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The Business Case for Reusable Launch Vehicles
An anonymous reader writes "Remember the failures of "shuttle replacements" like VentureStar? A Space Review article argues that even if VentureStar succeeded technically, it and other proposed big RLVs would never have made it financially: they cost too much to develop and wouldn't have made it up through increased launches. What's the solution? The author says that suborbital RLVs, like what Carmack, Rutan, and the other X Prize contenders are working on, will create a business cycle that will eventually lead to orbital vehicles."
The types of subsidy commercial entities are able to offer to space travel are nothing to scoff at, either. I would be willing to put up with advertising on the side of a shuttle, or under an orbital satellite, or even time-limited advertisements on the moon if it meant people got to ride there for free, and people who would complain about such things are no better than the ones who won't explore the heavens and won't let anybody else do so, either.
We've got to start looking at these alternatives if we're ever going to get anywhere.
Has any thought been given to reusing the main rockets? A friend once suggested getting them into orbit and using the shell as add-on modules for a space station. It seems like it would save time and money.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
It's imagination. The aviation industry used to have a handful of folks who could imagine and conceptualize the darndest vehicles - and a slew of brilliant engineers to turn those concepts into reality (or dis-prove the concept based on technical limitations, materiaks, etc.)
Nowadays, money issues and the eternal pursuit of higher profit margins has forced many of the dreamers out of the big aerospace companies and into places where there simply isn't the technical base to turn their ideas into anything at all. That's where the X-Prize will hopefully bear fruit - IF (when) the prize is claimed.
How long did it take for Trans-Atlantic airlines to start showing profits after Lindy made his flight? It's a rhetorical question, but the answer might be interesting, nonetheless.
This sig is a test. If this had been an actual sig, you would be reading something quite a bit wittier than this now.
From my point of view, you seem to have hit the nail on the head. RLVs are something that our current energy sources just can't dream to achive. We could build the vehicle that could sustain it, but we currently have no way of powering that vehicle.
IIRC, this is the reason behind the space elevator. Thus, we can get into space and dock with something already in orbit. Then we can transfer to some other station where work on space only vehicles can take place. These vehicles can then take advantage of ION Propulsion since it provides a constant acceleration.
My degree isn't in aerospace engineering, neither i have i even attempted to read futher on either of the above concepts other than a quick glimpse, but it seems to me that we are going about things in the wrong direction. I wonder what it will take to bring that revelation that suddenly changes everything?
Don't waste time... procrastinate now!
People now pay $5000 to fly a MiG for a few minutes; imagine how much they'll pay to gaze out the window at a big blue marble!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Well, the article makes a case for how the X-prize entries could be the springboard to cheaper access to orbital space. It seems like a nice idea, but it remains to be seen if that's the direction it will go in. I'm sure the X-prize backers have in mind a scenario like that for expanding the scope of non-governmental space efforts.
As for an RLV, it is true that only one design has ever flown; however, to give up on a whole class of vehicles when we're still on the 1st model seems very premature. Here's one remarkable fact about the Space Shuttle Columbia: their was a breach in the wing and the it was coming apart. Yet the craft (and its software) was actually able to maintain level flight until the wing actually broke off.
Are there flaws in the shuttle? You bet. But with 125 flights under their belt, NASA has a much better idea now how to build a reliable RLV. We're a long way from an operational vehicle, but that's only because of the high cost (and subsequent low number) of tests and launches. Maybe the X-prize entrants will solve this problem, or maybe a 2nd generation RLV will make a quantum leap in improvement-- today's big, dumb boosters are a lot better than how they started out; I bet the biggest improvments were early on.
So good luck to Armadillo and Scaled and NASA. If congress allocates the funds for NASA, I'm sure they can build a better, safer shuttle. If not, private industry will get there someday.
or Blow if you prefer, but as long as we keep using them this whole space exploration going to consist of nothing more than hop around the moon at best and a few robot probes.
