and balsa wood… I just can’t see a several ton ship landing safely on the lunar surface, then being able to return to orbit.
It will be interesting to see China’s approach, but my guess it will be “less is more”, and unfortunately my guess is they will have footprints on the moon way before any western nation.
I genuinely hope I am wrong…. And SpaceX has a history of doing amazing things, but just contemplating the logistics, and the physics… I am skeptical.
@ Gary….. I’m pleased you enjoyed Stockholm…. It is a beautiful gentle city steeped in culture. I am so very happy to have raised my kids here, the education system and social care is second to non.
Walking around the place you actually see where my tax krona actually go…. Clean, safe and a pleasure to experience.
If you choose to make another visit, try and take a few days in the far north…. The landscape is stunning, the people are even more friendly, and you get the real “Svensk” experience…. ( If you are prone to mosquito bites tho, then avoid midsummer… Take a winter trip!)
Well, the HLS version of Starship is going to be heavy modified, based on everything we have seen. There won’t be any fins. Instead, there will be deployable landing legs. The outer surface will be coated, presumably for thermal regulation. There will be hot gas thrusters high on the fuselage for use near the surface on liftoff and landing to minimize regolith plumes. (And there are loads of other mission-specific differences, including, yes, the cargo bay and elevator.) The landing profile will be completely different than on Earth, because there is no atmosphere to deal with, and only one sixth the gravity.
But yes, they will have to have a very flat, well characterized landing site for the initial missions….until they can create a solid landing pad. The center of gravity on Starship is low, but these are still human lives at stake.
Jeff Foust at Space News today dug up another Isaacman tweet from October 18 just past that I also somehow missed, but which will no doubt also be of interest to Behind the Black readers: Here, he is responding to that Mike Bloomberg op-ed demanding cancelation of SLS. Perhaps this gives a little more (encouraging) insight into his thinking.
There are also some thoughtful follow-ups by Jared to replies he receives in the X thread, and those are worth reading, too.
https://x.com/rookisaacman/status/1847346039038291983
Richard M: Thank you for the Isaacman tweets. Most helpful. Based on where I think I am going on this subject, Isaacman is going to find my recommendations very tempting, should he actually read them.
And I promise you, my recommendations are NOT what you expect. :)
My point in my detailed post was not pride that I have designed an airtight mission architecture but rather, there are many options if one is willing to think out of the standard box. We MUST think out of the box. No, I am not a SpaceX fanboy. HOWEVER, neither Boeing nor Blue Origin performance has filled me with optimism. I believe many of you agree that without the major shakeup that Jared Issacman will bring, we will never get off the dime and to the moon (much less Mars).
The more companies and differing systems we cobble together the longer the integration time and then we are back to what is happening to Artemis anyway: “flying under known risk”.
JFK set a 9 year race to the moon. We are 2 years past what Charles Bolden set in 2010 as a reasonable target date for return to the moon. We are (effectively) 9 months from his 2017 reset goal and now we are 16 months from the new reset reset goal. We are now (effectively) 5 years from 2030.
I urge people to find a copy of “Angle of Attack – Harrison Storms and the Race to the Moon” by Mike Gray. Storms was the Program Manager of North American Aviation which designed the Apollo CSM. Storms took the fall for the Apollo fire. I suggest you read Chapter 11 on how NAA established initial design from NASA desired concept. One part of the effort was setting the reliability of Apollo: “Though it had been plucked from the air in a 10 minute discussion in Gilruth’s office, it was the product of vast experience…if they had dropped one decimal place the cost of the program would have been cut in half…added a decimal place and there…would not be enough money on the planet to finish the job”
While it is impossible for the government to say these words, there WILL be significant risk to humans in returning to the moon. With SpaceX hardware architectures, the cost may be low enough to have consortiums undertake the risk which the USG dares not speak of.
I watched Apollo 11 land on the moon as a teenager, I want to see us get back to the moon and I doubt I have until 2030 or later to wait. Pardon my impatience.
