The mighty Saturn V, off to the Moon.
As we approach the anniversary of the first landing on the Moon (48 years on July 20), it is traditional for space opinion writers to wistfully look back on that lost “Golden Age” when humans ventured beyond low Earth orbit and set foot on another world. This lament for the past is particularly acute within NASA, whose entire self-image is wrapped around a romanticized vision of a tough, risk-taking, and technically competent organization. “Failure is not an option!” Just ignore the fact that Gene Kranz never said that, at least while the mission was underway (he did use it much later as a book title). Hollywood writes history these days, not the other way around.
Simultaneously, the Apollo missions to the Moon are the acme of American space achievement and the anchor weighing it down. And it is this paradoxical status that makes the age of Apollo both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing because it showed us what was possible in space, yet also a curse, for convincing many that the Apollo approach and architecture remains the Holy Grail for great accomplishment in spaceflight. I submit that we must continue to honor and celebrate the glory, but now we must throw off the curse.
Let us briefly recall why America went to the Moon. The effort was not undertaken to develop the means for human spaceflight, or to settle the Solar System, or to explore the wonders of the cosmos. It was done in our bid to achieve a difficult, technical task ahead of the Soviet Union. By 1961, that communist nation had racked up a number of impressive space “firsts,” including the first satellite, the first man in space, and the first probe to the Moon. Hoping to challenge the Soviets on a very public stage and win, the United States considered several different complex technical projects (including President John F. Kennedy’s personal favorite – the desalination of seawater). Space was the chosen playing field. Though the Soviets were ahead in building large rockets and could possibly build an Earth-orbiting space station, neither nation had yet mastered the ability to land a man on the Moon.
Kennedy asked NASA to devise an approach that would give the United States its best chance to beat the USSR to the Moon. Although NASA had many imaginative and competent engineers at that time, its spiritual godfather and guru was Wernher von Braun. In the 1950s, von Braun had devised an elaborate architecture for spaceflight and published it in a series of articles (with contributions from other space experts) in Collier’s, a popular national magazine. This architecture was incremental and cumulative – the development of pieces for a space transportation system that gradually but continuously expanded human reach into space. Those pieces were: Earth-to-orbit rockets, a space station in Earth orbit, a “Moon tug” to travel back and forth between Earth orbit and the Moon, and finally a manned Mars spacecraft. Each piece was optimized to serve its particular function, and to work in tandem with the other pieces – incremental and cumulative, whereby they would collectively permit the movement of people and cargo between Earth, Moon and the planets.
The von Braun template was a no-go, as the gauntlet thrown down by President Kennedy came with a deadline: “before this decade is out.” But building an infrastructure for a permanent, spacefaring system requires time, and in a race, time is not a free variable. Hence, NASA instead developed an architecture that launched everything needed to travel to the Moon and back with a single (or at most, double) launch. This architecture required a mega-heavy lift booster, one capable of hurling over 100 metric tons to LEO. The subsequently developed Saturn-Apollo system was truly an engineering marvel – one that brilliantly completed its assigned task. Some within NASA thought they might continue using this newly developed Apollo-Saturn hardware to explore the Moon and go to Mars. But the Apollo system was handcrafted and thus, cost much more than the nation was willing to spend on space hardware. In a bid to make spaceflight both cheaper and routine, decision makers turned to the development of a reusable Space Shuttle.
For its designers, the Shuttle was considered to be the first piece of the original von Braun architecture: shuttle, station, Moon tug, Mars mission. Hence, the Shuttle program was given the official name “Space Transportation System (STS),” as it was believed that Shuttle would be the first piece of this new, incremental spaceflight system. Though routine flight to and from LEO was achieved, the operation of the Shuttle was more difficult than imagined and the cost of spaceflight remained high. After the Challenger accident in 1987, the STS label was banished. But more than a simple name was lost – the central idea of developing an incremental, cumulative spacefaring system also disappeared.
