NASA's future: NAUTILUS-X (Video + PPT update)

[Dr Mordrid]

MMSEV = Multi-Mission Space Exploration Vehicle, aka Nautilus X

TAAT = Technology Applications Assessment Team

NAUTILUS X = Non-Atmospheric Universal Transport Intended for Lengthy US eXploration

ECLSS = Environmental Control and Life Support System


The money is in the 2011 budget to design the plan for MMSEV, but first they need a heavy lift rocket to launch the larger segments. That's going to take a while. Needed: $4 billion each and about 6 years, if they're lucky.

Basically, NASA wants a vehicle for manned missions beyond Earth orbit. Nautilus X shows their thinking as to what kind of features they want. They also want a ship that can be parked at a space station, probably at one of the Earth-Moon Lagrangian points, and refitted for the next long mission. Crews would be launched from Earth in an Orion or Dragon for the dash from Earth through the Van Allen belts, and return home in the same spacecraft.

The design shows many features available in the near term: Bigelow habitat modules; chemical, nuclear thermal or VASIMR plasma rockets; an arm like the shuttle Canadarm, and something right off 2001's Discovery but not as imminent - a rotating torus-shaped habitat for artificial gravity. Even has an AE-35 antenna

Looks like a plan....



and this for even longer/larger missions like Mars, its moons or Ceres - definitely looks like a nuclear VASIMR drive.

[paulw]

You think we will see this in our lifetime??

[Dr Mordrid]

It depends on how serious Congress gets with supporting HEFT (Human Exploration Framework Team). So far they've been pretty supportive, both parties included. The problem lies in how excesses in the rest of the budget affects NASA. Lots of questionable spending over the last few years have really put everything in a bind.

It also depends on how NASA administration handles the contacts. If they do things the old way anything beyond LEO is iffy, but if they take the COTS approach, like the program that developed Dragon etc. and the other coming manned spacecraft under CCDev-2, there's a good chance.

A good indicator wil;l be how they do the heavy lift (HLV) development Congress is likely to mandate, a requirement for MMSEV. If they open it up to a COTS competition between using shuttle-derived (Google Shuttle-C), an HLV Atlas V and SpaceX's Merlin 2 engine (bigger than the Saturn V's F-1 engine) & Falcon X/Falcon X Heavy rockets (bigger than Saturn V) there's hope.

SpaceX says they can do it for $2 billion start to finish, and they could use the existing shuttle LC-39 facilities with a few additions..

Shuttle-C (70 MT to LEO - weak, but cheap)


Atlas V evolution (phase 2 & 3A needed)


SpaceX evolution (Falcon X & Falcon X Heavy needed) (Saturn V to left)

[degrub]

boondoggle. Accomplish the same things with space station if they need to keep humans in space. Use unmanned for long range exploration. No sense using all the resources for human long range until you know something is there that makes it possibly sustainable. NASA's manned spaceflight budget should be minimized until we get through the current mess.

[Dr Mordrid]

Robots can't do everything, and what we're learning by doing space medicine & materials science alone is worth it.

Another perspective is NASA's $18 billion/yr budget vs. the $50+ billion/yr we spend on pet care.

[KRSESQ]

If congress could trim just 10 % out of the military budget then they could
a) more than double NASA's budget
b) keep those whose jobs are threatened by the cuts employed to a degree and
c) still have accomplished a serious, meaningful reduction in the national budget deficit.

Who wouldn't be for that?

(Rhetorical question.)

[Dr Mordrid]

The DoD has already identified $78 billion in reductions it can make, and the Republican leadership in the house is targeting it for reductions as well - with lots of overlap. This will include cutting procurements, bases, and standing divisions in the Army and Marines.

The problem isn't going to be cuts, the House is already talking a 5 year budget frozen at either 2006 or 2008 levels, it's getting some monies redirected to research and NASA COTS development instead of being locked into old, duplicate, poorly managed & unproductive projects in Congressman/Senator X,Y, or Z's district.

And this isn't partisan. Example being, Senators Nelson (D) & Shelby (R) are equally un-helpful. The bipartisan list of obstruction to NASA & military reform is long, with even the DoD complaining loudly about programs they don't even want being forced on them by Congress while real needs go wanting.

The latest/greatest example at NASA is >$500M budgeted for a canceled project (Constellation, the Ares I & Ares V rockets and Orion spaceship), and when NASA tried to repurpose it the usual suspects in Congress howled to the point where that work will continue right up to the drop-dead date this spring.

