Re: Ares vs DIRECT
- From: Einar <einarbb@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2007 13:34:53 -0800 (PST)
On Nov 21, 12:10 am, Ross B Tierney <krai...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Jorge R. Frank wrote:
ohara...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Nov 18, 2:50 pm, "Jorge R. Frank" <jrfr...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Brian Thorn wrote:
On Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:30:11 -0500, Michael GallagherA strong point of confusion, nevertheless, and one that I've argued (to
<mikejo...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The name "Direct" comes from "Direct Descendant of the Shuttle" (same.... NASA would simply have to rename the DIRECT vehicles "AresWell, direct wouldn't be totally "direct."
II" and
"Ares III" and the general public will hardly notice. Ares V would
still be a possibility for Mars farther down the road.
SRBs, same ET diameter, as opposed to FSB and 33 ft core Ares), not
the mode of reaching the moon.
no avail) to the DIRECT team that they should fix. It's not a bad
architecture, if the objective is to minimize transition costs from the
shuttle, but it is being sold so ineptly that they've pretty much
ensured they'll never get a fair hearing until at least 2009, by which
time it will be too late. If their prime objective is to make themselves
public martyrs, they are succeeding beyond their wildest dreams.
Jorge:
You may have discussed this previously but i missed it so please
expound on how you think it should be sold vs how they are trying.
I have not discussed this previously.
To understand why I think DIRECT is being sold ineptly, one must first:
1) Know Your Product. You may know already but for the benefit of the
rest, DIRECT is not a concept that originated outside of NASA. It is a
straightforward evolution of one of the concepts studied in NASA's ESAS
report, called "LV-24" (crew launch vehicle) and "LV-25" (cargo launch
vehicle). The key elements (4-segment SRBs, ET-derived 8.3 m core stage)
were all there. The principal difference is the substitution of RS-68
engines for SSMEs on the core stage (as NASA eventually did with the
Ares V). The other principal difference is that the ESAS report
concluded that LV-24/25 was incapable of carrying out a manned lunar
mission with two launches or less while DIRECT has found a way to do it
with two. But the key here is that all the real analysis behind DIRECT
comes from NASA, specifically a small group of engineers and managers,
primarily (but not solely) from MSFC.
2) Know Your Customer. NASA is far from a monolithic entity but to
generalize, NASA has high confidence in its own design capabilities
(justified or not), which results in a strong "Not Invented Here" bias
against external concepts. NASA is also politically vulnerable which
results in a strong "circle the wagons" response to perceived external
attacks.
So given the above, how did the DIRECT team choose to sell their concept?
1) Stay anonymous and get a bunch of internet frontmen outside NASA to
push the concept. Probably the single biggest mistake. It creates the
perception that LV-24/25 came from outside NASA, provokes the
circle-the-wagons response, and makes it virtually impossible for
Griffin to embrace the concept without losing face.
2) Name the architecture "DIRECT". Betrays an extreme ignorance of
history (namely, the Direct vs EOR vs LOR debates of the 1960s), leads
to confusion.
3) Name the launch vehicle "Jupiter". Nice and catchy but the name has
been used before, also leads to confusion, and it blurs the vehicle's
actual origins as ESAS LV-24/25. They should have kept it as LV-24a and
25a internally, allowing it to smoothly transition into the Ares family.
4) Insult and belittle the customer. Not directly the fault of the
managers/engineers who originated the concept, but sadly inevitable
given the choice of internet frontmen.
5) Comparing oneself to John Houbolt. Again not the direct fault of
those behind LV-24/25, but when one of your internet frontmen quotes
Houbolt in his .sig, it's also kinda inevitable.
For my opinion on how LV-24/25 *should* have been sold, one need look no
further than Houbolt. He pushed the concept strongly internally, but not
anonymously. He signed his own name to everything he wrote, he put his
own career on the line, he never went public while the debate was going
on, he never invented his own names for concepts being debated
internally, never even dreamed of having outside frontmen sell his
concept for him, and he let Von Braun take credit for the decision. Of
course, history vindicated him and now we all know Houbolt as the father
of LOR.
LV-24/25 is a good concept, one that strongly deserves a second look now
that Ares I/V are running into development problems, but the guys
developing and selling it aren't worthy to shine Houbolt's shoes.
Jorge,
Your post was forwarded to me yesterday. I am one of the "internet
front-men", as you termed us, for the DIRECT proposal. Perhaps I'm
thus in a good position to reply. I haven't spent much time on usenet
for about ten years, so please forgive me if I'm a little rusty with the
local netiquette these days :) This is going to be a *LONG* read, sorry.