When the goal of a return to the Moon and a Mars mission was announced by President George H.W. Bush in 1989, NASA responded to that challenge with what was essentially a large-scale version of the von Braun architecture (The 90-Day Study). This effort was ridiculed and derided, especially after its supposed total, end-to-end cost was leaked to the press ($600 billion over 30 years, about $20 billion per year on average). Invariably, the contrast was drawn between the then-existent space program of record – the “incremental” Shuttle-Station effort, which had run into multiple technical, programmatic and financial difficulties, and the “all-up” Apollo program, which had achieved great things quickly in the distant past. More firmly than ever, the sense of having lost our way from the previous “golden age” took hold in the space community and it has never departed.
This vague nostalgia for Apollo is especially true inside the agency, which recognizes that it’s lost the sheen of glory it once possessed – proudly working inside buildings where vestiges of the heroes and hardware of that time are enshrined and heralded. NASA is an agency revered due to the great accomplishment of the Apollo program, but because of the long passage of time, it does not appear to comprehend what it took to achieve that vision. Not only did the Apollo program have a clear goal with a deadline but it also drew on an aerospace technical and industrial infrastructure that no longer exists. Hence, we get absurd pronouncements about a fantasy “Journey to Mars,” a program for which there is no technical approach, no fiscal means, and no political will to undertake. Rather than embracing a workable architecture that focuses on building an incremental system fueled by lunar resources – one that could eventually take us to many destinations in deep space – they fixate on the Apollo template to send people to Mars, a “launch it all from Earth” spacecraft system that (they believe) will re-capture the magic and glory of that distant era. This fixation has taken us nowhere and will continue to take us nowhere.
The “curse” of Apollo is not that we once went to the Moon and now cannot, or even the way that we did it, but rather the notion that, because Apollo is the only deep space approach that has been successful, it remains the best way to access deep space. Despite the fact that the original notion behind the development of Shuttle as the first piece of a “space transportation system” had a lot of merit, we continue to plan for a series of launches that send expendable spacecraft to Mars in attempts to resurrect that Apollo-like paradigm of “design, build, launch, use and discard.” That approach is not a sustainable one as evidenced by the fact that it was not sustained, despite the immense good will generated by and for a strong space program.
In the current NASA human spaceflight program, initial flights are scheduled to occur within the next couple of years. The Orion-SLS stack is yet another version of the Apollo template, a re-imagining of the cancelled Project Constellation – built largely because the Congress was concerned that a national capability (the Space Shuttle) was being discarded and that no non-governmental replacement was evident. These are entirely defensible grounds for developing a new spaceflight system, but now the nation is confronted with a decision: Where shall we go and what shall we do with this new spacecraft? And having paid for its development, are we now willing to pay the costs for its operation?
The core SLS vehicle puts 70 metric tons into LEO and could quickly emplace the cornerstone elements (e.g., transfer nodes and stages, spacecraft, landers) of a cislunar transportation system in space. This would be the best use of the SLS system as it is already optimized for cislunar missions. Moreover, the Orion spacecraft with its multi-week dwell capability will be useful for our initial return to cislunar space. But Orion, with its water landing and semi-disposable architecture, cannot be the means by which we establish a permanent space transportation system. We must transition to a permanent space-based system, one emphasizing assets that allow transfer, refueling and reuse between the various energy levels of cislunar space.
We know that the Apollo template can be made to work because it worked in the past – for a price. And that is the curse of Apollo – it worked, whereas an incremental, cumulative system that could move us into the Solar System has never been constructed and shown to work. The Space Shuttle and International Space Station gave us the first two pieces of the von Braun architecture – now Shuttle is gone and Station has limited life left after completing its first decade in orbit. Fifty years hence will we still be writing about the Apollo era and those early days of accomplishment for the American civil space program? Or will we be writing about new discoveries and technology born from our resolve to set our national space program on a new course of spectacular achievement?