Poor Stormy. Allegedly, after the Apollo 1 investigations wrapped up, Jim Webb told Lee Atwood that either Atwood had to go, or Storms had to go, for NASA to continue going through with North American on the Apollo CSM. Not surprisingly, Atwood decided he’d rather fire Storms than lose his own job. But there was a lot of blame to go around, and someone had to take the fall – and the fall guys picked ended up being Harrison Storms and Joe Shea. (The “Apollo 1” episode of From the Earth to the Moon in 1998 does a terrific job of depicting that story.)
But NASA can’t run the Apollo playbook again. It worked in 1961-69 because a lot of things came together perfectly for it to work, things that don’t prevail today. Nor should it have to, because unlike 1961, there’s a whole lot of commercial capabilities that exist or are in advanced development which can be used to do the things NASA is trying to have SLS and Orion do.
Remarks by President Reagan at Briefing for The Grace Commission
(“Private Sector Survey on Cost Control in Federal Government”)
February 25th, 1985
https://youtu.be/gE-2brRaV_8
(9:08)
I have always imagined that travel to the Moon would eventually break down to three legs, rather than the non-stop missions of Apollo. As with the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, a shuttle with aerodynamic capabilities would take men and materiel from the Earth to a low Earth orbit (LEO) space station. Leg two is a spacecraft that has no landing gear or wings and may have smaller engines with high specific impulse for propellant efficiency, which shuttles between the LEO space station and a low orbit lunar space station. From there, a third leg is on a spacecraft with the weight of landing gear and engines powerful enough to lift off the lunar surface (LS).
Plans for lunar exploration and population depend heavily upon the actual existence of water ice at the poles. With it, much propellant can be made on the Moon and retanking (refueling) can occur there inexpensively. Without it, retanking becomes complicated.
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Gary asked: “Why pursue technology which will not support more than a ‘look at us, we did it’ program” and recommended that we pursue technologies that expand our presence in space.
This is exactly what NASA planned to do in the 1970s, but it turned out that all Congress wanted at the beginning of that decade was the former, the “look at us, we did it” program.
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Jeff Wright wrote: “Orion’s expense baffles me.”
Orion is expensive because it took so long to make the launch vehicle.
At the beginning of a space project, there are some design engineers, a bunch of managers, quite a few bean counters, and a lot of administrators. Later, there are machinists and technicians thrown in, but they also come with their departments’ overhead. Assembly, integration, and test (AI&T) engineers and technicians get involved with their overhead, and the design team is reduced, but somehow the design overhead still seems large.
Once the project is operational, all those teams no longer have jobs, so the costs are reduced.
Just kidding! Orion is a throw away capsule, so a small design team continues, making incremental improvements. Machinists make the parts for the next capsule, and AI&T assembles and tests that next capsule.
Orion’s launch was delayed from 2015 to 2022, giving an opportunity to save money by reducing the engineering and technical team. However, management, administration, and oversight continues without much reduction in cost, and the facilities costs aren’t reduced at all; many costs continue as a monthly expense. Test facilities, such as thermal vacuum chambers, are likely a one-time cost, not like the continuous expense of the manufacturing facilities, which become more like storage facilities with a little work going on. When making it takes twice as long but at almost the same cost per year, the total cost is twice the budget.
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Doubting Thomas wrote: “Either way the system (heatshield) gets the same total amount of heat (BTU, Megajoule, whatever) put into it, as long as it survives.”
This is not necessarily so. Most of the energy goes into heating the air as it compresses in front of the heat shield, and that hot air flows away around the reentry body, taking the heat energy with it. The kinetic energy of orbital speed is largely dissipated as thermal energy into the atmosphere rather than into the heat shield. When the spacecraft enters at a higher altitude, where the air is thinner, there is less heating of the heat shield (it takes longer to slow down). This is what the Space Shuttle and Starship rely upon, so they do not need the ablative heat shield to handle the higher temperature that a deeper trajectory would cause.
Ablation vs reusable reentry heat shield graph:
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Earth-Re-entry-paths-as-Velocity-altitude-graphs-showing-the-influence-of-the_fig4_261316575
This is the paper Figure 5 comes from:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261316575_Radiation-Ablation_Coupling_for_Capsule_Reentry_Heating_via_Simulation_and_Expansion_Tube_Investigations
The higher reentry altitude makes it easier to reuse the spacecraft, however Dragon and Starliner are designed for the ability to replace their ablative heat shields to facilitate reusability.
