XCOR Launch Application Complete

Kulic writes "SpaceDaily.com is reporting that XCOR, a competitor for the X-Prize has had their launch application deemed 'sufficiently complete' by the Federal Aviation Administration's Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation. This significant regulatory milestone means that AST has committed itself either to issue a launch license to XCOR within 180 days or notify Congress that it failed to do so."

Comments

Trip

[ActionPlant]

When do tickets go on sale?

Okay, so maybe we can't just buy our way into space YET, but this certainly seems to help get us that much closer. Maybe I won't need the engineering degree and military career after all.

Damon,

Re:Trip

[PhantomHarlock]

Well, we have a non-exclusive agreement with Space Adventures, the company that helped broker Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth's rides in Russia. They are currently selling tickets for suborbital flights and I believe they currently have over 600 reservations, some paid in full and others are partial down payments.

Link to their website. :) More Q&A about XCOR suborbital stuff on our site: here.

cool..

[laurent420]

say hi to zefram cochrane for me ;>

UFP==FAA?

[lone_marauder]

...Federal Aviation Administration's Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation.
Now that's what I call a job title. But are we setting a dangerous precedent here with regard to FAA authority? Do they have full authority of all known space farther than 6370km from Earth's core?

Re:UFP==FAA?

[mcrbids]

are we setting a dangerous precedent here with regard to FAA authority? Do they have full authority of all known space farther than 6370km from Earth's core?

I don't think the FAA is trying to regulate outer space. If they were, then the recent Chinese mission would have had to be licensed by the FAA.

Fat chance.

But, you have to get from here to there, and if you are doing that in the atmospheric space that is immediately over the USA, you need to talk to the FAA.

Re:UFP==FAA?

[PhantomHarlock]

Well....The division of the FAA in charge of licensing private space launches is AST, or Associate Administrator of Space Transportation. AST was origintally an independent government agency created by the 1984 commercial space act. It's job was to make the process of obtaining a launch license far easier by making it the one stop shop for all licensing needs. Previously you had to deal with many seperate government agencies to obtain all the nessesary permits for a launch. The 1984 Commercial Space Act says that OST (Office of Space Transportation) had the exclusive authority to issue or deny launch licenses and that they be a clearing house for all other agencies.

During the Clinton administration, OST was folded into the FAA as a department, where it became AST.

Recently, some confusion arose as to whether these new suborbital vehicles, which go to space but are shaped like airplanes and take off and land like airplanes, would be the jurisdiction of AST (the space folks) or AVR (the regular airplane folks at the FAA). A bill has just been introduced in the Senate to clarify the legislation set out in 1984 to include suborbital vehicles. This is discussed in our previous press release here: http://www.xcor.com/CST-2003.html

FAA does not have authority over 'all known space' (hi Larry :)..the job of the agency is only to protect the uninvolved public. In addition to protecting the American public, the United States has signed an international treaty which makes it partly responsible for the 'maximum probable loss'worldwide in the event of a disaster that kills people on the ground. This is mostly referring to large vertical launches, i.e. Boeing satellite launches out of Vandenberg, but can also apply to smaller vehicles as well.

Healthy regulation that promotes the industry is a GoodThing(tm) and part of AST/OST's mandate is to promote the industry. We are all helping to write the new regulations and make them safe and sane for both industry and the uninvolved public. Most people don't remember but the FAA got started when the maturing airline industry begged to be regulated so that the fly by night folks wouldn't taint the safety record of the reliable majority and thus scare off travellers. The only issue with the airline regulations is that they are very technology specific, and these new space planes use cutting edge composites and completely new engines that the FAA's airplane division is not equipped to handle, but the AST department is. Talk to your Senate leaders and endorse the HR 3245 bill, which clarifies AST's jurisdiction over these vehicles. ( http://www.xcor.com/HR-3245.html )

Re:UFP==FAA?

[Zachary Kessin]

Also, all ships and aircraft are registered in a specific country. If this ship is owned by a US company it will I assume be flying with a US (N---) tail number. That puts the FAA into play. If they were say a Canadian company the Canadian CAA would have to certify it.

If you look at the pictures of Space Ship 1 you will see that it has a US tail number (N328KF). So it too has an (experimental) certification from the FAA.

Re:UFP==FAA?

[Cecil]

Actually, in Canada the CAA would be the Canadian Automobile Association. :)

Transport Canada, a federal government branch, is in charge of regulating Canada's airspace and air travel. However, you weren't entirely off-track: the CAA is a common acronym for many countries' Civil Aviation Authority, including Britain, New Zealand, and South Africa.

Us Canadians, we just have to be different, eh? ;)

So let me get this straight...

[saskboy]

XCOR doesn't like X-Prize so they got the FAAAA for CST to AOK their design? So AST is stuck with XCOR or Congress with a 180?

Clear as mud.

I guarantee none of this will be covered by MEDIA

[zymano]

The only coverage I ever saw of the X-prize was on National Geographic of all places.

Re:I guarantee none of this will be covered by MED

[PhantomHarlock]

I've seen tons of converage on all of the various Discovery channels as well. We get news crews coming through here about once every two weeks at this point. There are a lot of stories about it, many of them are in the international media as well. Also remember, XCOR is not an X-Prize competitor. The time frame and vehicle specification does not currently mesh with our program.

--Mike

In other news...

