Slashdot Mirror

This update points out that dark forces within NASA are urging the return of cost-plus contracting for crew transport (scroll down to "Commercial Crew" section therein). This will get us straight back into the traditional world of missed schedules and massive overruns, if it's allowed to happen. USAan readers please hold yourselves in readiness to contact your elected lords and, um, representatives.

The causes of the X-33 program failure are the subject of considerable debate. Here are several good sources of information. You can see that the program received criticism from the GAO, and other sources. I've seen several references to the DoD effort to fund the flight test program, and that request being over-ruled by the Bush administration. I can't recall if these sources below include that claim or not, but you can probably find one or more if you use Google.

excellent X-33 overview
X-33 VentureStar what really happened?
New Mission for Lockheed Spaceplane?
X-33 and NASA's Proposed 2001-2005 Space Launch Initiative
GAO: SPACE TRANSPORTATION Status of the X-33 Reusable Launch Vehicle Program
GAO: SPACE TRANSPORTATION Progress of the X-33 Reusable Launch Vehicle Program
NASA Defends Itself Against X-33 Critique

• The Artemis Project - The project is a private venture to establish a permanent, self-supporting community on the Moon. Brief overview of the Artemis project.
• The Mars Society - To further the goal of the exploration and settlement of the Red Planet.
• The Moon Society - An international nonprofit educational and scientific foundation formed to further the creation of communities on the Moon involving large-scale industrialization and private enterprise.
• National Space Society - grassroots organization dedicated to the creation of a spacefaring civilization. Magazine.
• Stanford on the Moon (by 2015?) And yes, Stanford as in the university.
• Space Frontier Foundation - seems to have projects for space colonization, missions to the Earth's moon, and so on. Looks like a large scale organization.
• The Space Settlement Initiative
• Space Access Society - activism for getting out of the NASA-only paradigm/reality.
• Students for the Exploration and Development of Space - `... is dedicated to expanding the role of human exploration and development of space. We also seek to educate the public in such a way as to attain this goal. `
• Space Studies Institute - `SSI's stated mission is: Opening the energy and material resources of space for human benefit by completing the missing technological links to make possible the productive use of the abundant resources in space.`
• International Space University - `The International Space University provides graduate-level training to the future leaders of the emerging global space community at its Central Campus in Strasbourg, France, and at locations around the world. ` (mentions 'systems engineering' on the About page)
• Space Settlement Institute - `The Space Settlement Institute is a non-profit association founded to help promote the human colonization and settlement of outer space. `
• Cygo's Space Initiative - plan and conduct exploration missions to minor planets, build and mass produce (while in space) a multi-purpose interconnectable module, and to offer products and services using space and the materials therefrom.
• Freeluna - `Freeluna.com is dedicated to the proposition that the colonization of outer space is critical for the long term survival of the human species, and that colonization of the moon and the exploitation of the moon's natural resources is one of the very best first steps in that incredible journey off planet.` ... and when I first visited this page, I was visitor #3371. Yikes. Contact: Bill Clawson, wclawson@freeluna.com
• Island One Society - associated with the Artemis society, seems to be mostly a resource-help site.
• The Living Universe Foundation - `The Living Universe Foundation seeks to bring the galaxy alive with life from Earth, while healing the damage that humanity has already inflicted upon the Earth. We believe that expansion into space in the immediate future is a step towards accomplishing this aim.` turmith@yahoo.com --- This organization was inspired by the publication of a certain book. This is heavily related to Project Atlantis or Oceania (artifical floatin

Any comments on the following analyses? Transterrestrial Musings
Space Access Update #112

I just want to clear up some confusion generated by inaccuracies both in the MSNBC story and the slashdot post:

The vehicle we have received a licence for, as stated in our press release is not a full suborbital vehicle and is not an X-Prize competitor. It is an intermediate technology research platform to continue development of engines and related systems that began flight testing on the EZ-Rocket, our currently flying manned rocket powered airplane. It is also noted that this new vehicle, the Sphinx, has not yet been built. Quoth the press release: "It is helpful that RLV companies can obtain their launch licenses during vehicle design, prior to committing capital to build a vehicle."

A stated before, we are not an X-Prize competitor, due to among other things, a conflict in the time scale of the X-Prize and our business development plan, as well as the planned configuration of our current suborbital vehicle design. XCOR is focused on revenue generation. However, we fully support the X-Prize and offer technology and services to X-Prize entrants, as well as moral and legislative support.

Mike Massee XCOR Aerospace www.xcor.com

I hate to beat a dead horse, but seriously: Why do you ridicule the efforts of the x-prize contestants?

At least they are making attempts at going into space. By far and away the most difficult aspect of private attempts for getting into space (and even government attempts for that matter) is the sheer bureaucracy of people who are trying to stop you at every step of the way.

Check out the Space Access Society website for further details, but I find it rediculous that if you had one of those Slaver-designed bio-engineered rocketships described by Larry Niven (a great SF story about bio-engineer rockets as powerful as a Saturn V... just add water and the plant makes you a personal rocketship for just the price of the water and a little bit of sunshine) it would still cost you over $1,000,000 just to file the paperwork to get flight clearance.

Something is definitely wrong here when this is the situation. The X-Prize folks are making some very real progress, and they are following an incremental design and engineering approach that is going to be very sustainable in the long run. If you check out Armadillo Aerospace you will see that they are planning for not if but when their spacecraft crashes/dies/blows up, and they are just going to take lessons learned and move on from there. With NASA's approach they are so paranoid to lose a vehicle that they are completely unable to even launch anything, and refuse to take any risks even after they eventually plan on any launches.

