Bigger Rockets For 'Heavy' Lifting

msslave writes, "A local news station in Dallas reported that a Texas company, Beal Aerospace has tested the second stage of its BA-2 rocket. Designed for the "heavy-lift" market, these engines are intended for increasing demand for satellite launches. And they have spent only a half a billion dollars to get this far. "

Comments

Talk to These Guys Instead

[ewhac]

A quarter of a billion dollars? Why is this guy trying to recreate NASA? You don't need Saturn-V-class vehicles to get the majority of payloads to orbit. What's more, it looks like his vehicle is disposible, which is an unnecessary waste. And that launch site looks ridiculously impractical; how are you going to get what might be an extremely delicate, sensitive payload to that island?

Check out the Rotary Rocket Company. They have a working prototype, the Roton, undergoing tests in California's Mojave desert.

Maximum payload capacity: 7000 lbs.
Estimated cost per launch: $7M
Price per pound: $1000
NASA's price per pound: ~$5000

Most payloads, especially telecomm satellites, are under 7000 pounds. Unlike Beal's proposed vehicle, the Roton is reusable and manned. It takes off and lands on its tail, like God and Robert Heinlein intended :-). And not only can they deliver your payload to orbit but, unlike Beal, they can bring it back! Never throw away another satellite!

Right now, all they need is investment capital. For half of what Beal has spent to date ($120M), they can complete the Roton and start delivering payloads to orbit. Unfortunately, Rotary Rocket has had difficulty securing investment capital. Unlike most .coms -- which typically get twice what Rotary Rocket needs -- they have an actual working prototype, and they will make money.

Schwab

acme rocket co.

[romco]

I noticed this in the employment section of there website...

"Applicant should be capable of developing command/response serial communications software on
WinNT using Visual C++.

"Roger, we have lift-off, hold on I have a blue screen, abort! abort!"

A Rocket a Day Keeps the High Costs Away

[Baldrson]

Beal's analysis concluded that a new vehicle should be many times larger than those vehicles. The industry consensus was that small rockets were substantially simpler and cheaper. But Beal did not agree with the common consent and reasoned that if he built his own factory and was vertically integrated, that a large vehicle was clearly the best choice.

John Walker wrote a piece on the economics of launch systems that says, basically, it makes more sense to launch a lot of little rockets frequently than it does to launch a few big rockets occasionally. The argument is that recurring costs of industrial processes go down with volume more than enough to make up for any economies of scale that might be lost by launching only one satellite per rocket. Certainly microelectronics in low earth orbit requiring frequent "on demand" replenishment launches is at odds with the large booster approach.

John Walker isn't the first to make this argument. Since the early 80s aerospace professionals know have been pointing out that rocket engines have materials limits and tolerances no more demanding than a VW engine made in Brazil costing under $1000 per unit. The big difference is volume production. So this seems obvious to a number of very intelligent folks.

I've never seen a good refutation of this argument. I really wonder why Andy Beal et al chose the big booster approach. What were they thinking?

So do we need the Saturn V?

[SuperG]

Every now and then someone mentions that at the moment it's not actually possible for man to land on the moon - and to do so would mean getting out the old Saturn V plans, and rebuilding 30 year old technology.

Now with this series of rocket being developed by these guys, despite the fact that they are being built with the main objective of deploying satellites, could they be modified to perform moon-landing-type missions? It would mean that a) development of the necessary hardware wouldn't have to start from the ground up, and b) it isn't being built using 30 year old technology (based on maybe, but you catch my drift.)

I realise that the base model of rocket would have to be modfied to stick on the lunar module etc. but is this conceivable? I would just think that this would perhaps make any NASA, or any other space agency for that matter, prick up it's ears regarding picking up moon development where we left off a quarter-century ago.

Heavy lift, maybe.

[Crixus]

Beal claims a thrust of 810,000 pounds for its heavy lift engine. That's not bad, but the F-1 engine, 5 of which fired the first stage of the Saturn V developed 1.5 million pounds each, and those were still undergoing R&D. I think Rocketdyne was up to F-1g by the time they cancelled the program and those were putting out 1.75 million pounds each.

Bottom line, I think they've done a great job so far, but to do any real heavy lifting you need more thrust. They claim this engine is scalable, but we'll see. Getting more thrust out of it now will probably require massive investment, if the engine is capable of any more.

I may not be remembering correctly, but even Bob Zubrin's Mars Direct plan called for some serious heavy lifting. And I think he mentioned the Energia Booster.

You can cluster more engines to get more thrust but the Soviets learned that that isn't always the best solution. I think the first stage of their Saturn V equivalent (sometimes known as the G-1, but also know as something else, N1?) used 30 engines, and they had problems keeping them all working. They even managed to blow a few of them up.

So I question whether these are up to the task of real heavy lifting. I hope they prove me wrong.

Heck, just bust out the plans for the F-1 and start making those again. Sure, all of the tooling is gone but you could probably re-start the production of that engine for very little.

OR, get with the Soviets and re-start their Energia Heavy Lift program. THAT was the most powerful heavy lift vehicle ever built.

Just because those were government sponsored programs doesn's mean private industry couldn't take over (though I don't buy the whole argument that the private sector necessarily does things more efficiently than does government).

NERVA

[CrazyD]

Nuclear Rocket Page
http://www.roadrunner.com/~mrpbar/rocket.html

Basically, as an alternative to chemical rockets, we were developing a nuclear rocket called NERVA.
By the time the project was terminated, their prototypes were giving about 850 seconds of specific impulse, and the engineers believed it wouldnt be too difficult to raise that to about 1200. The theoretical maximum for chemical rockets, however, is something like 400 seconds of specific impulse. If the project hadn't been canned, it is quite possible that our rockets would be three times as efficient as they are today.

The downside was that if a rocket failed during launch, it would be pretty catastrophic. But, as was already mentioned, rockets like this would be great for interplanetary travel.

Re:A Step Towards Mars

[Maurice]

Actually the article was not specific at all. There was no technical info apart from them saying that in the future they will build the largest rocket engine ever. The size of the rocket engine is not the only factor in determining the maximum payload the rocket could take into orbit. Also, usually several smaller engines is better, because this way you can stabilize using rotation along the main axis. For example the Russian N-1, that was really the biggest *booster* ever built had 31 engines I believe, some of which were small and on the periphery to provide spin stability. The space shuttle has relatively small thrust vectoring engines to maintain stability, because it can't spin-stabilize (astronauts will start puking). Also, on the space shuttle, during launch if one (or even two) engine fails, they can still land safely -- provided it is after the short risky period immediately after launch. Imagine if you had one huge engine instead and it failed. Basically your booster will just fall on the ground and explode. This will not be safe for astronauts or bystanders.
Another factor is the design of the booster (the big cylindrical thing we usually call a rocket) itself. The payload capability depends more on that than the size of the engine(s). IIRC the overall acceleration depends more on the engines.
I think this article is misleading, or at least naive.