Time to start considering real concepts like Daedalus or Orion.
The markets which such RLVs will serve also seem to be dominated by government. Missile testing? Remove sensing? I can't remember having bought a missile or whatever the hell it is that a remote sensor gives you lately. Seems like we'll be paying for it through taxes for a long time yet.
Of course, the (disposable) booster stage would be much bigger and more costly than what they use now, but it still might be a win... emphasis on might. :-)
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
If I understand your friend, he proposes converting the upper stages in space. This would be difficult. You would need to rip out the machinery. Then if humans are to go inside, decontaminate them of any hazardous chemicals, left-over fuel, etc. Then install the equipment to turn it into something useful, which has to be brought up separately. Considering the difficulties of working in space, it is probably easier to do all of this on the ground.
Has there ever been a business case (ie profit) for ANY manned spacecraft at all? If NASA has failed to create one even with billions in taxpayer money, it follows that a huge leap would be required to fly one for profit. So I don't find the article too surprising.
Sorry to disagree but your argument is historically invalid. Every new frontier has had entry costs: cost in money, cost in materials, cost in lives. If Columbus had thought the way you do the New World would never have been discovered, and you probably wouldn't be here.
Eventually, every frontier has been commercialized and used for profit, whether it be new continents, the sea, space, the microcosm, you name it. Space already has been successfully exploited for communications, research, military and entertainment purposes, and if we continue to expand our presence there it will become even more valuable. I got news for you: space became commercially viable some time ago.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The problem with incremental development of RLVs is that there's a huge leap between the size and difficulty of putting something into space
for five minutes (as in the current X-prize contenders) and putting it into orbit (as in the shuttle).
I might point out that DC-X and any potential follow-on offers an incremental development path for a SSTO RLV. Fly a little, tweak a little, fly a little more, tweak a little more. This was one of the suble problems with the VentureStar proposal, everything had to work right, first time, which meant they had to overdesign the vehicle, which lead to its weight problems, which utimately lead to its failure.
Given the amount of gold, silver and other valuable minerals that made their way from the New World to Spain and other European nations of the time, I think you're a little off-base. Historically they got a lot from the New World, as a matter of fact an entire merchant/banker class arose to profit by that exploration. Certainly, the trifling investment made by Queen Isabella in Columbus' multiple expeditions was returned handsomely. Your comparison of the exploration of the New World to our current space efforts is flawed, I'm afraid. A good history book would be in order.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The real problem is chemical rockets. They are very useful for launching unmaned space vehicles like communication satelites, space telescopes, and deep space probes. But they are far too expensive for launching human beings into space.
That is because devices like communication satelites can be designed for the environment of space, while human beings are designed for the surface of planet earth and so to keep them alive you have to bring along an enormous weight of things to support them.
It is also because satelites and probes can be designed to do things that are useful in space, like relay radio waves, while the things that humans are good at, like looking around a physical environment to find something, and going and getting it, are useless in space. That is why the only important scientific advance that has come out of 40 years of manned space travel is the moon rocks, it is because walking around on the moon looking for interesting things is so similar to what the human body was evolved to do as hunter and gatherers.
What is needed is some radical new technology that makes it effiecient to put men in space, and in particular to get them out somewhere like to astroids where they can do something economically valuable like mining. NASA should stop wasting tens of billions of on chemical rocket manned space travel, and instead spend it on lots of possible new technologies. The payoff in the long term would be far larger
It would seem to me that companies like UPS, FedEx, USPS, etc... would find the ability to ship from New York to Hong Kong in a couple hours a significant incentive to start investing in this field.
Is it possible, say within the next ten years, to develop a suborbital shipping vehicle that can carry enough payload to make it worth thier while?
The idea is that as the companies compete to build systems that can handle even heavier payloads, out of this should emerge a system that can also handle orbital flights with a bit lighter payload.
Is this a reasonable assumption?
McDoobie