That and the approximately $500 million per launch is really quite overkill, but that is still another point to be made. NASA is doing a lousy job of lanching people into space and it is so obvious now that even a typical congressman can figure it out for themselves.

The Space Access Society has its annual meeting this weekend; this is the first one since the X prize was announced to be fully funded last October, and the race has definitely been heating up.

This year is also the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers flight, and a lot of these companies see this year as a terribly symbolic time to actually make it all happen.

It's time :-) Space enterprise will be the next big growth area - and NASA won't have a whole lot to do with it. Think of the shuttle accident as just another piece of motivation these guys need - right now the US has no human spaceflight capability, until one of these companies succeeds, or the shuttle starts flying again. Which do you think will happen first?

If you're wondering what's up with all these private space ventures lately, the Space Access Society conference is going on right now. This particular contender is for freight, not human travel (at least at this point), and orbital, not suborbital as in the X Prize competition, which has also been heating up the last few months, since they got the full $10 million in the bank last October.

So, when is this new shuttle going to be rolled out?

There isn't any. The only new project in that field is the Orbital SpacePlane, whose primary purpose is to stay docked at the ISS for 7+ crew rescue. A recent tacked-on requirement is that it could be launched on a conventional rocket with people aboard and possibly go beyond Earth orbit, but with virtually no cargo.

This is interesting, but not a replacement for the shuttle, although it will likely be just as expensive to operate. The current plans call for it to fly in 2010 in addition to current shuttles, which could remain in service through 2020.

But according to the latest couple of updates of the Space Access Society, don't hold your breath, since NASA hasn't managed to design any new vehicle since said shuttle...

So, when is this new shuttle going to be rolled out?

There isn't any. The only new project in that field is the Orbital SpacePlane, whose primary purpose is to stay docked at the ISS for 7+ crew rescue. A recent tacked-on requirement is that it could be launched on a conventional rocket with people aboard and possibly go beyond Earth orbit, but with virtually no cargo.

This is interesting, but not a replacement for the shuttle, although it will likely be just as expensive to operate. The current plans call for it to fly in 2010 in addition to current shuttles, which could remain in service through 2020.

But according to the latest couple of updates of the Space Access Society, don't hold your breath, since NASA hasn't managed to design any new vehicle since said shuttle...

Well, Cliff,

There's plenty of good stuff out there, but you'll have to do some editing. As somebody who grew up around teachers and has worked in textbook publishing I can assure you that teachers all have to do it too. Their stuff sucks far worse than anything referenced here.

While Project Gutenberg is great, you should also check out on-line encyclopedias like NuPedia, and Everything2 which are all open source, as is The Open Directory Project . A great source of fiction, which can be a wonderful learning tool, is Baen Books who have put hundreds of book online and are eager to have them downloaded and spread around.

For science materials, there are lots of great sites for kids done by educators pursuing whever they're into. All of which you'll want to use to spice up access to sites like Science Daily that are handy but a bit too serious some days for young minds.

Which brings me to Make Stuff which should fill in quite nicely for the "arts and crafts" part of most school curricula.

For biography I'ld check out American National Biography and for history a good start can be made with pages like Anyday which can be amazing or useless, all based on where *you* go from the starting point that they provide. Places like Colonial America are designed just for this but again, check out more than one.

For reference material you should check out Theodora which, while not meant to be open source, is very handy, Geographic.Org, which is open source and student-oriented, should do the rest. I've found that the CIA sourcebook is terrible, as folk should have long since figured out. Biased, misinformed, and sometimes just wierd; leave it behind. However if you hunt you'll find that within various.gov sites there's tons of great stuff, from manuals on camping to stuff on solar panels.

The space science community is very kid friendly, from NASA down to the local Mars Society chapter, having plenty of materials on quite a range of topics that you're free to reproduce and spread around. If you can handle it, the neopagan community is reliably eager to provide information and links on ancient indo-european history, from the government of Sumeria, to Celtic ironwork. (You might be surprised at how many neopagans have advanced degrees in history and/or literature.)

Speaking of limits, you'll always have to be careful that your kids aren't ending up places they shouldn't be but again, every teacher and librarian faces that one.

Lastly, the reason that I've got all this ready to hand is that I took it from my source database, more of which can be found on my web site, which is primarily oriented towards adults and older kids but does have plenty of other links like the ones here.

Best of luck to you and be sure to post back to slashdot in a few years about how it's going.

Rustin H. Wright - Information Geek
"It's all about the information, Marty. Little ones and zeros!"

Its good to see progress from some of the small launch vehicle companies, especially after the failure of Rotary Rocket.

The actual success here, though, is perhaps not as revolutionary as it first appears. The DC-X had a similarly reusable and relightable rocket even though it was in a more conventional vertical 'rocket ship' design.

Getting cheaper access to space is the key to broader space tourism and proper space industires. Other companies trying this include Pioneer Rocketplane, Armadillo Aerospace, JP Areospace and TGV Rockets to name but a few. There's even a UK outfit, Bristol Spaceplanes,
and the European Space Agency is beginning to think in this direction too, according to CNN.
All the companies are small and desperately in need of money if anyone wants to invest. Its probably less risky than Worldcom!

Another useful resource is the Space Access Society. Indeed they've argued that the whole X-33 mess was in fact Lockheed-Martin protecting their lucrative disposable launcher market by messing up the project. Sadly, NASA seems to have been complicit in this.

