Main Engine Cut Off - T+1: The Near Future of NASA’s Orion and SLS Programs

Episode Date: April 27, 2016

An analysis of NASA’s human spaceflight programs, Orion and the Space Launch System. How we got here, where we’re going, and how things could shake out with an eventful November in US politics coming up. Space Launch System Orion Space Station Freedom Vision for Space Exploration Constellation Program Ares I-X KSC meeting portrays SLS as scrambling for a manifest plan NASA facilities, teams ramp up SLS flight production for 2018 maiden flight NASA moves to enforce early switch to EUS for SLS NASA examines options and flight paths for SLS EM-2 mission Europe Aiming for International 'Moon Village' Attempt no landing there? Yeah right—we’re going to Europa Elon Musk Says SpaceX ‘City on Mars’ Will Be Announced in Guadalajara, Mexico Email feedback to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon

NASA's 2017 budget made its way through the U.S. Senate last week, which kicked off a whole new round of criticism surrounding two programs that NASA is currently working on, the Orion Crew Module and the Space Launch System, or SLS. They're the two programs that are at the center of NASA's human spaceflight initiative. They're the things that are supposed to take us out to Mars, eventually. The two programs are no strangers to criticism. They've been the subject of heated debate ever since they came into existence. The source of that criticism is this feeling that NASA's been without a very defined and achievable mission for quite a while now.

Critics say that without a clearly defined goal and deadline and motivation, that NASA is just working on things idly and will never actually get there. And that comes from the sort of desire to have that 1960s style clarity and focus when JFK got up there and said, we're going to go to the moon and come back within this decade. That was something that was very clear, very focused, and created a very driven NASA. But the truth is, ever since then, NASA's human spaceflight programs have not been like that. As Apollo was winding down, there was support building for the space shuttle. NASA was concepting out what they would do with this space shuttle. They would build a space station. They would do this extended living in space science to find out how humans could cope with long-duration

spaceflight. But once Apollo 11 was successful, public interest in NASA waned, and even presidential interest in NASA waned. President Nixon was in office at the time, and very quickly after Apollo was over, funding levels dropped for NASA. They didn't quite have the support that they did in the 1960s anymore. So they had to redesign their goals. They went from the space shuttle that they wanted that was designed for what they were going to do, to something that was a collaboration between the Air Force and NASA. And I say collaboration with a little tongue-in-cheek there because the Air Force really steamrolled NASA on what they got out of it. But that was the only way that NASA was going to get the funding to be able to build the space shuttle. So in the 1980s, the ideas for space station freedom started to be developed, and this

was a space station that looked a lot like what ISS does today, but specifically built by us only. Once the sticker shock hit on how much that program would cost, interest waned again, and then in the 90s, the international community said, we would go in on that space station with you. So we revived some of those plans and built what we have as the ISS today. And then as the shuttle's days were winding down in the 2000s, President Bush got a presidential commission together to figure out what was next for human spaceflight. This group of people released something called the Vision for Space Exploration, which defined how we would finish out construction and usage of the International Space Station, and then move on to the Moon, and then move on to Mars.

So out of that Vision for Space Exploration, NASA began work on Project Constellation. Project Constellation was how we would operate the new vehicles we had used, the new crew vehicles, the new landers, the new launch vehicles. All of these plans got developed, and NASA even flew a test flight back in 2009 of Ares I-X. And that was conspicuously timed with a changeover in administration and Congress. We had a new president, we had a new Congress. Political priorities were shifting again. Initially, President Obama supported Project Constellation, but once he got a year or two into his presidency and his advisors started talking

to him, they saw that the program was incredibly behind timeline, incredibly over budget, and both of those were because they were incredibly underfunded in the years when they were getting going. So the Obama administration canceled Project Constellation and replaced it with something. The something, again, was not very well defined. Initially, it was going to be focused on space technology, which was instead of putting money into launch vehicles and things like that, we were going to put money into the future technology we would need to live on Mars. Congress at the time didn't really like that plan because, again, as critics say, it didn't play to the strengths of their constituents.

So Congress rammed through something called the Space Launch System, and that's why mockingly people call it the Senate Launch System. This is a new big rocket that's meant to lift a lot of payload to orbit. It was sort of a revived design out of that Project Constellation. It's loosely based on the Ares V rocket that was in the works during that project. But the Congress people fighting for it were the ones from Florida and California and Texas and Alabama and Louisiana, all the congresspeople who have constituents that would be in control of this project. And that's sort of what led people to say, this is just a jobs program, this isn't going anywhere, we don't

have a good roadmap, what are we going to do with this rocket when we get it? Robert Zubrin, the president of the Mars Society, has this quote that I love. He says, in the mission-driven approach, you spend money in order to do things. In the constituency-driven approach, you do things in order to spend money. And that's a perfect summation of what critics of these programs think, that we're doing these things just to spend money, and we're not actually going anywhere with them. But here we are in 2016, and we have a couple of flights of SLS on the horizon. The first flight of SLS is slated for late 2018 right now. The mission is called Exploration Mission 1, and that will launch

