[FPSPACE] And Griffin's true reasons for sizing the Ares 5

Thu Jul 23 00:29:41 EDT 2009

Jens:

It is called Ares, after all. And the "5" is a tribute to the old Saturn V.

NASA's current Mars work is an evolutionary follow-on to the Mars work done when Griffin was Associate Administrator for Exploration back in the waning days of SEI. You can track the evolution up through 2001 in my book HUMANS TO MARS, which is available online. Basically, it was based on Code Z work and Mars Direct, and then it got "scrubbed" in a vain attempt to make it affordable.

After 2001, the NASA Design Reference Mission (DRM) became a hybrid of the COMBO scenario and Borowski, et al's NTR artificial-gravity scenario, though interesting work was also done looking into NEP artificial-gravity (the spacecraft design bore the evocative nickname "fire baton"). 

During the early part of that period - up to Griffin's takeover from O'Keefe - the Decadal Planning team philosophy of "go anywhere, go anytime" played a role. DPT envisioned using the same systems for piloted SEL, asteroid, and Mars missions. Then, when Griffin took charge, it veered back toward a more traditional model.

In case you missed it, the "Apollo on Steroids" ESAS architecture is First Lunar Outpost (FLO) 2.0. FLO was Griffin's lunar mission spinoff of the Mars Direct-based NASA Mars plan. The main idea was that one would use the same heavy-lift rocket for both missions. If I ever get back to it and finish it, my book HUMANS TO THE MOON will detail FLO and track the story from FLO's demise to the present day.

The important thing to remember here is that these are all *studies,* not concrete plans. Bret's remarks don't indicate anything otherwise. One can read similar remarks by exploration planners going back decades.

No one has any illusions that the current plan will be the final one. Phobos and Deimos might find their way into it at some point, for a while, for all anyone knows. 

The Space.com piece is Apollo 11 anniversary fluff, like so much of what we see at these times. I'm not sure why any of this is a great revelation or what posting it is meant to prove. 

While I hate to dump a load of reality on anyone, it's important to get one's mind around the fact that Ares 5 isn't going to get built, and neither will any other heavy-lift rocket for the foreseeable future. Getting into a twist over which heavy-lifter should be built is pretty silly, since none will be built.

Rather than resorting to fantasy, we need to grapple with what is. Right now we need a good piloted spacecraft for getting to Earth orbit. That's a big enough challenge for anyone in the current environment.

The moon and Mars planning is not unlikely to persist, though it might sink down into the undergrowth for a time, as happened soon after Clinton euthanised the all-but-stillborn SEI. That planning will persist is, I think, a good thing. Even if one is in no position to act on the plans, having them can help us to keep our eyes on the prize. 

When the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 rolls around, we're not unlikely to see similar news stories about NASA's plans, and I'm sure some people will take umbrage, and none of it will mean very much at all.

David S. F. Portree

dsfportree at hotmail.com
dportree at usgs.gov

http://robotexplorers.blogspot.com/
http://beyondapollo.blogspot.com/

http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/About/People/DavidPortree/

From: dstdba at post4.tele.dk
To: fpspace at friends-partners.org
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 04:34:43 +0200
Subject: Re: [FPSPACE] And Griffin's true reasons for sizing the Ares 5

Bret Drake and NASA seem to live in cloud-cuckoo land judging from the article you point to.

For one thing their plan is too ambitious, aiming as it is for an actual landing on Mars. At
best the astronauts would be stuck there for the rest of their lives.

In my view their mission should be to visit Phobos and Deimos, and possibly to set up
a permanent presence there. Lunar experience would come in handy.

At the same time the Drake plan is also not ambitious enough. There is no way it would
be defensible to despatch a single craft on such a long journey. At a minimum there would
have to be two craft, possibly three. There would have to be a provision for one of the craft
to be abandoned, and its crew to transfer to the other(s) - within the frame of a successful
mission overall.

Wernher von Braun and Willy Ley envisaged two craft with a total of 12 crew back in 1956
in The Exploration of Mars. Why has Drake abandoned that concept and now insists on
putting all NASA's eggs in one basket? Experience from the ISS shows that things break
down much sooner than anticipated. Keeping your spacecraft in good working order for the
duration of a voyage along a Hohmann orbit to Mars is a tall order in itself.

A mature vision does not call for a visit to Mars, but on the conquest of Mars. The defeat
of imperial Japan in 1945 was not carried out by sending one plane from the United States
across the Pacific Ocean carrying a single doomsday bomb. Rather it was achieved 
through a lengthy island-hopping exercise, which finally allowed the Enola Gay and
Bockscar missions to take advantage of Tinian, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, etc.

Likewise Mars is not conquered by launching a suicidal expedition from the Cape, but
through the establishment of permanent outposts on the Martian moonlets first.    

--
Jens Kieffer-Olsen
Slagelse, Denmark

-----Original Message-----
From: E.P. Grondine [mailto:epgrondine at hotmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 4:50 PM
To: fpspace at friends-partners.org
Subject: [FPSPACE] And Griffin's true reasons for sizing the Ares 5

Griffin's reason for the choice the Ares 1/Ares 5 architecture may be seen here:

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/090722-tw-mars-mission.html

Of course, the Ares 1, while it has the support of Thiokol, doesn't work; further a more efficient path of launcher development is Jupiter/Direct.

E.P. 
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