This was based on a 2009 go-ahead. Now it's a 2013 if given the green light today.
http://www.directlauncher.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diD20nLA8YMhttp://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index. ... board=37.0Since the article below was written Direct has decided against the RS68 engine and is now using the SSME (Space Shuttle Main Engine), so it will be ready sooner.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science ... sa/4295233NASA & Its Discontents: Frustrated Engineers Battle with NASA over the Future of Spaceflight
A group of renegade space vehicle designers, including NASA engineers bucking their bosses, are publicly crying out against the current Shuttle retirement plan. Their proposed plan, called Jupiter Direct, is an affront to NASA's current plans for the Ares I rocket, which they say is more costly and time-consuming than it needs to be. This is their story.
By David Noland
Late one evening in August 2006, Ross Tierney logged on to the chat room at nasaspaceflight.com, an unofficial cyberspace water cooler popular among NASA engineers. Tierney, a wiry 34-year-old space buff in Cocoa Beach, Fla., makes his living selling exquisitely detailed models of spacecraft and launchpads. He had been mulling over the design of the Ares I, the new NASA rocket that’s slated to launch astronauts into orbit after the agency retires the space shuttle in 2010. Though NASA has been working on the Ares I since 2005, the new vehicle won’t be ready until at least 2015. That leaves a five-year gap when there will be only one way to boost U.S. astronauts into space: Rent a Russian Soyuz rocket. And if Russia’s current conflict with Georgia or some other international incident disrupts that arrangement, the U.S. manned program will be grounded.
Tierney wondered whether the Ares I is really the best way to keep the U.S. in the spaceflight business. What if, instead of building a largely new rocket, NASA created a new configuration of proven space shuttle components and placed a crew capsule on top? Sitting on his living room couch, hunched over a laptop computer, he posted the question to the chat room. A dozen replies came back supporting the idea. “I was shocked,” Tierney recalls. “Here I was, just a nobody enthusiast asking a dumb question, and a bunch of NASA engineers are telling me I was absolutely right. They said they’d been pushing the same thing for years and that they’d been threatened with their jobs if they kept talking about it.”
Tierney’s innocent query mushroomed into a credible challenge to NASA and its Ares I, which is already under construction. His original chat network has grown into an underground coalition of NASA engineers and contractors who, working on their own time, have come up with an alternative rocket design they call Jupiter Direct 2.0, or simply Jupiter Direct, because it is more directly based on shuttle components than the Ares I. The dissident moonlighters argue that their launch vehicle, the Jupiter 120, would be more capable and less expensive than the Ares I. Furthermore, they say their lifter could fly in 2013, trimming the impending gap caused by the shuttle’s retirement. As a new presidential administration enters the White House, the insurgent engineers see a chance for change.
Last year NASA released a three-page, step-by-step critique of the Jupiter Direct proposal that challenged its claims. The dispute goes beyond engineering: Detractors’ doubts about NASA’s objectivity and professionalism strike at the foundation of the agency’s reputation. Last October, NASA administrator Michael Griffin felt obligated to defend the agency during a speech at the American Astronautical Society. Regarding press coverage that implied NASA was capable of using “unfairly skewed” data, Griffin asked how it could be “presumed that NASA does not act with integrity ... is that what some people really believe?”
The Shadow of “The Stick”
These doubts come at a challenging time for NASA, as the agency moves forward on its ambitious plan to maintain the International Space Station, revisit the moon and, ultimately, send people to Mars. The economic crisis, growing tensions with Russia and political change in Washington are already prompting calls to rewrite the space agency’s plan. Pundits and politicians have suggested extending shuttle flights beyond 2010 while pressuring NASA to speed development of the Ares I. In this environment, a rival plan promising a “faster, cheaper and safer” launch vehicle is as welcome as a pinhole in a spacesuit.
When NASA unveiled the Ares I in its 2005 Exploration Systems Architecture Study, it was already dubbed The Stick for its long, slim shape. The study, NASA’s blueprint for future manned spaceflight, includes the four- to six-passenger Orion spacecraft and the Ares I rocket to launch it. Initially, the Ares I replaces the shuttle to take astronauts to the space station. For moonshots and other longer missions, the ESAS calls for a second launch vehicle to supplement the Ares I. Dubbed the Ares V and due for test flights in 2018, this massive unmanned vehicle will do the heavy lifting necessary for more ambitious missions. In NASA’s plan, the Ares I would loft moon-bound astronauts into orbit in an Orion capsule. An Ares V would deliver the Altair lunar lander and the fuel-laden Earth Departure Stage (EDS). Once the three components—Orion, Altair and the EDS—link up in orbit, the combination vehicle would have ample power for extended moon missions. Similar configurations could travel to asteroids or beyond.