an uncrewed Orion module around the moon and back. The point of this is to prove out the hardware and do a test flight, a full-up dress rehearsal rehearsal for what it would take to send humans on the same mission. So Exploration Mission 2 is the first crewed mission of Orion and SLS, and it will fly in the same flight path, up to orbit and then around to orbit the moon and back. The reason for that same exact flight plan is because of congressional demands on the SLS. They're mandated to not fly humans on any untested hardware for the first time. So Exploration Mission 1 would test this new rocket and this new upper stage called the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, ICPS for short. It would test both of these hardware pieces so that they can be human rated for when humans

are ready to set foot on the rocket. But recently there was a decision to change out that upper stage before EM-2. So they would go from the ICPS to something called the Exploration Upper Stage, or EUS. This is a bigger, beefier version meant to push the capsule out farther than it could with the ICPS. The problem is, if we're going to switch out EM-2 for the new exploration upper stage, we need to fly that first in order to meet the congressional rule that we can't fly new hardware with humans. So we need another flight of SLS before EM-2 to make this possible. As of right now, it seems like in 2022, the SLS will launch a Europa mission, which is one of the moons of Jupiter.

We'll send an orbiter and a lander out there to investigate that moon up in detail, because it's a place that we think life could exist. So it's a very exciting robotic mission that we're getting, even at the expense of all this weird roadmap kind of lost their way sort of thing going on with the SLS right now. roadmap kind of lost their way sort of thing going on with the SLS right now. Interestingly, in the NASA 2016 budget, the Europa mission was mandated to fly on the SLS. So we have good evidence that the SLS will fly at least twice, EM-1 in 2018 and the Europa mission in 2022. That pushes EM-2 out to no earlier than 2023, but it could very well be later than that.

Beyond that, there is no manifested flight. So instead of harping on the same criticism like we always have been for the past decade almost, I just want to shift this perspective a little bit. We've built this rocket, but we have no missions. But maybe that's not the worst thing ever, given where we're at in the political cycle. At the end of this year, we we have no missions. But maybe that's not the worst thing ever, given where we're at in the political cycle. At the end of this year, we're going to get a new president, potentially a change in party. We're going to get a bunch of new congresspeople. There's about to be a big political shift, and as we've seen time and time again, political shifts cause change in priorities and motivation and plans, really, from the NASA side of things. So this is different than when

President Obama took office, which Project Constellation at the time was behind this timeline over budget, and they didn't actually have any pieces in place. Now the new president's going to take over, and there are these launches in the near-term future. There's actual hardware being built today for these launches. NASA's in a very different position this time around. They have hardware, they have a launch manifest, they need to know where to go next. So instead of shooting for this big 20-year project that was never going to be in place by the time the next president took over, maybe NASA played the cards right. They bit off the chunk that they could chew. Because in NASA's eyes, whatever they do next, whether it be the moon, whether it be Mars,

whether it be Europa missions, they need a heavy launch rocket. And that's what they've built. They've put themselves in the position where they have the designs done, they've put all the money into the development of this thing, and they're ready to fly it. Now, there are people that will argue they don't need that rocket and they can rely on the commercial industry like we've talked about last week. But in NASA's eyes, they need this rocket. When the new president comes in and the new Congress comes in, maybe the motivations will shift again, but this time we have this

rocket in place. So whatever plan comes next, we're working off the shoulders of the SLS. There's more and more talk every day about the European Space Agency's idea for a moon base, and maybe that's something that the next Congress or next president would be willing to take part in. And all of a sudden, we have a heavy launch rocket ready for missions to that moon village. Or maybe the next president is somebody that is scared of China and losing, and sees China heading out to the moon in the next decade or two, and wants to redirect our efforts to moon landings again. Either way, we have this rocket in place that would be the backbone of that new program. So instead of starting from scratch again,

NASA at least has something to work off of. Something physical, something actually built, something in place already. So wherever the political winds may blow from here on out, at least NASA is starting from a place further down the line than they were last time. With an organization as much of a political football as NASA is, maybe that is the right play after all. So the next year or two will be very telling in what happens with these two programs. We could see someone come in and take these programs and put their own motivation on top of them and say, we're going to use these things to do X. And then you have the whole variable that's coming, which is SpaceX is going to announce their plans for a Mars mission or Mars infrastructure in September. So you start seeing these pieces come together where you have

a government program that has a lot of capability that you would need to go to Mars, and then you have a commercial interest developing their things that they need to go to Mars, and maybe there's an instance where these things can work together. And NASA could say, you know, we'll use SLS to launch these three things. You use your giant rocket, whatever it's going to be called, to launch those three things. Let's put them together and go. And that's something that could change the financial outlook for a Mars mission from the big sticker shock price tag that it would be today to Congress to something more

manageable. And that's something that could develop over the next 10 years. That'll be it for me this week. Thank you very much for listening to the show. And if you're enjoying it, or if you're not enjoying it, or if you have any feedback about what I talked about today, I'd love to hear it on Twitter at Mco Podcast, M-E-C-O Podcast. Also, a rating in the iTunes store would be lovely or a recommendation on Overcast or whatever platform you're using. Just help spread the word a little bit if you're enjoying this. Thanks. I'll talk to you later. Thank you.