Old rocket science tied to today's at Marshall

The Birmingham News ^ | 8/10/2006 | Kent Faulk

[Paul Ross]

Old rocket science tied to today's at Marshall

Thursday, August 10, 2006
KENT FAULK, News staff writer

HUNTSVILLE - NASA engineers are going old-school with a new twist as they design rockets to take astronauts back to the moon and eventually give them a boost toward Mars.

Marshall Space Flight Center engineers have enlisted the help of retired rocket scientists, dug through archives and taken parts off museum pieces as they look toward mixing Apollo and space shuttle technology with later innovations into the Ares I and Ares II rockets.

"We're marrying the best of historical knowledge and understanding with the best of today's tools and computing power," said Don Krupp, chief of the vehicle analysis branch at Marshall.

About 540 people at Marshall, where NASA built the engines that first lifted Americans into space, are working on development of Ares I and Ares II under the Constellation Program. Their goal is to return people to the moon and prepare for future missions to Mars. That number will steadily grow, NASA officials said.

NASA hopes to have the Ares I rocket ready by 2014 to take capsules containing up to six astronauts to the International Space Station. By 2020, the Ares I rocket is expected to launch four astronauts into orbit for a trip to the moon. The astronauts will dock in orbit with a lunar lander and other equipment boosted into space by the larger and more powerful Ares V.

The Ares I and Ares V will use updated parts from the Saturn V rockets that shot men to the moon nearly 40 years ago. They also will use updated parts from space shuttles, which are scheduled to be retired in 2010, and some new hardware and manufacturing and welding techniques.

Marshall developed the Saturn V and space shuttle rockets.

The lower, or first stage, of the Ares I will be a juiced-up version of the reusable solid-fuel rocket boosters made by ATK Thiokol for space shuttle launches. The second stage will be powered by a Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne J-2X engine fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. It's an updated version of the J-2 engines used on Saturn V's upper stages.

NASA plans to award a contract in about 30 days for development of the capsule astronauts will ride into space.

Ares V will be powered by two reusable solid-fuel rocket boosters mated to the sides of a taller two-stage rocket. The first stage of the central rocket will be powered by five Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne RS-68 engines, the same type used for Boeing Delta IV rockets built in Decatur. The upper stage that gives the final boost to put up to 290,000 pounds of cargo into low Earth orbit also will be powered by the J-2X engine.

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne announced Tuesday that it will add 200 to its current 85-member work force in Huntsville by next August because of the engine development for Ares.

Building the J-2X is the biggest challenge in meeting the 2014 deadline to send astronauts to the space station on Ares I, NASA engineers told reporters last week.

J-2's `graybeards'

Jim Snoddy, the J-2X project manager at Marshall, said the first thing he did was gather 28 of the "graybeards" who designed and built the J-2 engine for the Saturn rockets. "We laid out our design and got those guys to come in and say what we're doing wrong," he said.

"You've got to go back and talk to your forefathers," Snoddy said. "We may think we know it all, but we don't know half of what they know. ... Those guys have a lot of wisdom."

Engineers continue to meet with the older scientists, many of whom still live in Alabama and California, Snoddy said. Two have been hired by NASA, and two others are with Pratt & Whitney, he said.

Marshall engineers also got out old drawings of the J-2 engine from NASA archives, Snoddy said, and pulled pumps, valves and other hardware off old engines in storage.

Marshall engineers recently removed parts from a Saturn I rocket on display at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, said Al Whitaker, spokesman for that museum. "We've had folks from NASA and subcontractors looking at the old Saturn V (display) ... and in the archives over the course of the last year and a half or so," he said.

Marshall has performed about 650 of the 1,300 wind tunnel tests done so far at NASA centers around the country on small-scale stainless steel and aluminum models of Ares. An 18-inch model was tested last week at the 50-year-old facility, simulating wind the Ares I rocket would experience at more than three times the speed of sound.

Ares safer than shuttle

At Marshall's Test Stand 116, built during the Apollo era, J-2X engineers also are test-firing a small-scale version of the fuel injection system for that engine. The tests are designed to tell engineers what kind of fuel mileage to expect with the full-scale engine.

"I've got to build a dump truck that has the gas mileage of a Yugo and runs like a Ferrari," Snoddy said.

Updating proven designs, including the J-2 engine and the space shuttle boosters, gives engineers more confidence the rockets will be reliable. But don't get them wrong, engineers say: The Ares I and Ares V will be different.

Ares I and Ares V are being designed so they can fly in all types of weather, which the shuttle can't do, NASA engineers said. Ares I will be 10 times safer for astronauts than the space shuttle, primarily because it will have a capsule abort system, engineers said.

Ares V will lift more cargo and fuel into space than the Saturn V. More equipment and fuel will give NASA the ability to put four - instead of two - astronauts on the moon, allow them to stay longer and land anywhere on the moon, NASA engineers said.

Apollo missions were tied to landing on the moon's equator.

Ares V will have 10.5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff - about 3 million pounds more than a Saturn V, said Scott "Doc" Horowitz, associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate.

Growing up, Horowitz said, he lived 10 miles from the Kennedy Space Center and witnessed the launch of the Huntsville-designed Saturn V rockets. "I can't wait to watch Ares V," he said.

[Paul Ross]

Ares I and Ares V are being designed so they can fly in all types of weather, which the shuttle can't do, NASA engineers said.