I’m thinking the NewSpace crowd has advantage of not “carrying baggage” of Apollo but they have their own set of problems as Billgamesh repeatibly points out. So far much attention has been on Mars, however, all you space cadets surely seen the latest is admission we don’t have funding for Journey to Mars.
Then there is the Moon and latest news by Moon Express which Dennis Wingo posted on Twitter he is skeptical. How about you Dr. Spudis? I wonder such an ambitious announcement and plan by Moon Express that if it fails to deliver in three years will make the Moon as distant as Mars?
I have been working with Moon Express for the last few years, helping to develop different mission scenarios and scientific payloads. We hope to see the first mission launched sometime in the coming year.
Congrats on getting a mission to fly. I read their website on the smallest unit. about 66 pounds to the lunar surface?
What rocket would be used? Or will this be a secondary payload on a launch?
The plan is to use Rocketlab’s Electron launch vehicle for early missions and the first few will likely only carry a few kg of payload. Later missions may use a bigger LV and carry hundreds of kg payloads.
OK, this gives some credibility, I sure like to see some action instead of more artwork (I wonder if an amateur radio beacon or APRS ride along). Lots of discussion about Moon Express on NASAWatch. “TheBrett” mentioned probably no market for moon rocks unless rover lands remnants of asteroid rich in platinum group metals. He also mentioned pulling off a demonstration mission would put them over most Space Startup contemporaries. There are tons of startup companies with paper rockets and dubious profit models that’ll never go anywhere because they don’t have enough capital to start.
Regarding landing on a PGM asteroid impact on the Moon, as Dennis Wingo wrote just think having large amounts of PGMs would do for your portfolio. Or lower the cost of platinum so we can produce fuelcells for cars in large quantities and the internal combustion engine goes bye-bye. Anyone working on identifying such sites?
FYI, other day an 11 year old asked me what she can do to become one of the people working on Mars. I said there are no real programs to send people to Mars, and forget about Mars (always 20 years into the future). I suggested consider the Moon, and for starters read the books by Spudis “Value of the Moon” and Wingo “Moon Rush” as these give overall aspect of the Moon along with concepts how to do it.
“Moreover, the Orion spacecraft with its multi-week dwell capability will be useful for our initial return to cislunar space. But Orion, with its water landing and semi-disposable architecture, cannot be the means by which we establish a permanent space transportation system. We must transition to a permanent space-based system, one emphasizing assets that allow transfer, refueling and reuse between the various energy levels of cislunar space.”
I just hope we do not make the same mistake we made in the transition from Apollo to Shuttle and dispose of developed hardware with uses in other configurations.
As an example the life support/crew systems hardware for Orion will (with limited modifications) serve very well for the crew modules for LEO to LLO transports and lunar landers. By taking this approach not only would cost be reduced, but so would vehicle development time and risk.
That may seem obvious, but it has been missed before (to the detriment of program objectives).
Interesting to see that Von Braun is closely associated with making the Apollo architecture work, while his true vision, the one we desperately need now, is often ignored.
“Those pieces were: Earth-to-orbit rockets, a space station in Earth orbit, a “Moon tug” to travel back and forth between Earth orbit and the Moon,-”
In my view those pieces, due to Skylab and the wet workshop concept- and the ice on the Moon, have changed. The main determining condition is space radiation and the massive water shielding required- which is the elephant in the room nobody will address (except to trivialize and dismiss as non-existent).
The Earth to orbit rockets are now Earth to lunar orbit wet workshops that become lunar space stations and then GEO space stations and then spaceships. This is effected by robot landers that harvest lunar-ice-as-shielding and ferry water to lunar orbit. Different but still similar in many ways.
“The Orion-SLS stack is yet another version of the Apollo template,- Where shall we go and what shall we do with this new spacecraft?”