“In the beginning, all of us down in the trenches felt pretty good about the Ares I,” says a former engineer at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., who spent three years working on the rocket. (Because of continuing work for a contractor that has NASA as a client, he requested to remain anonymous.)
But then NASA senior management began changing the design. To save money, the efficient, well-proven space shuttle main engine that was to power the upper stage was replaced by the J-2X, which is three-fifths as powerful. Although the J-2X borrows its basic design from the J-2 used on the Saturn V, it is essentially a brand-new engine that requires a full development program.
To make up for the power loss, the Ares I’s first stage—a four-segment solid rocket booster lifted from the space shuttle—had to be upgraded to five segments. “The net result of these two changes was a loss of performance,” the former NASA engineer says. The souped-up new booster ran into another problem—a jackhammer vibration called thrust oscillation that will require 6 tons of new hardware to dampen, reducing the rocket’s payload by 1200 pounds.
Pet Project?
NASA is steadfastly sticking by its launch vehicles, claiming they remain the cheapest and fastest way to space. Before settling on the Ares I, NASA says it evaluated hundreds of configurations, including a rocket stack that is close to the Jupiter 120. But some within the space agency complain that the Ares I is a pet project of NASA boss Michael Griffin and former exploration chief Scott Horowitz. Before coming to NASA, Griffin, an aerospace engineer, co-authored a technical paper for the Planetary Society that proposed a rocket strikingly similar to the Ares I. Horowitz had previously promoted an Ares-like concept while a senior executive at ATK Thiokol, the manufacturer of the solid rocket booster that subsequently became the first stage of the Ares I. “The fix was in from the beginning,” says a NASA contract engineer involved in the process. “Other configurations never had a chance.”
Griffin declined an interview request from Popular Mechanics. However, during his October Astronautical Society speech he challenged these negative images of NASA: “If it is not obvious that objective expertise underlies NASA decisions and actions, then the civil space program will grind to a halt in response to one searching examination after another by various other governmental entities which claim the right of agency oversight, and can make it stick.”
Inside NASA, some disaffected staffers say they feel pressure to support the Ares I. The anonymous former NASA engineer says that there is a culture of intolerance for negative feedback among senior NASA management. “The attitude is, ‘Do what I tell you, don’t tell me what can be done,’?” he says. “Data doesn’t matter. All that matters is the decision that’s already been made.” The engineer says he received bureaucratic harassment for voicing concerns about the Ares I; last summer he decided to leave NASA.
Some veterans of NASA, such as former associate administrator Scott Pace, say that many young NASA engineers lack experience with developing new hardware. Instead, they have experience only in conducting research or in operating hardware that already exists. This, Pace says, adds to the “naiveté” of those who feel their solutions are unheeded. “There were lots of these technical fights during Apollo,” he notes. “What is different now is the modern communications and computational power on people’s desktops. People can come up with plausible-seeming analysis and design in ways they couldn’t during the 1960s and 1970s.”
Those conditions helped Tierney’s underground team find each other and form an upstart plan. The dissident engineers began to crunch technical and financial data to craft a detailed proposal. Meanwhile, a former Boeing engineer and software designer named Stephen Metschan was working independently on an Ares I alternative strikingly similar to the Tierney team’s proposal.
Under a NASA contract, Metschan had created software to analyze rocket performance and fiscal feasibility. Using the software, his computer kept spitting out numbers that favored a vehicle similar to the shuttle stack configuration over the Ares I. Metschan presented a paper on his proposal at an aerospace conference in 2006; a friend of Tierney’s happened to be in the audience.
Tierney and Metschan soon joined forces, combined the best features of their two designs, and became the primary spokesmen for the joint project. Along with three other non-NASA engineering- and space-savvy co-authors, they presented a 131-page proposal at the 2007 meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Since then, the number of secretly sympathetic NASA employees and contractors on the Jupiter Direct team has grown to more than 60. Some are frightened of losing their jobs, and neither Tierney nor Metschan knows the names of all of them. Tales abound of engineers punished for airing dissenting views and, even if the stories are exaggerated, the effect on staff morale is real. “Sure, I’m paranoid,” one NASA source says. “If anybody found out I talked to you, I’d be blackballed.”
NASA officials say that differences of technical opinions should be expected—and not taken personally. “A decision by a manager to follow one path rather than another is not evidence of ‘stifling dissent,’ ” Griffin said in October.