H'mmm. Is this particular specification wise? Just because the Russians got away with it with Soyuz...i.e., here is Michael Cabbage's (Space Writer, Orlando Sentinal) posting relating to this:

NASA is designing the Ares 1 to lift off in much more marginal weather than the space shuttle. The goal is to create a vehicle more like Russia’s Soyuz booster, which has been launched in rain, high winds, fog and snowstorms.

The first test flight of the rocket, dubbed Ares I-1, is scheduled for April 2009. The test will use an adapted four-segment booster from the shuttle program instead of the slightly longer five-segment version planned for operational flights. The second stage will consist of a dummy payload.

[Ninian Dryhope]

Hope they use some good o-rings in those boosters.

[Pontiac]

The lower, or first stage, of the Ares I will be a juiced-up version of the reusable solid-fuel rocket boosters made by ATK Thiokol for space shuttle launches.

I never have liked solid-fueled rocket boosters for manned space flight.

Even if they were 100% reliable once they are lit you can’t shut them down.

If something totally unrelated to the booster themselves goes wrong you have to wait till they have completed their burn to jettison the booster.

[SengirV]

I hope the only piece of engineering they take from the shuttle over what they had on Apollo is, uhhhhhhhhh Hmmmmmmmmm. I'll have to get back with you.

[SampleMan]

Is this particular specification wise?

It should lead to a more predictable, more economic space program. Designing aircraft to fly in "all weather", did the same for airline service. Of course, "all weather" isn't all weather, but rather all reasonable weather. Just out of curiosity, you didn't go to High School in Missouri did you Paul?

[wideminded]

Marshall Space Flight Center engineers have enlisted the help of retired rocket scientists, dug through archives and taken parts off museum pieces as they look toward mixing Apollo and space shuttle technology with later innovations into the Ares I and Ares II rockets.

Last week I read that the plans for the Saturn V have been lost (along with the raw videotape of the moon landing). Maybe someone here knows if that is true.

[Corey Ohlis]

Who was it who said, "The more things change, the more things stay the same."?

[redgolum]

So after the multi billion dollar shuttle, we are going back to the man in a can approach.

Which works ok and is cheaper.

[Paul Ross]

Just out of curiosity, you didn't go to High School in Missouri did you Paul?

Nope, Minnesota.

[Phsstpok]

Hope they use some good o-rings in those boosters.

It probably wouldn't matter if there were an O-Ring burn through on Ares I, as the fuel tank on that one (for the upper stage in this case) will be up on top of the SRB, not next to it.  A burn through could screw up the trajectory, but shouldn't cause an explosion on Ares I.

On Ares V, if I get this right, it will look like the Shuttle tank with two SRBs attached directly to it as on the current Shuttle stack, but the rest of the stack goes on top as well.  There are also liquid fuel engines beneath the tank.  Frankly it will look much more like Russia's Energia or France's Ariane 5 when it's all up. 

Ares I and Ares V

 

Energia vertical stack configuration:

 

Or the French Ariane 5:

 

[Paul Ross]

Hope they use some good o-rings in those boosters.

There is no external tank to be breached and detonated on a vertical stack approach.

And the O-rings were fixed after Challenger. And even now, just to be extra-safe for the shuttle, they launch only in warm days so the material is at its most effective to seal...

[SauronOfMordor]

H'mmm. Is this particular specification wise?

It is good to not be sensitive to weather conditions. It is wise to not push your capabilities unless you really need to.

I would hope they do not try "bad weather takeoff" for anything but emergency rescue missions

[carmenbmw]

Dont know about the Saturn plans, but R. Hoblein(sp?) was on the Art Bell Show (yeah, I know) a few weeks ago talking about how there are 700 boxes of raw footage, etc missing from the archives of the 1st moon landing.
?????

[dr_who_2]

Another moon landing in 2020? 14 years from now? Pretty pathetic.

[JOE6PAK]

gather 28 of the "graybeards"...

GM should do the same. Take apart a '63 Chevy and find out how the thing lasted 40 years and apply that to todays hunks of plastic junk.

[Erasmus]

If something totally unrelated to the booster themselves goes wrong you have to wait till they have completed their burn to jettison the booster.

With the solid boosters currently on the Shuttle, they still have a little fuel left over at the end of their burn phase.

I think the main reason for this is that they want to make sure that thrust from both boosters ends within a small fraction of a second; otherwise, the induced yaw would destroy the vehicle.

But they can't make a solid booster burn so precisely that it exhausts its fuel within a small fraction of a second of a nominal period. So, they equip the booster with a pyrotechnically-actived vent at the top.

When the solid boost phase is complete, they blow the vents on the boosters simultaneously, and this cuts off thrust immediately even though there's a small bit fuel remaining (varying slightly among the boosters).

Maybe solid boosters can be designed to be capablie of this early in the burn, for emergency aborts.

Restarts are not feasible in any solid booster design I know of, but present-day designers don't see this as a problem, so long as they add a liquid-fuel booster which gives a part of the total thrust, and which burns beyond the duration of the solid boosters.

[Moonman62]

But if the crew capsule can separate or eject that should solve that problem.

[Moonman62]

Ares I and Ares V are being designed so they can fly in all types of weather, which the shuttle can't do, NASA engineers said.

H'mmm. Is this particular specification wise?

From someone who thinks the current manned space program is a tragic joke, I think it's very wise. Can you imagine a commercial service surviving with the same delays as the Shuttle?

[No2much3]

The original engineers of the space program did most of their calculations on slide rules. I wonder if having laptops is going to speed the process up. One can only hope!

NO2

[Moonman62]

Another moon landing in 2020? 14 years from now? Pretty pathetic.

Yes it is. They should shutdown the Shuttle and ISS, and get to it.