NASA Exploration Roadmaps

cIclops · 2007-06-08 07:00:29

Exploration briefing - (video 68 mins) - 7 Jun 2007

Overview of Exploration program by Scott Horowitz and Jeff Hanley.

Interesting comments:

o Working towards an Initial Operating Capability (IOC) of a first human flight of the Ares I/Orion in September 2013.

o 65% confidence level of achieving IOC by March 2015 under current funding profile

o Orion will be able to support crew for 18 days in space and will use airbags

o Ares I will launch 90 minutes after Ares V if onorbit checkout is ok and rendevous the same day

o Ares I performance is within margin for both ISS and the more demanding Lunar missions

o Marginal cost of Ares V estimated between $200-300 million

Briefing charts

Fledi · 2007-06-08 09:13:04

Marginal cost of Ares V estimated between $200-300 million

Wow, that's great, would mean 2000 - 3000$/kg into LEO if Ares V has about 100 ton lift capacity. I hope they can pull this off.

cIclops · 2007-06-08 11:39:36

It's even better than that, Ares V lift capacity is currently 131 mT so that means around $1500 to $2300 per kg. That is the marginal cost and does not included fixed costs such as operations and engineering support. As there won't be many flights a year, two perhaps, this will add a lot more cost. However Ares V shares the SRB, J-2X and other subsystems with Ares I.

cIclops · 2007-07-09 06:53:15

rumors from the Mars architecture study? - 8 Jul 2007

Lastly — in the humans to Mars picture — NASA has several studies in the works. One of them looks at an initial suite of three human expeditions in the 2030-2040 time period…leading to later missions and an extended presence of humans on Mars out in the year 2100.

cIclops · 2007-07-22 06:23:10

Space Exploration Day video - (44:38 mins) 18 Jul 2007

Scott Horowitz and others from the Langley Research Center present the exploration roadmap and an update on the Constellation project development. Includes details of the Ares I Launch Abort System (LAS) and the space exploration technology development program.

cIclops · 2007-09-16 16:13:31

Richard J. Gilbrech - will replace Scott Horowitz as head of exploration

Associate administrator for Exploration - 10 Aug 2007

WASHINGTON - On Friday, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin named Richard J. Gilbrech as associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, the NASA division designing the next generation of spacecraft to return astronauts to the moon and eventually journey to Mars. Gilbrech currently serves as the director of NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. Griffin also named Robert D. Cabana, deputy director of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, to replace Gilbrech as center director at Stennis.
Gilbrech will succeed Scott Horowitz, who will leave his position in early October to pursue interests outside NASA.
"Scott Horowitz is someone who has seen it all and done it all in aerospace -- Ph.D. researcher, fighter pilot, test pilot, astronaut, and the possessor of a brilliant system engineer's mind," Griffin said. "He was the perfect choice to kick-start NASA's effort to replace the shuttle and return to the moon; the Ares I always will be seen as Scott's brainchild. I will forever consider him to be both a good friend and a valued colleague. But I respect his need to move on.
"We are incredibly fortunate to have as his replacement someone of Rick Gilbrech's training, talent, and experience," Griffin continued. "Rick was our 'go to guy' when we needed someone to head a tiger team to deal with the loss of the shuttle PAL ramp foam on STS-114. With experience in both institutional and project management, Rick's willingness to take on this challenge will ensure the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate remains in good hands."
Before being named director of Stennis in 2006, Gilbrech was deputy director of the agency's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., and deputy director of NASA's Engineering Safety Center located at Langley. Gilbrech began his career at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi in 1991. He earned a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from Mississippi State University, Starkville, and master's and doctoral degrees from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

cIclops · 2007-09-22 09:29:53

To the Moon and Beyond - October 2007

Well written Scientific American article by Orion project managers describing the Constellation architecture.

cIclops · 2007-09-25 04:46:55

NASA aims to put man on Mars by 2037 - 24 Sep 2007

HYDERABAD, India (AFP) — NASA aims to put a man on Mars by 2037, the administrator of the US space agency indicated here Monday.
This year marks the half-century of the space age ushered in by the October 1957 launch of the Sputnik-1 by the then Soviet Union, NASA administrator Michael Griffin noted.
In 2057, the centenary of the space era, "we should be celebrating 20 years of man on Mars," Griffin told an international astronautics congress in this southern Indian city where he outlined NASA's future goals.

