A former head of NASA's astronaut corps has little confidence that commercial launch companies can develop a rocket quickly that meets the space agency's specifications for safety.Four-time shuttle flier Charlie Precourt, now a vice president at ATK, said the NASA would not be eager to send astronauts into space on a commercial rocket developed outside NASA's rigorous inspection and review procedures.
"I wouldn't be if I were the chief astronaut. You have to understand what the risk is," Precourt added.
Precourt spoke to the National Space Club meeting Tuesday in Cocoa Beach. His presentation was titled, "Ares Update from ATK's Perspective." In 2005, Precourt joined ATK, the company which makes solid rocket boosters for the shuttle and the first stage of the Ares I rocket, which could be the nation's next manned spacecraft.
After becoming a shuttle astronaut in 1991, he made four space flights, serving as shuttle commander on two. Precourt also served as deputy program manager for the International Space Station, chief of the Astronaut Corps and director of operations for NASA at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia.
With NASA's budget problems, the development of commercial rockets seems unavoidable. Most of the options weighed by a presidential panel reviewing the agency's human spaceflight program would rely on private companies to ferry cargo and astronauts, to the space station and the first legs of trips to the moon.
Precourt, however, said it would be difficult for a private company, operating without NASA oversight, to develop a safe rocket.
"I don't follow the process that accelerates this whole thing through what people are loosely calling commercialization," Precourt said in an interview after the presentation. "What do we do when the vehicle is not one that has that kind of understanding and involvement of NASA expertise, the expertise that is the best on the planet."
After the failure and repair last month of a sensor in test equipment, ATK will test fire a five-segment solid rocket engine Thursday in Utah. The five-segment engine, with 3.6-million pounds of thrust, will become the first stage of the Ares I, which will be NASA's first new spacecraft since the shuttle. Funding shortfalls and engineering delays could put the rocket behind its 2015 development date.
"For the first time in NASA history we're designing a vehicle that's smaller," Precourt said.
Though the Ares I is designed to be 10 times safer than the shuttle, it still faces design obstacles, including possible excessive vibration at launch. The launch of the Ares I-X, a test vehicle with critical differences from the eventual design, is planned for late October and has been delayed several times.
Despite his opposition to a commercial rocket developed without NASA, Precourt said ATK was preparing for that eventuality, should the Ares I be pushed into competition with other rockets.
"What we are fearing about the commercial aspect is, 'What does it really mean?'" Precourt said.
IMAGE: Details of the Ares I-X
12 comments:
If the only consideration is the launch success record, I'd rather be launched on an Atlas than on Shuttle. Atlas has been more successful for the last 16 years. (Of course, some of the environments such as axial acceleration and acoustics would require a lot more mitigation!) As for the part about them being "developed outside NASA's rigorous inspection and review procedures", that can be remedied. Just ask the commercial launch providers who sell to NASA now.
Of course he's going to say that. ATK will go in the dump if the Ares projects are dumped.
Fuzzy logic. Try comparing Atlas reliability against Shuttle reliability per number of launches, not a period of time.
The only thing that "Atlas" guy will be riding is star jets in Disney.
(sarcasm) Hmmmmm, ATK doesnt think commercial rockets are the way to go. Yeah.... didn't see that coming.... (/sarcasm)
Grrr... this blog software can't tell the difference between real and fake HTML tagging. That's why I had to use "() instead of <>".
My question is why are we going to the moon, again? Shouldn't we be trying to go further, where no man has gone before? I also agree with the fact that he's going to agree with Ares, he works for ATK which is involved with Ares. He wouldn't be saying that if he worked for Space X
I like how he thinks NASA's expertise is the best on the planet! That's too funny! The real expertise lies with the contractors. How many launch vehicles has NASA successfully designed and fielded in the past two decades? The answer: 0! Boeing gave us Delta IV, Lockheed Martin gave us Atlas V, and SpaceX gave us Falcon 1, is soon to give us Falcon 9, and they are even close to flying their own spacecraft!! NASA has nothing but a string of failed projects. The guys at Marshal Spaceflight Center haven't designed a launch vehicle from start to finish in decades!!
Also, I like how he uses the word "inspect". The reality is that NASA doesn't "inspect." They stick their nose into everything and change requirements as often as the wind blows. That is why this business is so darn expensive!