Total Constellation outlay so far: $30B, and little to show for it while SpaceX developed 3 rockets, a triple-use spaceship, two launch facilities (with one more coming @Vandenberg), 5 engines and have done several successful flight tests on <$800M.

They also have to cut a lot of wasteful spending passed the last several years, and this does have to include numerous foolish provisions of Obamacare - a new outlay of >$ 1T. Even members of the Dem House leadership are agreeing on this (but of course, not Pelosi). In fact, the Senate now has bipartisan support (60 Senators) co-sponsoring a move to do surgery on Obamacare - enough to pass even if Harry Reid doesn't like it.

[SitFlyer]

THE REAL PROBLEM IS that the social security fund has been robbed to the blindness of most Americans.

[Dr Mordrid]

That's just one part of the problem. The core problem is the over-spending by all sides that forced the raiding of the SoSec Trust Fund for other uses, to the point where now it's running at least a $50B/year deficit for as long as its actuaries recent forecast predicted.

[KRSESQ]

You're both describing symptoms not causes. The real problem is the obscene amount of money the military contractors pump into congressional campaigns on the condition that their contracts be preserved at all costs. Remember what Eisenhower said about the military/industrial complex? Things have metastasized even further in the last 50 years. Only SERIOUS campaign finance reform will fix things. Reform a lot more serious than McCain-Fiengold.

We're drifting dangerously close to politics thread territory. Someone change the subject, quick!

[Dr Mordrid]

>
The real problem is the obscene amount of money the military contractors pump into congressional campaigns
>
Reform a lot more serious than McCain-Fiengold.
>

The Supreme Court ruled early last year in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission that free political speech extends to corporate donations in the major part of the campaign. As a result McCain-Feingold (aka: Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act) is pretty much emasculated and extending it very unlikely. Centrist Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion.

There are also other cases in the pipeline that could extend Citizens United, perhaps even removing donation caps.

Holding:

A provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act prohibiting unions, corporations and not-for-profit organizations from broadcasting electioneering communications within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary election violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. United States District Court for the District of Columbia reversed.

[Dr Mordrid]

A poster on another board made an interesti point, which speaks to public support for something like Nautilus X vs. capsules for deep space operations...

>
we've been conditioned by history and TV to think of magnificent ships that travel into the unknown. If Star Trek just sent people in disposable capsules, there'd be no show. The star of it is the Enterprise. Ships have personality and presence, and to human beings that means a lot. A simple name also means a lot - in marketing terms, they have a "brand." I think that'll make it more popular politically, and we may see something like Nautilus-X built.
>

[GT98]

If congress could trim just 10 % out of the military budget then they could

The problem is that other costs like Social Secuirty/health care/etc are going to grow at a high rate vs Military spending over the next 10-20 years.

Plus look at whats happening in the military....we are using aircraft that are going on 30 years old without replacements for another 10-15 years, if not longer/at all. Not to mention all the extra use they are getting wearing them out faster then if we where in cold war type envorment. Part of the blame goes towards the "peace dividend" that happened in the early 1990s...no one gave any thought that after the Cold War that we would see a 300% increase in deployments etc using up that equipment much faster.

[Evildead666]

The planets getting a crowded place.
Lots of things are going to be more and more complicated.

The longer we wait, the more there will be of us. Well, most of us anyway.
There will be less and less resources.
Unless we get the next space station made in China, its going to take some money, and there is no real reason for the developed world to spend bogloads of cash on military.

On a relative note, anyone know how those dudes who were doing 500 days in a mock-space station are getting on ?

[Dr Mordrid]

>
Unless we get the next space station made in China, its going to take some money
>
On a relative note, anyone know how those dudes who were doing 500 days in a mock-space station are getting on ?

The next space station starts construction in late 2014 in the form of Bigelow Aerospace's commercial CSS Alpha, to be followed by CSS Beta. These will be built over a span of just a few Falcon 9/Falcon 9 Heavy/Atlas V launches vs. the dozens of shuttle flights it took to build ISS because of their more advanced tech. They'll also be massively cheaper, and more resistant to radiation and impact events.

It is a Mars mission simulation, and the guys have landed....

NASA just released a more comprehensive guide to NAUTILUS-X. This is looking very, very do-able and it would be the first spacecraft with an artificial gravity module - the "centrifuge" - which would function much like the rotating habitat in 2001's Discovery. The framework would expand from folded Hoberman-like structures, then Bigelow modules and the rest of the hardware tacked on in modular fashion.

Link to PDF....

When reading through it substitute Bigelow Aerospace where it says TransHab since they own the exclusive rights to the expandable/inflatable hab tech that would have been used for TransHab.