Nice vision! Checkout the latest roadmap, see next message ...

cIclops · 2007-09-25 04:49:59

Latest roadmap - ripped from Lunar Architecture Update (PDF 8MB) - 20 Sep 2007

Note the top right corner "Mars Expedition 2030" - much better than 2037

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-09-26 07:42:47

Most curious. The Mars expedition waits for the completion of the Moonbase, as if NASA can only do one thing at a time. One good thing though, by 2027, it is predicted that computers will reach the capacity of the human brain if current trends in processing power continues. Astronauts on a 2030 mission would be superflueous and could be replaced entirely with humanoid robots. It would be nice if the Mars landings would come before the technological singularity.

Also a prediction for 2027, the GDP of China will exceed that of the United States - that is unless robots count as a major expansion of the workforce, in that case it wouldn't matter if a country has one billion people or one hundred million, what matter is who develops the robots first. Seems to me that NASA is playing "tortose" rather than "hare."

Seems to me that Orion "development" shouldn't take seven years, the Apollo capsule certainly didn't, and if what we're doing is essenally replicating Apollo results except for putting 4 people on the Moon rather than two, there doesn't seem to be alot of "development" that needs to go on. The Ares I shouldn't take six years to develop either, two years should suffice, as its only an extension of existing solid rocket technology.

Thirteen years from now we will have something that's equivalent to what we had 40 years ago. It should take thirteen years for us to replicate 40-year old technology, it certainly didn't take thirteen years to develop the first Saturns from scratch. Keeping the Shuttle till 2010 only explains two of those years delays. No doubt China can and has knocked together a space capsule in less times, and China will not wait for us to get all our ducks in a row or for us to complete the Moonbase. If we're spending Money on construction of a Moonbase, China can meanwhile proceed on a manned Mars mission and arrive their first.

cIclops · 2007-09-28 05:55:57

Seems to me that Orion "development" shouldn't take seven years, the Apollo capsule certainly didn't, and if what we're doing is essenally replicating Apollo results except for putting 4 people on the Moon rather than two, there doesn't seem to be alot of "development" that needs to go on.

Check the history Tom

1960 ...
May 25: STG Advanced Vehicle Team formed to conduct research and make preliminary design studies leading to the definition of requirements for an advanced multiman spacecraft.
...
September 1: The Apollo Project Office formed under the Space Task Group (STG) Flight Systems Division.

Apollo 7, the first manned capsule flew 11 Oct 1968. That's eight years after the project office was formed and more than eight years after preliminary design studies. And that was with unlimited funding and resources as a top priority, national crash program!

Orion will be far more capable than Apollo, it can loiter autonomously in orbit for six months, accommodate six crew and can reenter from Mars missions. Developing a manned spacecraft is a long, complicated, expensive process.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-09-28 08:04:58

You must admit though that Apollo was treading new territory, no one had done that stuff before. With Constellation, the fact that they are first covering old ground should cheapen and shorten the program. I sometimes worry that they may be too careful and spend too much money on safety and delay the program till it balloons out of sight. I thought the point of using off the shelf technology was to make the program happen sooner and to make it cheaper, new ground will only start being covered when they set their sites on Mars. What we are doing now is attempting to regain our capacity we had during the Apollo years.

What I don't understand is the 10 year gap between the construction of the Moonbase and the first manned Mars Mission. It seems to me that the two activities could be happening concurrently, and if not both by NASA, then the other could be done by another country. The added cost of a Mars mission on top of a Moonbase is not as much as doing a Mars mission alone. The opportutinies for travel to Mars occur every two years, it seems to me that NASA could easily focus on the Moon during the off-years between launch windows to Mars. A Mars mission will probably require multiple Ares V launches to assemble the spacecraft in orbit, and this is best done as quickly as possible rather than staggered over a two-year period, but to keep the Ares Assembly line going we could have lunar missions between the Mars launch windows. I think once the Shuttle is retired, there should be nothing to hold us back.