Let's look at some of the claims in the article:

"Nuclear systems give you a chance to reduce your mass and so your overall costs to orbit," Adams says.

This is a missile-builder talking. He's clearly obsessed with one particular engineering measure of "goodness", which is called "ISP". There has been any amount of research in the last twenty to thirty years that shows that maximizing ISP does not necessarily reduce costs. If NASA's current rockets were operating at the lower end of what you can do with chemical engines then he might be correct, but they are in fact several orders of magnitude off.

Nuclear propulsion could allow single-stage rockets to reach orbit - cutting the need for expendable boosters and allowing what he calls "airline-like" access to space.

Chemical propulsion allows single-stage to orbit, if you do it correctly. In fact, NASA has already built several rockets capable of single-stage to orbit operation, but they just haven't used them that way. The second stage of the Saturn V was one of them. Launched by itself, it would have been capable of making orbit with a small payload. It had the necessary ratio of fuel to total mass.

It would also be lighter and be able to lift a bigger fraction of its starting mass into orbit - perhaps as much as 45 per cent. "With existing systems, it's more like 10 per cent," he says.

This is true, but it DOES NOT MATTER. The 90% of the mass that doesn't make it to orbit is fuel. Fuel is very cheap. The current Space Shuttle uses something like $20 million dollars of fuel to get to orbit (and the vast majority of that is the solid rockets, not the hydrogen). The total cost of a Shuttle mission is more like $1000 million. Even if you could make the fuel free it wouldn't make the shuttle any cheaper.

What is important to cheap access to space is to make the vehicles *totally* reusable, like an airliner, not throw-away like a missile. The Shuttle is partially reusable, but it still throws away a huge amount of itself each flight, and has to be totally refurbished -- a process that takes months. Space flight won't be cheap until you can fly, come back down, fill-her-up, and fly again the next day.

Even if that means that 98% of what you leave the ground with is fuel it doesn't matter until you've got total costs down to well under a tenth of what they are today, and maybe closer to a hundredth.

If you're interested in this then I highly recommend that you go and read what the Space Access Society has been writing about this stuff for more than five years now.

I'm a huge proponent of the US space program, but let's face it. The enormous cost of sending a man to the moon should be enough to show us that the US would not have bothered if there had not been the intense competition for propaganda rights with the Soviet Union. If the Soviet Union had not existed in the '50s and '60s, there would not have been a US lunar program then.

Why am I saying this? Because it's true. Today, the cost to put anything into low Earth orbit is about $10,000 per pound. Until that cost falls by a factor of 10 or more, NASA will continue to scratch for the money to conduct any sort of space exploration and the moon and Mars will be out of reach for manned missions.

Kubrick and Clarke looked at the rate of progress of space exploration in the '50s and '60s and extrapolated that by now, we'd have giant orbiting space stations that rotated to produce artificial gravity. They imagined we'd have the wherewithal to send an enormous manned spacecraft to Jupiter (Saturn in the book).

So, why don't we have any of those things? Ironically, it has less to do with current launch costs than with the economics of demand for commercial space launch and what's known as a "demand plateau." A recent study showed that demand for space launch capability is in a plateau region where reducing costs will not significantly increase demand until costs fall by a factor of 20 or more. In other words, there's a disincentive for commercial launch companies to reduce launch costs unless they can radically slash launch costs.

And don't even get me started on the dangers of orbital debris....

Certainly, Carmack's thoughts on timing for moderatly inexpensive (I think his "expense" standards are broken, but whatever) spaceflight are optomistic, but if the inventor of doom says I get weightlessness, I expect weightlessness.

I think the real problem, however, is in carmack's approach - he's aiming for a suborbital manned shot first, before he goes for a true orbit - whereas the prospace people (they have a good update here are aiming direct for a full orbital launch in the next 5-7 years at costs in the affordable range for well off people (as long as you don't get hit with the AMT as opposed to the incredibly rich (where it is now)

The big deal about using hydrogen peroxide as fuel is the simplicity of the engine design. All you have to do is run the peroxide (which is, btw, far, far more concentrated than what you buy at the drugstore) over a platinum mesh, and there is a catalyzed reaction and the stuff goes off.

Combine that with a simple, pressurized fuel tank instead of turbopumps, and you have a rocket engine with the minimum of moving parts. Perfect for a technology demonstrator that's more about the other parts of the system than the rocket itself.

The late, lamented Beal Aerospace was building a big booster rocket by scaling up this technology, and with a fair degree of success. (Then NASA stomped them flat by announcing a "civilian space launch initiative" that would have amounted to subsidizing Beal's competitors. Beal closed up shop.) Read the Space Access Society's pages to see what they think of NASA these days.

For more fun with peroxide rockets, see here.

Jon Acheson

Even better is the latest SAS update here.

Space Access Update #84 6/14/99

Copyright 1999 by Space Access Society www.space-access.org;

Space Access Society's sole purpose is to promote radical reductions in the cost of reaching space. You may redistribute this Update in any medium you choose, as long as you do it unedited in its entirety.

Editorial: Right Intentions, Wrong Direction -

NASA's Destructive Approach To Cheap Access

Let us be clear from the start: NASA has screwed up the cheap access initiatives entrusted to it to date, from the mismanagement of DC-XA into a crash (we still haven't seen full public release of the predictable blame-the-contractor report on that mess) to the muddled morphing of X-33 into a half-assed Shuttle II. As far as we are concerned, the current push to do "X-Ops" reusable rocket low-cost operability demos in Future-X is NASA's last chance - if they mess this up too, come 2001 we'll be pushing hard for removal of RLV technology development responsibility from NASA entirely.