Simple Design, Complex Debate
For all the trouble they're causing, the proposed Jupiter Direct launchers are not technologically revolutionary. Rather, they are a patchwork of pieces from current and past space programs. Indeed, the new plan leaves the Orion capsule and lunar lander plans unchanged. The basic single-stage Jupiter 120, intended to replace the Ares I, is essentially a modified external tank from the shuttle powered by two RS-68s, the reliable liquid-fuel engine currently used in the Delta IV satellite launcher. The initial kick is provided by two four-segment solid rocket boosters lifted directly from the shuttle. “It’ll deliver twice as much mass to the space station as the Ares I,” Metschan says. While the Ares I is limited to low Earth orbit, the Jupiter 120’s extra oomph would enable it to launch Orion beyond Earth orbit on a lunar flyby or on a visit to a near-Earth asteroid.
Lunar landing missions would call for a pair of medium-size, two-stage Jupiter 232s: One would carry Orion and the Altair lunar lander into orbit; the other, the Earth Departure Stage. Three RS-68 engines would power the first stage of the Jupiter 232; its second stage would rely on a pair of J-2X engines. Although the Jupiter 232 would not be as powerful as NASA’s Ares V, Metschan says the two 232s could launch more mass toward the moon than the Ares vehicles. Jupiter Direct’s backers estimate development costs for both its models at $13 billion, compared to an estimated combined cost of $25 billion for the Ares I and V. After a go-ahead, they say, the Jupiter 120 could be flying within four years, since its engines and boosters are available.
But the Jupiter 120 still faces two major technical hurdles: modifying the shuttle’s external tank to form the main rocket body and certifying the RS-68 engines for manned flights. (NASA has more stringent criteria for space hardware used on those missions.) By contrast, the Ares I is essentially a new rocket requiring separate engine and booster development programs, including the J-2X; the Ares V also will require two additional development programs. Jupiter Direct’s proponents say their system would fit neatly into the current manufacturing and launch infrastructure, allowing more of the current shuttle workforce to be retained. The Ares I and V, on the other hand, will require two new sets of factories and launchpads. Metschan calculates Jupiter Direct’s on-the-ground operating cost savings alone at $2 billion a year.
NASA’s attitude toward Jupiter Direct is understandably hostile. “We’ve looked at 1700 concepts since 2005, poking and prodding for a better way,” says Steve Cook, the Ares program manager. He says a number of those concepts were similar to the Jupiter 120: “If we had found a better mousetrap, we would have used it.” Cook insists that the Ares I will be cheaper than the Jupiter 120. “We’ve got a one-engine first stage and a one-engine second stage. That gives you lower recurring costs and a lower development cost.” He dismisses the argument that the Jupiter 120 will save dollars during development because it is directly based on existing hardware. “Economically,” he says, “the smaller vehicle wins,” even with an all-new rocket.
Cook’s big objection to the Jupiter 120, however, is crew safety. Since the Jupiter 120 has twice as many engines—two solid boosters and two liquid-fuel core engines—he says there is twice the chance of a failure. Metschan responds that, given the Jupiter 120’s huge excess lift capacity over the Ares I, engineers could outfit the Orion spacecraft it would carry with a blast-resistant shield to protect the crew in case of an explosion during launch.
NASA’s Cook saves his most withering fire for the Jupiter 232. “When you run the performance numbers, the Jupiter 232 doesn’t cut the mustard,” he says firmly. Cook points specifically to the upper stage. “It’s just unrealistically light for what it has to do,” he says. “They’re apparently building it out of unobtainium. If you use realistic numbers, their lunar lander mass goes down by 50 percent.”
But Bernard Kutter, manager of advanced programs at United Launch Alliance, the Lockheed Martin/Boeing consortium that builds launch rockets, says that the Jupiter 232’s upper-stage weight is “very reasonable. I’d even call it conservative.” Kutter also spearheaded development of a cryogenic upper-stage design that the Jupiter 232 planners suggest adopting.
NASA backers say the entire debate is unfair: Ares is undergoing the challenges of a full-fledged development program while Jupiter Direct exists only on paper. Jupiter proponents can criticize every engineering trade-off NASA makes, while their own concept remains untested. All the while, the clock ticks down to the shuttle’s overdue retirement.
As NASA faces an uncertain future, doubts over its direction are both expected and worrisome. The rebellion within NASA is not just about the volume of liquid oxygen tanks and calculations of thrust: The revolt arose from within the workforce, the most critical and least predictable asset of the space program. There is no algorithm that can measure the compulsion of engineers to question, tinker and argue. NASA may be finding that calculating the influence of celestial bodies is far easier than managing the human element.
Experts Weigh In
If there’s one thing the space community enjoys, it’s a debate about hardware. But these experts note that budgets and other factors—not just engineering—will determine if the rebel Jupiter Direct plan will usurp NASA’s Ares program to propel U.S. astronauts beyond Earth orbit.
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