Instead what I see is Shuttle Shuttle Shuttle, retire the Shuttle, then Space Station Space Station Space Station, Space Station missions complete, then Moon landings Moon landings Moon landings, look for a site for the Base, then Build the Base Build the Base Build the Base, Base complete, then figure out a way to get to Mars. This is rather linear thinking and it eats up a third of a century. Are we going to retire the Space Station before we go to the Moon? Are we going to build the Moonbase before we go to Mars? What's to stop the Chinese or some other power from going to Mars while we are building the Moonbase?

cIclops · 2007-09-28 08:26:40

What I don't understand is the 10 year gap between the construction of the Moonbase and the first manned Mars Mission. It seems to me that the two activities could be happening concurrently, and if not both by NASA, then the other could be done by another country. The added cost of a Mars mission on top of a Moonbase is not as much as doing a Mars mission alone.

There is no planned date yet for the first Mars expedition. The 2030 and 2037 dates that NASA have given are guesses on when the expeditions could begin given the current funding levels. The idea is to establish the Outpost and when the funding and the technology are ready to go on to Mars. Once established, sustaining the Outpost should be possible. The Outpost is currently in the 2020 timeframe, that's so far ahead almost everything can and probably will change.

Exploration driven by destination makes planning much clearer than exploration driven by technology. LEO > (NEO) > Moon > Mars. Mars as a destination is too big a step given the available funding. It's all dependent on funding. If the ISS partners get onboard a lot more is possible.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-09-29 01:24:40

It makes a number of unrealistic assumptions:

1) That space travel will cost as much in 2030 as it does today.

2) The funding level does not change.

3) The technology does not change.

Essentially, we could build something and in five years be on our way to Mars with today's technology and an unlimited abount of funding. We would simply spend as much as we had to and we could get there.

But given that funding is limited, we end up stretching the 5 year plan to something like 25 years, we then make the assumption that since it takes five times as long, technology will advance 5 times as slow. Technology improves even if we don't fund it as part of the Moonbase or Mars Mission appropriation. For other reasons, people may develop nanotube fibers, smarter robots and computers, more efficient jet engines that can go faster. Things have not changed for long enough, to expect things to not change for twice as long becomes twice as unlikely, just as one who has been on a winning streak at a gambling table cannot expect to keep on winning for an equal amount of time in the future as he has been in the past.

I submit that the lack of progress in Space Travel over the past 30 years was an improbably occurance, and that it is twice as unlikely to be sustained for another 30 years into the future. Like a bunch of logs piling up behind a log jam, eventually something has got to give. Once enough technological developments occur independently, space technology will break through and things will rush forward. Particularly things such as artificial intelligence. Perhaps when we build something that is 1000 times as smart as a human, it will finally figure out a way to get off this planet cheaply where our puny organic brains have failed.

cIclops · 2007-09-29 06:48:00

The 2030 time frame for the first Mars expedition assumes current funding levels and probably quite a lot of new technology - DRM 3.0 uses NTP for example. The good news is that a Mars expedition is possible within the current budget, this is because of the Shuttle retirement and completion of ISS. With more funding that 2030 date can be moved to the left, technology breakthroughs would help too of course.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-09-29 11:34:06

The 2030 time frame for the first Mars expedition assumes current funding levels and probably quite a lot of new technology - DRM 3.0 uses NTP for example. The good news is that a Mars expedition is possible within the current budget, this is because of the Shuttle retirement and completion of ISS. With more funding that 2030 date can be moved to the left, technology breakthroughs would help too of course.

I'll bet there is not large hotels in low earth orbit under these assumptions, no Solar Power satellites, no space elevators etc. If we're going to assume a 30 year project time horizon, we also have to assume that things will pretty much stay as they are or change only on the margins. I will however be 63 years old by 2030. Thirty years is the difference between 1970 and 1940, the difference between the age of the transistor and the age of the vaccuum tube, between the Jet Engine and the Prop engine, between transcontinental jets and ocean liners as the main mode of overseas travel. The difference between 1977 and 2007 is less apparent, we are still in the age of Jets, microelectronics, and transcontinental flights, but there has been changes at the margins, smaller electronic gadgets that we carry around, but what are the changes that the next 30 years will be more like from 1977 to 2007 instead of from 1940 to 1970. A number of small technological changes have been occuring over the last 30 years that haven't radically altered our lives, but taken together they may be building up pressure on a technological log jam that has been occuring and that has basically kept us technologically in the "20th century" up till now. Now I wonder how much longer this can occur? How much longer will all these small technological improvements that you only read about in technical journals not matter.