We reluctantly came to this conclusion last fall, and started working quietly behind the scenes to advance Future-X X-Ops work. Why are we going public now? Because over the last two months the evidence has become overwhelming that NASA is reverting to malign old habits - they are once again pushing their internal agendas with reckless disregard for the interests of US industry and of the country as a whole, to the point of actively attacking the credibility and investment-worthiness of the reusable-launch startups. They have done so repeatedly, and (under the most charitable interpretation) factually incorrectly.

This must stop, NOW. If NACA in 1930 had been allowed to tell potential investors that Douglas and Boeing couldn't possibly build robust all-metal monoplane airliners without ten additional years of massive NACA research funding, we'd all still be taking trains. Assuming, of course that we survived WW II at all.

If NASA can neither usefully support entrepreneurial low-cost launch ventures, nor at minimum shut up and stay out of their way, then it's time to start looking carefully at the parts of NASA involved, constraining the ones still needed, and defunding the rest.

Why?

NASA is doing this to advance two major agendas that we see. One is to maintain the JSC/KSC manned-space Station/Shuttle bloatocracy into the indefinite future, by preempting all possible alternatives to some sort of massive full-employment Shuttle Upgrade or Shuttle Followon project.

The other is to fund a wish-list of blue sky launch technology projects (including hypersonic airbreathing launch vehicles - NASP II, anyone?) from most of the other NASA centers under the name "Spaceliner 100", by attacking current (rocket) technologies as simply not good enough.

That's our merely best estimate of their motives, mind. It's always possible NASA is attacking the commercial RLV outfits out of sheer random institutional bloodymindedness. But attacking they are - and in general, the main content of their attacks is, uh, incorrect.

In evidence, point #1

- The April 8th speech by Administrator Goldin to the US Space Foundation, in the context of supporting yet another expensive push for hypersonic "RBCC" (Rocket-Based Combined Cycle) airbreathers. (We suspect Dan Goldin has been getting very bad advice lately.) "At NASA, the technology barrier is the rocket." He goes on to state, more or less correctly, that Shuttle launch costs are about $10,000 per pound, and then says "Expendable vehicles are not significantly cheaper" (with the unspoken corollary that reusable rockets can't possibly be much better.)

It depends on your definition of "significantly", we guess - aside from the Titan 4, which involves almost as much bureaucracy as Shuttle, current medium-to-heavy commercial expendables cost from about half (Delta 2, Atlas 2) to about one fifth (ILS Proton) of $10K per pound to LEO. NASA's recent line that even reusable rockets can't make more than a factor of ten reduction over Shuttle launch costs looks pretty foolish when decades-old expendable designs already undercut Shuttle by factors of two to five. And at least two credible current expendable ventures are shooting for that factor of ten reduction.

It is indeed possible that rockets, *as conceived by NASA*, can never get much cheaper than Shuttle. There's considerable evidence to support this in NASA's recent RLV efforts. But, if we can keep NASA from strangling the innovative RLV startups in their cradles, there is no fundamental law of physics preventing clever engineers without NASA's forty years of bureaucratic baggage from undercutting Shuttle costs by factors of ten right from the start, getting down to factors of as much as a hundred once experience refines systems and flight rates rise.

In evidence, point #2:

- May 8th "New Scientist" magazine - from an article on Richard (Virgin Atlantic Airways) Branson's investment negotiations with Rotary Rocket Company, a quote from a top-level NASA official dismissing Roton and other such reusable rocket concepts as "...system gimmicks to overcome the unbelieveable lack of technology they [the startup reusable rocket companies] have."

Hmm. NASA, by implication, has far better technology. Oh, really. Who has full-scale graphite-epoxy LOX tanks? Who has access to the best (Russian) rocket engines in the world? Who can build composite fuel tanks, liquid hydrogen or plain old kerosene, that *don't* leak like sieves? Who knows how to tow-launch high wing-loading vehicles? Who has the biggest concentration of expertise in the world on vertical-landing rockets? On aerial cryo-propellant transfer? On rapid prototyping of high-strength ultra-light composites? On high-performance non-toxic storable propellants?

If you answered "NASA" to any of the above, you are *wrong*, chucko. The answer in every case is "private industry", and in most cases the startups. NASA still has pockets of excellence, but they float in a sea of mediocrity. NASA slamming the startups' technology in order to get more funding for their own endless noodling is, frankly nauseating.

That said, precisely what is wrong with "system gimmicks" if they *work*? Are they somehow impure, unclean, unworthy of the true scientific guardians of higher-tech-at-all-costs? A case in point: Modern military aircraft require a base with a ten thousand-foot concrete runway to operate effectively, right? No possible way to cut that to one-tenth the size and, better yet make it mobile, short of some ultra-advanced technology like anti-gravity? Right?

Uh... What is an aircraft carrier but a collection of "system gimmicks" - massive victorian-tech steam catapults for takeoffs, arrestor wires and tailhooks and mirror-and-light path indicators for landings, angled flight decks to allow both at once, plus the accumulated operational expertise to make it all work, a mobile airbase a tenth the size of fixed landbased versions. If the "system gimmick" RLV startups can make a major dent in launch costs, and it looks as if, given a chance, they can, we do not give two figs how "gimmicky" their technology is. To quote some anonymous Cold War weapons designer, "'better' is the enemy of 'good enough'".