“Such a 20 ton mission has enough Delta V to get from LEO to LO to LS to LO BUT NOT ENOUGH Delta V remains to return to LEO never mind landing on Earth.”
First: the Starship lunar lander does not land on Earth, so it does not need the heavy equipment that allows this (heat shield, steering fins), so the lunar Starship is already lighter than the terran Starship. Second: SpaceX is still developing Starship, so it may end up with more delta-v capability than it has now. Third: SpaceX is already talking about Starship being able to lift closer to 200 tonnes to LEO, which would allow fewer propellant launches (half?) from the Earth in order to get to the Moon or to Mars. These can have an affect on the analysis of Starship’s usefulness.
Once on the lunar surface, a spacecraft needs around 1¾ km/sec of delta-v to get to low lunar orbit, then about ⅞ km/sec to leave that orbit and head back to Earth (it also takes virtually the same amount to land on the Moon from the lunar transfer orbit). It could use high altitude aerobraking at Earth to return to LEO. Can SpaceX give their lunar Starship the ability for a delta-v of 8 km/sec, or do they have to perform one or two retanking operations in lunar orbit (LO)?
I wouldn’t scoff at a 20 ton payload to the Moon. That is a nice capacity for a rocket to LEO. Getting that much to the lunar surface would be impressive.
Starship may not be the most efficient way to get to and from the Moon, so it may not be a long-term solution. The future should see many improvements in efficiency and effectiveness.
We cannot yet say exactly how Starship fits into our return to the Moon, because we don’t yet know what its final capabilities will be. It is still in development, and new versions have yet to be tested and analyzed. If it can put 20 tons or so of cargo onto the surface, then it may be more suitable for cargo runs and Blue Origin’s lunar lander may be more suitable for manned landings.
Doubting Thomas,
You wrote: “Finally, I looked at sending tankers to LO to refuel the crewed mission stuck in LO to return to LEO. I don’t need to fully refuel crew ship since I just want to get back to LEO to catch my Crew Dragon ride home. 4 Lunar Tankers carrying 100,000 kg of propellant each would do it. … 1 Lunar Ship – 5 Tanker Ships – 5 Super Heavy Boosters – 55 total Starship launches to get one crew on one Starship to the moon and back to LEO for pick up by Crew Dragon (Elon throws that ride home in for free).”
This is almost certainly how Starship would have to do it if it did it on its own. It is a combination of NASA’s original “Earth Orbit Rendezvous” idea to refuel the lunar spacecraft after launch and in Earth orbit, and the idea to only land a small portion of what was sent to the Moon, called “Lunar Orbit Rendezvous.”
I didn’t follow your math, however. I didn’t do my own research, but working from your comment above, if each Starship going to the Moon needs 5 tankers launched from Earth for LEO retanking, and four are needed at LO for retanking to return the lander to Earth, that sounds like twenty-four launches (4 LO tankers + 20 LEO tankers to get the four to LO). Adding the six launches for the lander and its five LEO tankers, and I get thirty launches, not fifty-five. SpaceX’s proposed orbital gas station may make this a little more efficient, and if Starship can carry more than 100 tons of propellants to LEO, then even fewer launches will be needed. (200 tons means 2 LO tankers and only 5 LEO tankers for them plus 1 lander and 3 LEO tankers for it for a total of 11 launches.)
What if Starship carried a cargo module to LEO and released it to its own voyage to land on the Moon? This way, the structural mass of Starship would not have to be taken to the Moon or landed, saving huge amounts of fuel. If the module is useful as living space, it may not even have to leave the Moon for another cargo run, allowing it even more cargo capacity.
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Robert wrote: “What had happened is that NASA had already decided to replace the first heat shield design, because it was too costly and slow to install.”
At the amount they already have spent, and at the speed they already aren’t building them, shouldn’t slow-and-costly be the least of their concerns? How much did it cost to do this recent investigation into the failed material, and how long did it take? And now the failed material is the reason for the current delay in the next launch, in which NASA is again going to use Solid Rocket Boosters beyond their recommended one-year “use-before” date.
By the way, Robert, I just received another notice that I am posting too quickly and should slow down. Just thought you should know.