As I stated above, the wet workshops are filled in lunar orbit and go to GEO to replace the present junkyard as human-crewed telecom stations providing an order of magnitude improvement in reliability and connectivity. GEO telecom revenues are now at around 200 billion per year. Part of those revenues can build more wet workshops as spaceship crew compartments.
“But Orion, with its water landing and semi-disposable architecture, cannot be the means by which we establish a permanent space transportation system.”
It is sad that NewSpace fans criticize the Orion as “expendable” but as I understand it the internal systems can be removed and re-installed in another capsule for reuse. The shell is what takes the beating and actually should be replaced. The Dragon capsule, especially when it is loaded with toxic hypergolics for landing back to Earth, is a gimmick. The Orion is the real deal and with half the planet covered in ocean the splashdown was always the best idea.
In fact, much of the Saturn V was about inventing the wheel and everything since about re-inventing. The escape tower being another example of a concept that cannot be improved upon.
“In a bid to make spaceflight both cheaper and routine, decision makers turned to the development of a reusable Space Shuttle.”
And that was the first wrong turn- going cheap. There is no cheap. Pay now or pay later. Despite the cost which ended up approaching that of the Saturn V, the shuttle was an attempt to go cheap.
In terms of “cheap” the wet workshop concept was the ultimate reusability scheme whereby the fuel tanks become the space station or space ship. Nothing can beat that. The space shuttle threw that most efficient and useful of all structures away. There were many other mistakes made with the shuttle but overall the idea that it could be made and operated cheaply was the fundamental error. You get what you pay for.
NewSpace loved to compare the falcon 9 with the shuttle but it became obvious in any lengthy discussion the shuttle was in fact a Saturn V class launcher. The falcon was mediocre and would never, in any faux heavy iteration, even approach the lift of the Saturn V. Because of the pernicious influence of NewSpace on public opinion for the last ten years it is now difficult to make the public understand how irreplaceable that 100 ton neighborhood capability is and how incredibly difficult everything becomes without it.
That is why Sidemount was probably one of the most heart-breaking episodes for any space enthusiast that understands the technology. It was what the shuttle was supposed to be and I still get depressed thinking about when they killed it.
“…we don’t have funding for Journey to Mars.” A timely observation, given Bill Gerstenmeier’s concession yesterday that NASA simply does not have the funding, or prospect of the funding, to develop and build surface systems for Mars. Mars orbit is about as far as the #JourneyToMars can stretch – and I think even that is optimistic. The Deep Space Exploration vehicle intended for the flyby still remains unfunded, after all.
This will not kill off SLS or Orion – still too much support on the Hill to overcome at a price Trump would be willing to pay, for the time being – but it may well start forcing it into a cislunar/lunar focus, once the Administration is in position to actually look at the program.
Still, even with it, Mr. Spudis raises the right question: If you *are* going to keep SLS, what do you do with it? What payloads will it carry, and to where? So far, *nothing* is funded save for Orion, beyond some pilot study funding for possible deep space habs. Even if the Administration settles on a new plan (no sure thing), where will the money come from to build such payloads? Even if the ISS is splashed tomorrow (and we all know it won’t be), that only frees up about $2-3 billion per annum – enough to develop something, possibly, but only with a lengthened development period if you’re using traditional cost-plus NASA procurement.
“Even if the ISS is splashed tomorrow (and we all know it won’t be), that only frees up about $2-3 billion per annum –”
No. It is more than that and the cost will continue to climb as the space station to nowhere nears the end of it’s life. This is really what “we all know” and the fact presents NewSpace with a huge problem: where will the money come from to build a new station? Answer: It will not come because no billionaire tourist industry is possible when a station costs billions per year. LEO space stations are an incredible waste of money. The Chinese are following us but whether they will figure out what a losing proposition they are remains to be seen.