In evidence, point #3:

This week's "Space News" - "Reusable Launch Vehicles A Decade Away, NASA Says." We mentioned in Update #83 that the results of an industry study on what to do about Shuttle (STAS, the Space Transportation Architecture Study) were out, and that while many of the proposals were (predictably) for massively expensive one-size- fits-all Shuttle replacements, at least some of the conclusions were sensible, IE gradually replace Shuttle with an EELV/CTV system that would meet NASA manned-space's basic needs with a relatively small investment while having (a major point to us) negligible impact on the commercial markets.

Now it seems the NASA/Aerospace Corp response to the various STAS reports has been leaked to Space News, and the gist of it is: NASA slams the various RLV proposals as unrealistic regarding schedule and budget (not surprising if they're geared to actually getting a contract to replace Shuttle; spending too much money over too long a time in all the right districts is an unspoken requirement for any would-be Shuttle replacement - still, it seems unfair to slam the proposals for soft-pedalling these unspoken specs) and proposes that NASA essentially micromanage a drawn-out process to eventually replace Shuttle sometime in the 2010's.

Previous intentions to encourage commercial RLV developments have evaporated; NASA Shuttle II will be the only game in town, at least by this tell-the-customer-what-they-want-to-hear custom blueprint.

Mind, we haven't seen this study ourselves yet; we're going on Space News's reading - but this agrees with the other recent evidence. By essentially dismissing the chances any of the current crop of RLV startups could succeed and thus position themselves to meet a significant part of NASA manned space's launch needs, NASA significantly reduces their chances of getting the investment they need to succeed, in a fine example of pernicious self-fulfilling prophecy. Meanwhile, by ignoring the meet-JSC's-needs-and-no-more EELV/CTV approach in favor of some flavor of massive-overcapacity Shuttle II, this study continues NASA's implicit threat of a subsidized grab of the core of the existing commercial launch demand, adversely affecting the investment climate for commercial space launch in general.

This is rapidly approaching the point where we'll be able to make a convincing case that this nation's future in space would be better served by a radically reduced NASA. We'd rather not find that road the only one left to us.

Fixing the problem

For starters, we'd like to see whoever's peddling this line at NASA HQ fired, or at least transferred to counting seabirds at some remote tracking station. Not that the person in question is more than a representative of widespread NASA tendencies, but it will at least serve as an example to the rest.

We'd like to hear an unambiguous repudiation of the totally unacceptable anti-RLV startup investment advice voiced in the May 8th New Scientist article.

We'd like to see a firm NASA commitment to "X-Ops", supporting interested startups in proving out and refining their low-cost launch approaches via low-cost subscale flight demonstrations on NASA's dime, in order to get them to the point where they are unmistakeably ready to raise commercial funds to develop full-scale commercial vehicles on an acceptable commercial timescale.

Under those circumstances, we would find it appropriate to support a minimal-investment approach to guaranteeing Shuttle's NASA-unique missions, and to support a moderate level of investment in getting the various "Spaceliner 100" technologies closer to ready for prime time - we note that the proposed RBCC engine in particular has huge remaining unknowns in terms of weight, cost, and speed range, and much work needs to be done before any Trailblazer-class (~$500m) flight vehicle program is appropriate. In other words, "show us the engine!" - given X-33's develop-a-whole-new-engine problems, this should go without saying, but it apparently doesn't.

We can understand why there might be disillusion with reusable rockets at top levels in NASA, given the reluctance of the post- consolidation aerospace majors to compete with themselves by commiting significant resources, and given the NASA managerial-level cluelessness in efforts to date. But stomping the startups in an effort to fund NASP II is not the answer.

Give the startups a real chance now - tight funding. tight schedule, tight accounting, but minimal engineering elbow-joggling - and in three years, we'll know what's really possible.

Stick with business as usual, and sooner or later the country will realize what damage NASA is doing, and will act appropriately.

Space Access Society's sole purpose is to promote radical reductions in the cost of reaching space. You may redistribute this Update in any medium you choose, as long as you do it unedited in its entirety.

Space Access Society http://www.space-access.org space.access@space-access.org

"Reach low orbit and you're halfway to anywhere in the Solar System" - Robert A.Heinlein

Space Access Society www.space-access.org;

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

Space Access Update #84 6/14/99

Copyright 1999 by Space Access Society www.space-access.org;

Space Access Society's sole purpose is to promote radical reductions in the cost of reaching space. You may redistribute this Update in any medium you choose, as long as you do it unedited in its entirety.

Editorial: Right Intentions, Wrong Direction -

NASA's Destructive Approach To Cheap Access

Let us be clear from the start: NASA has screwed up the cheap access initiatives entrusted to it to date, from the mismanagement of DC-XA into a crash (we still haven't seen full public release of the predictable blame-the-contractor report on that mess) to the muddled morphing of X-33 into a half-assed Shuttle II. As far as we are concerned, the current push to do "X-Ops" reusable rocket low-cost operability demos in Future-X is NASA's last chance - if they mess this up too, come 2001 we'll be pushing hard for removal of RLV technology development responsibility from NASA entirely.

We reluctantly came to this conclusion last fall, and started working quietly behind the scenes to advance Future-X X-Ops work. Why are we going public now? Because over the last two months the evidence has become overwhelming that NASA is reverting to malign old habits - they are once again pushing their internal agendas with reckless disregard for the interests of US industry and of the country as a whole, to the point of actively attacking the credibility and investment-worthiness of the reusable-launch startups. They have done so repeatedly, and (under the most charitable interpretation) factually incorrectly.

