Re: Does a solid-fuel Ares 1 make sense?

On Sat, 09 Sep 2006 14:28:38 -0500, "Jorge R. Frank"
<jrfrank@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hmm? Ares 5 was always 5-segment. Did you mean Ares 1?

Whoops! Yes.

I'm not exactly sure what the objection is, then.

It was sold as "safe, simple, soon" and is now none of the above, I
guess I'm just a little irritated by the bait-and-switch routine.

And the huge expense of FSB and Stage 2 for Ares 1, plus taking one
Complex 39 pad offline just when NASA will need it the most should be
objectionable. The high cost of Ares 1 development will bleed NASA dry
at a time when it needs every cent it can get for the trifecta of
Shuttle, Station, and Orion. By abandoning the
not-what-it-was-promised-to-be Ares 1 and investing instead in
accelerating Orion and uprating an EELV as necessary, we can minimize
the post-Shuttle downtime and dependence on Russia. And they might
even have a little left over to actually *gasp!* do something useful
on that expensive space station of ours.

Although 5-segment and J-
2S increased the cost of developing Ares I, the fact that they're now
common between Ares I and Ares V decreases the cost of developing Ares V,

In a future year when NASA's budget won't be under as much pressure as
it is now, thanks to retirement of Shuttle. Instead we're headed down
the Ares 1 debacle path of cancelling big programs and making pretty
much everything else zero-growth to pay for it. This oughta be a
no-brainer. Instead, Ares 5 has turned into something almost
completely different than what CLV started out being, but NASA is
clinging to the original projections, not unlike NASA's continuing to
promise weekly Shuttle flights at a time after it was clear the design
had changed so much that this was a pipedream. We need to learn from
our mistakes. It seems to me that NASA is not.

making the total cost difference a wash. It wouldn't make sense to switch
Ares I to EELV while leaving Ares V shuttle-derived - the cost of
developing 5-segment and J-2S would have to be eaten at *some* point, plus
the consideration for keeping the ATK SRB line open during the years when
EELV is flying and Ares V isn't.

So basically, we're dooming Constellation to future high operational
costs for just one reason: to keep SRB, a booster almost no one thinks
is good for humans or expensive payloads, alive.

Its not worth it.

Brian
.

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