The NewSpace fans think a blow-up tent like Bigelow is proposing will be cheap and easy and they are dead wrong. The missions the SLS can perform are the missions the falcon and falcon heavy will never be able to so those missions of course do not exist for SpaceX fandom. But SLS missions to create a cislunar infrastructure do exist and will be funded. As soon as the Mars fantasy and the soon-to-die-of-old-age ISS are retired.
The reason Kennedy pushed America towards the Moon was because America was technologically behind in space at the time (the US hadn’t even sent a man into orbit at the time) and we really didn’t know what the Soviet Union’s– long term plans– were for human space travel.
Some believed that the Soviet Union might even claim the Moon as part of their communist empire if they were first to land humans on the lunar surface.
The space race really ended, IMO, when the US and the USSR signed the Outer Space Treaty in 1967 making it– illegal– for any nation to claim ownership of the Moon or any territories on the Moon and beyond.
But what finally terminated America’s beyond LEO efforts was the fact that the Soviet Union never made it to the Moon– and showed no interest in sending cosmonauts to the Moon. If the USSR had made it to the Moon and set up outposts on the lunar surface, America would still be on the Moon with outposts on the lunar surface. And maybe we’d even be on Mars.
But with America reigning supreme in space at the end of 1969 and with no competition from the USSR, many American politicians who had always been cynical about spending large sums of tax payer dollars on human spaceflight– gutted NASA’s beyond LEO architecture. And practically all NASA notions about returning permanently to the Moon and going to Mars had pretty much been viewed by Congress and the Executive branch as a wasteful fantasy. Even the Constellation program gradually backed away from the notion of permanent outpost on the lunar surface.
And executive cynicism about returning to the Moon at all returned when President Obama came to office. And now NASA is in the Twilight Zone with an embattled president who still hasn’t appointed a new NASA administrator yet.
Marcel
“But what finally terminated America’s beyond LEO efforts was the fact that the Soviet Union never made it to the Moon– and showed no interest in sending cosmonauts to the Moon. ”
In fact, the Soviets *were* interested – they tried up to the last minute to launch a Zond mission in December 1968 to beat Apollo 8 to cislunar space – and did not give up on the N1 until 1974. But the U.S. did not appreciate that until much later. And so you had Walter Cronkite musing out loud that the U.S. had been somehow snookered into racing itself to the Moon.
“If the USSR had made it to the Moon and set up outposts on the lunar surface, America would still be on the Moon with outposts on the lunar surface.”
Almost certainly.
The Soviets were always the drivers of the Space Race.
If the USSR had made it to the Moon and set up outposts on the lunar surface, America would still be on the Moon with outposts on the lunar surface.
Probably correct. Of course, for such to happen, the USSR would have had to continue to exist.
And practically all NASA notions about returning permanently to the Moon and going to Mars had pretty much been viewed by Congress and the Executive branch as a wasteful fantasy. Even the Constellation program gradually backed away from the notion of permanent outpost on the lunar surface.
Actually, Congress supported the VSE (which included lunar return) in two separate NASA authorizations, once under the Republicans (2005) and once again under the Democrats (2008). Although NASA’s architectural studies in 2007-2009 focused more on sorties than outpost (again a reflection of the agency’s Mars mania), the outpost goal was never abandoned.
Marcel,
The following is from Joe, who is having difficulty posting his comment, so I am posting it for him:
Hi Marcel,
“Even the Constellation program gradually backed away from the notion of permanent outpost on the lunar surface.”
Actually Constellation never backed away from the Lunar Base goal. It vacillated between the base and sortie approaches. This was not because of cost, but because a segment of the Lunar Science Community favored the sortie approach
One of the sortie supporters (a good guy even though I disagreed with him) told me his reason was because he was convinced the program would be cancelled (like Apollo) after only a few flights (sadly he turned out to be optimistic about that) and with the sortie approach at least a couple of interesting sites could be examined.
“And now NASA is in the Twilight Zone with an embattled president who still hasn’t appointed a new NASA administrator yet. ”
Not yet, but we do now have a National Space Council technical leader. The White House just announced it is Scott Pace.