What NASA does right, however, is their Launch Services Program, where they buy rides on existing EELVs. The rest of NASA spaceflight should be modeled off of LSP.
Talk about someone having a conflict of interest...geez...
I respect Mr Precourt as an ex-NASA astronaut, but what he said was in his capacity as an employee of ATK. He would say that wouldn't he! But to be fair to him, if Ares is dumped then that's another 3 billion tax-dollars down the hole. In a recession, it really doesn't look or sound clever to those who think human spaceflight is a waste of money
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he has very good reasons to have big doubts!
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first of all, the "commercial space" has already missed its #1 goal that is "be much cheaper than old.space companies and government agencies
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the expected price-per-ton of the Falcon family of rocket (the ONLY existing new.space company so far...) is only slightly less than Delta, Ariane and Atlas but very much higher than prices of Russia, India and China (all them "on the market" like all other their products)
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the CRS program is expected to give to NASA two cargo-vehicles (Cygnus and Dragon) INFERIOR to Shuttle, Progress, Soyuz and ATV, since (like the HTV) are not even able to dock to the ISS but must be berted with the ISS robot-arm!
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also, the "cheap" price of these "commercial" cargo-vehicles should be $60M per ton for SpaceX and $95M per ton for Orbital Sciences, that is up to FOUR TIMES the (already high) price-per-ton of the Shuttle cargo and 10-15 times the prices of the Progress, as explained in this article:
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http://www.ghostnasa.com/posts/042moneywasted.html
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the Falcon-9 may need two-three years to have a good successful launch rate and at least five more years to be man-rated, also, I doubt very much that a ten-engines rocket can be so reliable to be man-rated!
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the only thing the Falcon-9 can launch is the Dragon, that may be good for cargo, but it's TOO SMALL for SEVEN astronauts, so, I doubt it will never carry them at the claimed $20M per seat
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last, I doubt that a small company like SpaceX can have the enough experience (like NASA, Boeing, LM, etc.) in the development of SAFE and RELIABLE manned vehicles... maybe, it will have this experience in the next 5-10 years, but NOT NOW nor in a few years, so, the Dragon (that can't dock to the ISS also in its crew version) can't replace the Shuttle, Soyuz and Orion!
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last, SpaceX (the ONLY existing new.space company) has ZERO CHANCES to replace the Constellation rockets, since, the latter program needs 150-200 tons payloads to LEO, while, the max payload of the Falcon-9 is around 10 tons (slightly more than a Soyuz)
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the Falcon-9 Heavy will be much less reliable than Falcon-9 (due to its 28 engines that, all them, must work properly!) and is only a paper-rocket today, that needs 5-10 years to see its first test launch
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if NASA will really rely only on (today's and near future) "commercial space" it will be its DEATH
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It must be obvious by now that government agencies (like NASA) will always be given less $$$ than needed to get the job done.
Governments are never trustworthy when it comes to visionary pursuits; every 4 years the 'big ship' might change course, never reaching its goal, forever wandering..
It seems the only way 'up' is by small private companies/groups like Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, Rocketplane, XCOR etc. who really want to reach for the stars...
I agree that Precourt is biased. However, let's be real. NASA requirements and procedures are used to instill certain safety features into the rocket motors. Commercial programs will NEVER be able to meet those requirements. People like to compare the shuttle to commercial motors, but that is a bogus comparison. You would have to "strap" those motors onto the shuttle and then say it is safer, cheaper, etc. You would have to go through the quality control checks that NASA currently requires for the Shuttle program and then make the comparison. The reality is, the commercial motors would be far more expensive than the current configuration on shuttle. The reality is also that they wouldn't be even close to as safe as the shuttle is today.
As for Ares, the vertical stack removes a lot of the safety issues on Shuttle today. On top of that, it is struggling to meet budget, not because of the solid boosters that ATK provides, but because the upper stage and orion capsule are WAY behind schedule. The upper stage is a liquid motor much like the commercial versions. The orion capsule would be needed regardless of the motor used. Shoot the Ares solid booster was just test fired a little while ago and all the data is coming back as "good".
So why on earth would you scrap that and start over? What commercially available rocket are you really going to use? As Griffin recently said, what program is at the same level in development that the current Ares I configuration is today?
There is nothing even close to Ares I. Anyone else saying so is just living in a pipe dream.
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