Edward – Thanks for the info on heatshields. I will look at closely. I agree that the approach is a hybrid between the early 1960’s EOR and LOR concepts of pre-Apollo days.
I assumed based on Musk tweets and NASA remarks that 10 tankers would be required to fully refuel a Starship. That implies:
* Lunar Starship needs 10 tanker launches to LEO to get ready to go to moon or 1 Ship + 10 tanker launches
* Each of 4 Lunar tanker Starships take 10 tankers in LEO to get to moon or 40 tanker launches.
1 Lunar Starship launch + 10 tanker launches + 4 tanker launches to LEO + 40 tanker launches to 4 tankers = 55 launches. Fewer than 55 launches if the 10 tanker assumption is too conservative.
I thought about the idea of aerobraking to LEO by the returning Lunar Starship but couldn’t figure the numbers. I used a precomputed Delta V ladder (ES to LEO to LO to LS) for my work.
For my 20 ton mission, I returned to Lunar Orbit from the Lunar surface with enough fuel to burn for 517 meters per second out of a needed 4,100 meters / second to get back to LEO. So in this no lunar tanking sub scenario, the Starship would hit Earths atmosphere at 3,583 meters per second. Could the Ship aerobrake to LEO burning away the 3,583 m/sec without burning up? Don’t know. Can you help with a rough calculation?
Frankly, the concept of aerobraking seems like it could solve the Orion heatshield problem, aerobrake to LEO and catch another ride back home (say with the trusty Crew Dragon). Again flexibility and out of the box ideas need to be used to get us out of this Artemis fix rather than just demanding more money and more time over and over again.
The concept of releasing a lander from Starship is a great idea. A variant would be for two Starships, 1 to carry a crew and another to carry the lander. I just worry that Blue Origin won’t have a lander ready in time to meet even a 2030 target.
I think you caught the spirit of my posts, in order to finally get to the moon by or before 2030, the Nation will have to think outside the box and function as if getting to the moon is more important than just spreading money around.
Thanks
“I assumed based on Musk tweets and NASA remarks that 10 tankers would be required to fully refuel a Starship.”
Now your math makes sense.
No wonder the company is working so hard to increase the capacity of their tankers.
“I thought about the idea of aerobraking to LEO by the returning Lunar Starship but couldn’t figure the numbers. I used a precomputed Delta V ladder (ES to LEO to LO to LS) for my work..”
I use this one for my approximations:
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FU5iH7huE5qKth7ZFvipXt8vzaFOO99qHFh9o9_SkLLk.png%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dd145ac9ae496abe35fae86fc11a584d62fe42592&rdt=51889
It is based upon certain assumptions, but an orbital mechanics program can probably improve realistic routes.
The real problem that we face is that nothing we have now was designed to return to the Moon, despite having been given that assignment in 2004. The interruption by Obama hurt us badly, setting NASA adrift for a decade. Amazingly, even after Trump put us back on track while we had a head start on much of the hardware we need, we still cannot seem to get back in a dozen years, even though NASA started from scratch in 1961 and succeeded eight and a quarter years later.
What a difference half a century makes.
To Richard M
I see Garver was picked as a rep for a company that wants to make Ballutes….she doesn’t play well with others–how could she not be a detriment since she loathes Trump as well as SLS?
Bloomy is an enemy of human spaceflight in general. It is frightening what his influence is.
Edward – Your Delta V ladder for the solar system will be very useful. Thank you.
Doubting Thomas,
You’re welcome.
Keep in mind that these values assume Hohmann transfer orbits, which Hohmann assumed was the most propellant-efficient, but the reality is that often better transfer orbits can be found by vigilant and creative orbital mechanics (people who use the mechanics of orbits, my term, and I don’t know what such mechanics actually call themselves (probably “engineers”)), but these numbers are good for approximations and “back of the envelope” discussions, like ours.
An example is that the transfer orbits we use to Mars, these days, is often called a Hohmann transfer orbit, but it is actually different, and the trip to Mars takes closer to six months rather than the 8½ months of the true Hohmann transfer orbit. Lucy is about to use a gravity assist with the Earth, as another example, allowing Lucy to get out to Jupiter-orbit distances without using quite as much delta-v (propellant) as we would derive by using the chart.