This must stop, NOW. If NACA in 1930 had been allowed to tell potential investors that Douglas and Boeing couldn't possibly build robust all-metal monoplane airliners without ten additional years of massive NACA research funding, we'd all still be taking trains. Assuming, of course that we survived WW II at all.

If NASA can neither usefully support entrepreneurial low-cost launch ventures, nor at minimum shut up and stay out of their way, then it's time to start looking carefully at the parts of NASA involved, constraining the ones still needed, and defunding the rest.

Why?

NASA is doing this to advance two major agendas that we see. One is to maintain the JSC/KSC manned-space Station/Shuttle bloatocracy into the indefinite future, by preempting all possible alternatives to some sort of massive full-employment Shuttle Upgrade or Shuttle Followon project.

The other is to fund a wish-list of blue sky launch technology projects (including hypersonic airbreathing launch vehicles - NASP II, anyone?) from most of the other NASA centers under the name "Spaceliner 100", by attacking current (rocket) technologies as simply not good enough.

That's our merely best estimate of their motives, mind. It's always possible NASA is attacking the commercial RLV outfits out of sheer random institutional bloodymindedness. But attacking they are - and in general, the main content of their attacks is, uh, incorrect.

In evidence, point #1

- The April 8th speech by Administrator Goldin to the US Space Foundation, in the context of supporting yet another expensive push for hypersonic "RBCC" (Rocket-Based Combined Cycle) airbreathers. (We suspect Dan Goldin has been getting very bad advice lately.) "At NASA, the technology barrier is the rocket." He goes on to state, more or less correctly, that Shuttle launch costs are about $10,000 per pound, and then says "Expendable vehicles are not significantly cheaper" (with the unspoken corollary that reusable rockets can't possibly be much better.)

It depends on your definition of "significantly", we guess - aside from the Titan 4, which involves almost as much bureaucracy as Shuttle, current medium-to-heavy commercial expendables cost from about half (Delta 2, Atlas 2) to about one fifth (ILS Proton) of $10K per pound to LEO. NASA's recent line that even reusable rockets can't make more than a factor of ten reduction over Shuttle launch costs looks pretty foolish when decades-old expendable designs already undercut Shuttle by factors of two to five. And at least two credible current expendable ventures are shooting for that factor of ten reduction.

It is indeed possible that rockets, *as conceived by NASA*, can never get much cheaper than Shuttle. There's considerable evidence to support this in NASA's recent RLV efforts. But, if we can keep NASA from strangling the innovative RLV startups in their cradles, there is no fundamental law of physics preventing clever engineers without NASA's forty years of bureaucratic baggage from undercutting Shuttle costs by factors of ten right from the start, getting down to factors of as much as a hundred once experience refines systems and flight rates rise.

In evidence, point #2:

- May 8th "New Scientist" magazine - from an article on Richard (Virgin Atlantic Airways) Branson's investment negotiations with Rotary Rocket Company, a quote from a top-level NASA official dismissing Roton and other such reusable rocket concepts as "...system gimmicks to overcome the unbelieveable lack of technology they [the startup reusable rocket companies] have."

Hmm. NASA, by implication, has far better technology. Oh, really. Who has full-scale graphite-epoxy LOX tanks? Who has access to the best (Russian) rocket engines in the world? Who can build composite fuel tanks, liquid hydrogen or plain old kerosene, that *don't* leak like sieves? Who knows how to tow-launch high wing-loading vehicles? Who has the biggest concentration of expertise in the world on vertical-landing rockets? On aerial cryo-propellant transfer? On rapid prototyping of high-strength ultra-light composites? On high-performance non-toxic storable propellants?

If you answered "NASA" to any of the above, you are *wrong*, chucko. The answer in every case is "private industry", and in most cases the startups. NASA still has pockets of excellence, but they float in a sea of mediocrity. NASA slamming the startups' technology in order to get more funding for their own endless noodling is, frankly nauseating.

That said, precisely what is wrong with "system gimmicks" if they *work*? Are they somehow impure, unclean, unworthy of the true scientific guardians of higher-tech-at-all-costs? A case in point: Modern military aircraft require a base with a ten thousand-foot concrete runway to operate effectively, right? No possible way to cut that to one-tenth the size and, better yet make it mobile, short of some ultra-advanced technology like anti-gravity? Right?

Uh... What is an aircraft carrier but a collection of "system gimmicks" - massive victorian-tech steam catapults for takeoffs, arrestor wires and tailhooks and mirror-and-light path indicators for landings, angled flight decks to allow both at once, plus the accumulated operational expertise to make it all work, a mobile airbase a tenth the size of fixed landbased versions. If the "system gimmick" RLV startups can make a major dent in launch costs, and it looks as if, given a chance, they can, we do not give two figs how "gimmicky" their technology is. To quote some anonymous Cold War weapons designer, "'better' is the enemy of 'good enough'".

In evidence, point #3:

This week's "Space News" - "Reusable Launch Vehicles A Decade Away, NASA Says." We mentioned in Update #83 that the results of an industry study on what to do about Shuttle (STAS, the Space Transportation Architecture Study) were out, and that while many of the proposals were (predictably) for massively expensive one-size- fits-all Shuttle replacements, at least some of the conclusions were sensible, IE gradually replace Shuttle with an EELV/CTV system that would meet NASA manned-space's basic needs with a relatively small investment while having (a major point to us) negligible impact on the commercial markets.