It seems to me that we are still living in a basic "20th century" lifestyle. I don't see much difference between 1997 and 2007. Personal computers get faster and have more memory but its hard to appreciate these added capabilities given the typical applications we routinely use desk top computers for. My question is, would 2030 look futuristic from the persective of someone who just stepped in from 1977? From one perspective, he may see people walk around wearing tiny little gadgets that let them stay in communication over a wireless network over real time, but the typical 1977 person might wonder, "So what, who wants to be on the phone all the time? The cars look sleeker and rounder, but again so what? Those are just styling changes, granted they may look a little weird driving on the roads of 1977, but they still drive on the ground. A man walking on Mars might not impress the 1977 guy, he would say, "we just been on the Moon 5 years ago and will wonder why the press is making such a big deal about such an underwhelming accomplishment 30 years to late. The 1977 man may encounter surprisingly little "Future Shock" unless he likes to play with tiny little gadgets, at least according to NASA's assumptions.

Grypd · 2007-09-30 08:39:43

Intresting article from the Space Review about NASA and the economies of space.

Space economies and economics

This is about NASA's and Griffins view of what NASA is about and its future.

Intresting comment though was from Mike Griffin

Griffin extended that theme to include human exploration of the Moon. “I personally believe that China will be back on the Moon before we are,” he said. “I think when that happens, Americans will not like it, but they will just have to not like it. I think we will see, as we have seen with China’s introductory manned space flights so far, we will see again that nations look up to other nations that appear to be at the top of the technical pyramid, and they want to do deals with those nations. It’s one of the things that made us the world’s greatest economic power

cIclops · 2007-10-01 01:39:47

Nations Looking For a Piece of the Exploration Pie - 30 Sep 2007

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, among the strong turnout by space-agency chiefs this year, reminded the congress that President Bush’s original exploration directive called for international and commercial participation.
Sun Laiyan, Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA) chief, says China has yet to decide whether it will send its citizens to the Moon, even though Griffin says it’s his personal belief that the Chinese will get there first this time (AW&ST Sept. 24, p. 31).
Sun says the CNSA is ready to cooperate with anyone “but only as an equal,” and NASA invited CNSA to participate in the series of workshops that produced an initial “framework document” last summer (AW&ST June 11, p. 32). But so far, it’s an arm’s-length relationship.
That marks one extreme of the lunar-exploration “collaboration” taking shape in the NASA-initiated workshops, which took the ISS partnership as their starting point. At the other end are longtime cooperative relationships like those among Canada, the European Space Agency (ESA), Japan and NASA. That may be the starting point, but the emerging approach to lunar exploration will be something very different.
“The ISS model is not the right model for exploration,” says workshop member Graham Gibbs of the Canadian Space Agency. While the basic goals of lunar exploration are fairly well-understood, he says relations among participating nations are much more fluid. Nations will take part in some joint efforts on the lunar surface, eschew others and perhaps do some on their own. “We’re looking at, shall we say, a more nimble partnership arrangement,” Gibbs says.
Piero Messina from ESA’s exploration office in Paris agrees. He stresses that while the ultimate shape of the lunar collaboration won’t be clear for several years, it will be much more open-ended than the tight bilateral and multilateral agreements governing the ISS. “Some of the features of this new cooperative scheme would be flexibility, for example,” he says. “Participating parties in this scheme would retain control over their own elements. I think one of the things that we are looking at quite carefully is how to limit the interdependence among different elements.”

It's politics all the way out.

cIclops · 2007-10-01 03:23:52

Paul Spudis - Vision for Space Exploration - (video 1:20 mins)

Spudis, a leading lunar scientist, outlines his vision for space exploration.

Gennaro · 2007-10-09 17:37:27

NASA aims to put man on Mars by 2037

This looks more and more like I once wrote. Man will land on Mars in 2047 (there will be another ten years of time delay). In mid september to be exact.

Gennaro · 2007-10-09 17:43:21

One good thing though, by 2027, it is predicted that computers will reach the capacity of the human brain if current trends in processing power continues.

Only in terms of hardware raw processing power. Software lags considerably behind and is nowhere near the exponential curve predicted by Moore's law.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-10-09 18:04:26

One good thing though, by 2027, it is predicted that computers will reach the capacity of the human brain if current trends in processing power continues.
Only in terms of hardware raw processing power. Software lags considerably behind and is nowhere near the exponential curve predicted by Moore's law.