I appreciate your comments, and actually agree with some. There
are a few points which need clarification too. I think it would be
beneficial if I walk you through the entire process from my personal
perspective.
IN THE BEGINNING
I'm a self-confessed amateur rocket scientist myself, with no
professional background in this industry, nor with any qualifications in
the advertising/promoting world. I've never claimed to be more than I
am - an outsider who got into something a lot bigger than himself.
I have a passion and deep interest in the works of NASA, and spent a
lot of time following the release of the ESAS Report chasing details.
"Something" never quite added up with that document for me though. I
couldn't identify it, but it niggled me like a dull toothache until I
was able to discover it. I initially supported NASA's choices though,
even going so far as to write a three-part article supporting Ares-I.
However, I eventually discovered a set of the ACI Draft version of the
ESAS Report which included the cost figures behind ESAS which was the
first crack in the proposal which I found. The real revelation came
when I found the NASA costings for the pair of launchers ESAS had
promoted - the LV-13.1 CLV and LC-27.3 CaLV (before they were named
Ares) and realized that although we were deleting the complicated and
very costly "Orbiter" element from the whole equation, the new launcher
choice was still going to match the cost of the retiring system.
That simple fact just didn't make sense to me so I started
investigating alternatives on my own - purely for fun at the time.
The argument I heard was that the new LV costs needed to match
Shuttle thereby providing sufficient work for the existing workforce.
This just didn't hold water for me because the EDS, LSAM, the Lunar Base
elements and Science hardware are all going to be additional elements
which have no correlation today. I was convinced that they would,
together, be more than large enough programs to take up any slack
created by reducing the launcher costs.
The ACI Draft ESAS Report showed very clearly that two vehicles
would cost roughly double the cost of any individual one. It seems
obvious now of course, but it was a revelation to actually see it in
NASA's own documentation. From that point, it isn't a big leap to work
out that one small launcher (CLV) and one very large launcher (CaLV)
could likely be replaced by a single vehicle somewhere in the
performance region in between. It seemed logical enough to me at the
"broad strokes" level anyway so I decided to look around for alternatives.
Coincidentally with all this, I had just completed a fairly detailed
study of the STS infrastructure, performance and costs at the time. It
occurred to me that the standard Shuttle Stack was actually in precisely
that middle-ground if only the system were re-configured by not making
the payload carrier so heavy (99mT Orbiter) compared to the payload
(16mT to ISS). An in-line solution (LV-24/25 in ESAS) seemed to back
up this conclusion quite well, being only 25mT lower performance than
the ESAS LV-27.3 CaLV without an EDS.
ESAS never published a figure for LV-24/25 performance with an EDS,
which I found very 'curious' from the first moment. Also the
explanation that LV-24/25 was a three launch solution requiring an
LV-13.1 "Stick" launcher to loft the crew didn't hold water either given
NASA's own Report showed that the LV-24 CLV variant exceeded NASA's
minimum LOC requirement of 1:1000, yet was never included in the running
for CLV use.
PEER REVIEW
Armed with this - and LOTS of questions - I put a brief summary
together and put the idea on a public forum (nasaspaceflight.com - NSF)
for peer review.
That was when things snowballed in a direction I had never
considered. Within 48 hours I was contacted privately by about twenty
different NASA & contractor engineers and managers who all said roughly
the same thing: "well done, this is what we should be doing, need any
help?".
While I had another hundred contacts who just expressed support,
those 20 offered their time and expertise to refine the idea into
something a lot more serious than I had ever planned. I was game if
they were.
Most made it very clear though, that they wanted anonymity because
they had serious concerns about speaking out against management's plans
in any way. At this time there were already a lot of "stories"
floating about regarding staff persecutions following Lockheed-Martin's
attempts to convince NASA to look at Atlas-V again as an alternative for
the CLV because they felt so very unfairly treated by ESAS.
...
read more >>
Just wanted to thank you for this enormously interesting post. I´ve
sort of not been paying close attension to this matter for the last
few month´s and didn´t realise that Nasa had such a severe problem
with it´s Ares´.
The idea you people are pushing appears to the standpoint of a pure
know very litle to be very sensible, if it´s really true that all this
extant infrastructure can be reused. Building a new one, and really
two new ones must alone cost a bundle and then some.
I whish you people all the luck in the world and the satisfaction of
seeing your proposal put into use, knowing you had positive influence.
Regards, Einar
.
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