Now it seems the NASA/Aerospace Corp response to the various STAS reports has been leaked to Space News, and the gist of it is: NASA slams the various RLV proposals as unrealistic regarding schedule and budget (not surprising if they're geared to actually getting a contract to replace Shuttle; spending too much money over too long a time in all the right districts is an unspoken requirement for any would-be Shuttle replacement - still, it seems unfair to slam the proposals for soft-pedalling these unspoken specs) and proposes that NASA essentially micromanage a drawn-out process to eventually replace Shuttle sometime in the 2010's.

Previous intentions to encourage commercial RLV developments have evaporated; NASA Shuttle II will be the only game in town, at least by this tell-the-customer-what-they-want-to-hear custom blueprint.

Mind, we haven't seen this study ourselves yet; we're going on Space News's reading - but this agrees with the other recent evidence. By essentially dismissing the chances any of the current crop of RLV startups could succeed and thus position themselves to meet a significant part of NASA manned space's launch needs, NASA significantly reduces their chances of getting the investment they need to succeed, in a fine example of pernicious self-fulfilling prophecy. Meanwhile, by ignoring the meet-JSC's-needs-and-no-more EELV/CTV approach in favor of some flavor of massive-overcapacity Shuttle II, this study continues NASA's implicit threat of a subsidized grab of the core of the existing commercial launch demand, adversely affecting the investment climate for commercial space launch in general.

This is rapidly approaching the point where we'll be able to make a convincing case that this nation's future in space would be better served by a radically reduced NASA. We'd rather not find that road the only one left to us.

Fixing the problem

For starters, we'd like to see whoever's peddling this line at NASA HQ fired, or at least transferred to counting seabirds at some remote tracking station. Not that the person in question is more than a representative of widespread NASA tendencies, but it will at least serve as an example to the rest.

We'd like to hear an unambiguous repudiation of the totally unacceptable anti-RLV startup investment advice voiced in the May 8th New Scientist article.

We'd like to see a firm NASA commitment to "X-Ops", supporting interested startups in proving out and refining their low-cost launch approaches via low-cost subscale flight demonstrations on NASA's dime, in order to get them to the point where they are unmistakeably ready to raise commercial funds to develop full-scale commercial vehicles on an acceptable commercial timescale.

Under those circumstances, we would find it appropriate to support a minimal-investment approach to guaranteeing Shuttle's NASA-unique missions, and to support a moderate level of investment in getting the various "Spaceliner 100" technologies closer to ready for prime time - we note that the proposed RBCC engine in particular has huge remaining unknowns in terms of weight, cost, and speed range, and much work needs to be done before any Trailblazer-class (~$500m) flight vehicle program is appropriate. In other words, "show us the engine!" - given X-33's develop-a-whole-new-engine problems, this should go without saying, but it apparently doesn't.

We can understand why there might be disillusion with reusable rockets at top levels in NASA, given the reluctance of the post- consolidation aerospace majors to compete with themselves by commiting significant resources, and given the NASA managerial-level cluelessness in efforts to date. But stomping the startups in an effort to fund NASP II is not the answer.

Give the startups a real chance now - tight funding. tight schedule, tight accounting, but minimal engineering elbow-joggling - and in three years, we'll know what's really possible.

Stick with business as usual, and sooner or later the country will realize what damage NASA is doing, and will act appropriately.

Space Access Society's sole purpose is to promote radical reductions in the cost of reaching space. You may redistribute this Update in any medium you choose, as long as you do it unedited in its entirety.

Space Access Society http://www.space-access.org space.access@space-access.org

"Reach low orbit and you're halfway to anywhere in the Solar System" - Robert A.Heinlein

Space Access Society www.space-access.org;

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There are no big surprises here. NASA continues to try to build the most technically advanced craft possible, instead of actually building something that works. For a detailed description of how NASA screwed up and why X-33 is dead (written a year ago) see: http://www.space-access.org/updates/sau91.html

The real problem here is that NASA has become an enormous entrenched bureaucracy. They aren't interested in any solution that doesn't require an army of 10,000 engineers and technicians because then they won't be able to justify an legion of bureaucrats. The DC-X craft was built and tested on a shoestring over the objections of NASA. A scaled up SSTO based on that would require a support staff on the same order as a 747 (hundreds of people rather than tens of thousands as is the case for the shuttle) and would fly daily to weekly. For a detailed description of how we could have built such a craft as early as the '70s, see Halfway to Anywhere: achieving America's destiny in space by G. Harry Stine.

Another problem we have run into along the way here is that NASA has done everything it can to squash the independent, privately funded space transportation startups (Rotary Rocket, Beal, Kistler, etc.). NASA administrator Dan Goldin has made disparaging (and untrue) statements about their technologies which have contributed to their funding difficulties. In addition NASA continues to propose initiatives that would compete against these companies.

I still think NASA's planetary/space science programs (Pioneer/Voyager/Galileo/Cassini/etc.) are something to be proud of, but they have had to take a back seat to the "shuttle-station complex" (sing to the tune of "military-industrial complex") and that really disgusts me. What can you do about it?

Don't reply to this post! Instead, write, call, fax, or email your congresscritters (all 3 of them) and demand that we get NASA out of the launch vehicle development business.