Joe
“We must transition to a permanent space-based system, one emphasizing assets that allow transfer, refueling and reuse between the various energy levels of cislunar space.”
I advocated this for about a decade.
Space based, reusable, “gas n’ go” vehicles was my tagline. I always believed funding would be an issue and why I stated to stay out of gravity wells until we had the fuel station and vehicle(s) so maybe that infrastructure could get in place before the next great thing. It was why I pushed for something like the Nautilus X. NASA researchers could just test and spiral out…
“,,, I stated to stay out of gravity wells until we had the fuel station and vehicle(s) ,,,
The problem with that approach is it requires bringing all propellant up from earth for a substantial period of time and the earth has a much deeper gravity well than the moon.
Granted BUT it creates the demand that would help entice capital flows for Lunar fuel production… no point in creating gas if their isn’t any cars… It also would create a FIERCE competitive environment for launch companies to launch a fungible product to space.
The Deep Space Gateway (DSG) can act as the lunar spacestation in a variation on von Braun architecture. If it has sufficient docking ports the DSG can act as a hanger for reusable lunar landers including manned landers.
The Deep Space Gateway (DSG) can act as the lunar spacestation in a variation on von Braun architecture
Not the one that NASA is planning — it’s in the wrong orbit (too high) and is not configured to accept multiple vehicles. Like the ARM before it, it’s merely another “make work” project.
There is probably only one options besides using robots to process and ferry water-as-radiation-shielding up to lunar orbit stations. That most exciting possibility is without doubt the “super lava tube” as a ready made underground city. If we could find some of these cubic-miles-size caverns, perhaps with ground penetrating radar or some other technique, then there would actually be a market for Bigelow blow up tents and Blue Origin lunar landers.
Giant water trucks could be used to transport water from the pole to these tube cities. The real technical challenge would be how to provide artificial Earth gravity. The only obvious solution being the circular “sleeper train” and that would require a very large tube indeed.
The ULA will probably have the lead in such a space architecture since the the IVF technology that they intend to use for their ACES vehicles will allow them to be refueled.
But NASA could easily accelerate the development of this technology by commissioning the ULA to modify NASA’s EUS into reusable orbital transfer vehicles and water storing and propellant producing orbiting depots.
Commissioning the developed of extraterrestrial crew landing vehicles with IVF technology would allow crewed spacecraft to be used on the Moon, Mars, and as a crew transfer vehicle between LEO and the rest of cis-lunar space.
The ULA and SpaceWorks have already proposed much larger LOX/LH2 orbital transfer vehicles using IVF technology that could transport humans to the orbits of Mars and Venus.
A Study of CPS Stages for Missions beyond LEO
http://www.sei.aero/eng/papers/uploads/archive/SpaceWorks%20CPS%20Study%20Final%20Distribution.pdf
Marcel
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“-that Apollo-like paradigm of “design, build, launch, use and discard.” That approach is not a sustainable one as evidenced by the fact that it was not sustained, despite the immense good will generated by and for a strong space program.”
Considering the lack of a few million in funding kept Mr. Brown from making Skylab a true wet workshop by utilizing the second stage of the Saturn V fixed to the converted third stage dry workshop, it must be appreciated Apollo certainly had the potential for reuse. Replacing the first stage with a pair of ocean recovered monolithic solid boosters or better yet pressure fed boosters would have made the Shuttle a poor investment in comparison. The boosters would have been reused and the second and third stage used as a workshop with more interior space than the ISS (in one launch).
Six launches per year from 1973 to the present could have sent around 240 ISS size platforms up and with a station useful life of ten years perhaps 60 stations at a time in orbit with a capacity of 600 astronauts at any given time. A purely hypothetical number because so many thousands of people cycling through tours decade after decade would serve no useful purpose. Actually the same holds true for the one station now going around and around.