OK by 2027 you may have a laptop computer sitting on your lap with the same processing power as your brain, it may take some time to develop the software that can efficiently use that processing power, but it may be wishful thinking to suppose that a 2037 computer couldn't do alot of the stuff a human could. The Human Brain is a product of evolution, and so we might similarly evolve AI software in an electronic 2027-37 computer, and I think electronic software will evolve much faster than the human brain. The market place will be the decider of what evolves, the more useful programs in the competition will be adopted while the less useful ones will be discarded. One thing to do may be to have multiple AI programs running simultaneously in the same program, and having them broken up into elemental parts and adopting the most useful parts which perform the algorithm most efficiently.

I forsee Global Positioning systems in cars evolving into automated driving systems. Various programs will be run under simulated conditions, and the ones that are best at staying on the road and avoiding obstacles will be the ones adopted. I think by 2027-37 we'll have upright 2-legged robots that are quite capable of navigating around obstacles and dealing with various terrain and stairs just as a human would, Animals can do that after all. I would expect the world of 2027 to be populated by all sorts of robots in everyday life, and I would be surprised not to see them. My job as a Chauffer will probably be gone by then.

Alot of things humans now do will be done by robots, this would free up humans to do the harder stuff, this would tend to reduce the costs of many things, including space travel.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-10-10 23:59:33

So it appears here that the ship computer, when astronauts finally do reach Mars, will be as smart as one of the astronauts under the NASA exploration time table.
Exponential Growth of Computing

And by 2010 we shall see whether we have a supercomputer that can match the processing power of the human brain.

cIclops · 2007-10-11 02:17:30

And by 2010 we shall see whether we have a supercomputer that can match the processing power of the human brain.

According to that chart Tom, by 2010 a $1000 computer will have the power of a mouse brain ... yes it should be possible to find somebody with one of those

It's a nice chart based on calculations per second, the computer inside your phone can already calculate much faster than your brain! Seriously, there is no clear way to convert calculations per second into the equivalent processing power of a brain. That chart is based on a lot of assumptions. Note how all the data points stop below the "insect brain" level.

It's doubtful that Artificially Intelligent systems will make much difference to NASA's roadmap or change the date of a Mars mission. The key technologies are propulsion and materials.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-10-11 10:06:42

By 2020, that $1,000 computers becomes the equal of a Human brain, and by that time computer scientists will have 10 years of fiddling with the Supercomputer human equivalent. I doubt "Strong AI" as Ray Kurzwell calls it will remain tantalizingly out of reach for very long, and NASA bases its planning on the assumption that everything will stay the same with advances in computing being "window dressing" and not affecting the rest of the World. I think planning a Mars landing with humans is pointless beyond 2020, you could just build a robot that looks and acts human and land it on Mars and no one will know the difference.

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#101 2007-06-08 07:00:29

Re: NASA Exploration Roadmaps

#102 2007-06-08 09:13:04

Re: NASA Exploration Roadmaps

#103 2007-06-08 11:39:36

Re: NASA Exploration Roadmaps

#104 2007-07-09 06:53:15

Re: NASA Exploration Roadmaps

#105 2007-07-22 06:23:10

Re: NASA Exploration Roadmaps

#106 2007-09-16 16:13:31

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#107 2007-09-22 09:29:53

Re: NASA Exploration Roadmaps

#108 2007-09-25 04:46:55

Re: NASA Exploration Roadmaps

#109 2007-09-25 04:49:59

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#110 2007-09-26 07:42:47

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#111 2007-09-28 05:55:57

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#112 2007-09-28 08:04:58

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#113 2007-09-28 08:26:40

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#114 2007-09-29 01:24:40

Re: NASA Exploration Roadmaps

#115 2007-09-29 06:48:00

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#116 2007-09-29 11:34:06

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#117 2007-09-30 08:39:43

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#118 2007-10-01 01:39:47

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#119 2007-10-01 03:23:52

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#120 2007-10-09 17:37:27

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#121 2007-10-09 17:43:21

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#122 2007-10-09 18:04:26

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#123 2007-10-10 23:59:33

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#124 2007-10-11 02:17:30

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#125 2007-10-11 10:06:42

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