The DC-X worked too well. It actually did what it was supposed to do, on time and on budget. They had a crack design team who were rearing to go on the next phase. Why did NASA ignore them and turn to Lockheed?
This is Space Access Society's take on it:
Lockheed (by this point, Lockheed-Martin) won the X-33 competition with their by-then renamed "Venturestar" lifting body rocketship. One of the reasons NASA gave for selecting this bid was that it *required* more new advanced technologies [and thus higher risk] than any of the other vehicles bid. So much for the KISS principle.
quoted w/o permission from issue #91 of their newsletter; full text is available here. Scroll down about a page to "The Last Five Years: NASA Gets The Ball, And Drops It"

The "space game" isn't heating up, just Slashdot's coverage of it is. I'd given up last year on submitting space stories to be ignored by "News for Computer Nerds", but the change of pace this summer is pretty nice. But frankly, with the progress of past years in mind, the current news is pretty depressing.

Rotary Rocket has been gutted of engineers and CEO, and their current progress is destined to be mothballed unless they find a magic money tree somewhere.

Ok, so they were a long shot. But Kistler was playing it relatively safe with their design (after ditching an initial wacky idea), didn't hit any big technical or political snags, but simply is in limbo now trying to raise the last third of their funding.

Did Timothy not read the last SAS newsletter when it got posted to Slashdot? (Big thanks to whomever did that one, by the way; I'd advise interested readers to check out the archives too). The SAS seems to be the group most interested in low cost access to space, rather than in lobbying for a larger NASA budget. And they hit the mark right on with that last article; it takes a billion dollar initial investment to develop a new launch system, there are only two aerospace companies left who can afford that kind of investment, and they've both got good reason to love the status quo.

Oh, but what about government research? The X-33 is a joke. It was never designed as a simple, cheap launch vehicle, just as a way to be a "technology demonstrator" for as much flashy stuff as necessary to win a NASA contract. Of course, except for the aerospike engine, most of that flashy stuff is looking worse and worse. The lifting body shape may need control fins the size of wings, or ballast (yes, ballast on a spacecraft) to keep the center of gravity ahead of the center of pressure. They've just about given up on a high-tech composite tank after discovering it damaged in tests, and will probably have to use plain old aluminum for their wacky, multilobed design.

And did I mention that they're running years behind schedule, over budget, and despite previous agreements that Lockheed-Martin would pay budget overruns, they may renegotiate or scrap the project anyway?

Sea Launch's success isn't even in the same class as these failures. They're trying to squeeze a few extra pounds onto the usual work-intensive expendable rocket, not to reduce the gross costs of space launch by an order of magnitude.

My last glimmer of hope is Beal Aerospace, not because they have any groundbreaking new ideas in their design, but because they've got a sugar daddy financer who can afford all the capital investment before they get up and running. And even if they get started with tried and true booster technologies, they'll be a profitable new space company with no vested interest in squeezing the largest launch prices out of the government as possible. And that might actually heat things up.

www.space-access.org

These guys were following the selection process between Lockheed and McDonnell-Douglas pretty closely.

As I remember, they lobbied for McDonnell-Douglas for a variety of reasons: small launchpad team, quick turnaround time, focused program that would have gone far if it hadn't been so strapped for cash. Perhaps they wouldn't have been so innovative and scrappy if they could have been more relaxed about the money. As I remember, there was a running situation where Congress had approved ~$40 million, but some bureaucrat at the Pentagon refused to release it.

So, Lockheed won the bid for the X-33, though, b/c they were better at schmoozing the bidding process. (Make a kitchen-sink type rocket, so every senator has a part of it built in his district...) Unfortunately, this rocket lost a lot of the advantages of the small, closely-knit, highly-focused team for McDonell-Douglas.

So from this point of view, it was again politics that won out over technical issues.

The Space Access guys don't have a full archive up of their updates, so you can only read about the tail-end of the selection process there, but it's a start.

It's late and I have to work tomorrow, so I'm going to confine myself to addressing the most relevant issue that you raised: the cost of launch.

You are correct: Getting into space IS prohibitively expensive. The going rate is around $5000/pound to Low Earth Orbit on the cheapest (Russian) ride available. If you want to fly the Shuttle, you're looking at more like $10000+/pound. And you are also correct in your assumption that we cannot do anything that makes sense in space until we get the cost to orbit down.

BUT IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY!! Your belief that space access is inherently expensive is a common misperception, which has been propagated and supported at every opportunity by NASA and the companies that feed off their largess.
The technical problems are hard, do not misunderstand me, but the primary challenges and limitations are organizational, political, and operational in nature, not technical.
NASA is a hidebound bureaucracy; they have no motivation to be cheap and efficient.
The shuttle requires ground support by tens of thousands of people between every launch. No wonder it is expensive.
Since the end of Apollo, NASA has repeatedly and consistently selected the launch system development programs that are least likely to produce results.

For a good summary of why we must go to space, and how NASA has worked to make that impossible, go to the latest report from the Space Access Society.

As long as I am getting up on this soapbox, let me establish my credentials: I have worked for NASA (at JPL) and I have worked on a launch vehicle development program. A privately funded launch vehicle development program. The company in question, the Rotary Rocket Company, is now effectively out of business for lack of funding. But in two years we built and tested four new rocket engine designs, while spending less than $2,000,000. Compare that to any program run by NASA, and you will understand why they have consistently failed to produce a reasonable launch vehicle.
We can develop the technology RIGHT NOW that would put us in orbit for 1/10 what NASA has to spend. And once space began to be commercialized in a big way, that cost would drop by another order of magnitude in less than a decade. All we need is the development money, and not very bloody much of it at that.
Come on, all you dotcom millionaires who grew up loving Star Trek. Do you want to live the dream? Then let's make it happen!

I welcome replies posted here, or to brent@lorax.org.