[Scalli0n]

In other news, several test subjects have been volunteered by the technology industry, including a few SCO executives and a certain "Cary Sherman" from the RIAA...

Re:Obligatory...

[Dibblah]

No. Actually you didn't.

Tried many times

[Rupan]

it seems to me that this has been tried so many times before. I really hope this works, and if it does it may bring affordable spaceflight to the masses within a few decades. but I'm not holding my breath.

Re:Tried many times

[WegianWarrior]

Tried before? Uhm... you you care to back that statement up, preferable with links? Because, even thought some germans during the last big war messed with rocketproppeled planes, those wasn't meant to go anywhere near space, and the various winged programs (DynaSoar, Shuttle, Buran to name a few) that has been either close to flight or actually has flown have all been large, costly goverment programs.

AFAIK civilians has always dreamed of "cobbling together a rocketship in the backyard" and head up into space, but it's only the last few years that the technology needed has reached a pricepoint where it is possible for anyone but a goverment to afford to develop and build a manned spaceship (or even a suborbital one). Papaerprojects has floated around since before the dawn of the spaceage, but no one went into space on those. It looks like the X-prize and XCOR are the first programs that results in actuall hardware beeing built.

On the other hand, if you want a real affordable, private launch, you could try cobbling together a huge suger or sorbitol rocket, put a chair on it and see if you can't get hold of something like the MOOSE. Off course, you would need a suit too, but as the early suits where souped up versions of a standard flightsuit, a visit to the nearest military surplus store will solve that.

So there you have it... an simple, affordable launchsystem. Wonder why no one has done that... oh, safety. Right.

Early Stages

[thrull1]

After looking at the X-Prize site, it doesnt seem that these guys are even official contenders for the X-Prize. Also, by "sufficiently complete", they mean that the application for a launch contains most of the necessary info, not that their design or some such is sufficient.

Re:Early Stages

[PhantomHarlock]

Two things:

Yes, we are not an X-Prize contender. That part of the submission is incorrect. (it's the most common journalistic mistake, we forgive /.)

To clarify...when AST receives a launch license application it deems is "sufficiently complete" it just means that they are now on a 180 day clock to either deny or grant the license. If they deny the license, they have to report to congress and tell them why it was denied. Along the way, they may request from us (XCOR) any kind of new information they might need as well.

So yes, your comment is correct. The license is not granted, but the application is in the 'sufficiently complete' mode. The newsworthy significance of this is that it's the very first sufficiently complete application for a winged suborbital vehicle, of which he hope there will be many more of in the not too distant future. :) -m

That's beside the point

[Media Withdrawal]

As long as you're using rockets and not transporter beams or beanstalks, you have to fly through the air to get to orbit. That's the FAA's baliwick.

The FAA had its roots in the Air Commerce Act of 1926, a year before Lindberg's transatlantic flight. The Air Commerce Act created a series of agencies whose whole point was promoting safe air commerce. Emphasis on commerce. 45 years after the act was passed, you could fly just about anywhere in the world on a jet. That's what I call success, and this is lineage of agencies to talk to if you want to start selling tickets to orbit. Heaven forbid you should talk to NASA, which has been around for 45 years, thinks they own space itself, and distains commerce.

Launch what? X Prize team for sure?

[Gogo Dodo]

Looking over the X Prize teams list, I don't see XCOR listed. On the XCOR Xerus page, it says that their design is "in the preliminary design phase".

So they have a license to launch something they haven't built or even finished designing? I think my money is still on Burt Rutan.

From their faq page

[lingqi]

Does it make a lot of noise?
Yes. Our sound level meter goes off the scale of 138 dBA at 10 meters. However, during test flights people on the ground have noted that it is quieter than many jet aircraft they have heard.

oh... really? have these people on the ground checked their hearing after long-term exposure to whatever noise that's abusing their ears???

the BEST earmuffs do a -29dB cut, and that means even wearing that, the grount crew can expect over 109dB (since we don't know how much, it's off the scale right?) exposure...

even wearing earplugs AND a earmuff, you still are pushing ~ >79dB - and earplug + muff doesn't actually give you -60dB.

besides... the ratings are only at certain frequencies; some -29dB muffs are as ineffective as -16dB only for lower frequencies.

Re:From their faq page

[PhantomHarlock]

Yes, at 10 meters an EZ-Rocket engine test (the thing being referred to in your quote) almost requires headphones and earmuffs. And by golly if that's not the same sort of sound levels that come out of an F-4 phantom on full afterburners or a 747 taking off, except you're never that close to them. If you are you're insulated inside the plane.

When the EZ-Rocket is actually in flight, the noise from the ground isn't any different from a fighter jet. And inside the cockpit, our test pilot Dick Rutan says that the engine isn't any louder than a jet with the canopy closed and the earphones on.

The key thing to remember is that the engines that will go on the suborbital vehicle are larger and have much lower noise frequency components. The XR4K5 1800 lb-thrust engine has a low rumble well within the safety margins of just wearing headphones. It has a really beautiful sound when it runs. The 400 lb-thrust EZ-Rocket engine, which is the one that the sound levels refer to, sounds more like full spectrum white noise.

the loudest noise from a rocket engine can be heard when you are standing approximately 45 degrees from the thrust vector (45 from straight behind) and the quietest point is directly in front of it. (in the cockpit)

One of the many advantages of using liquid fuel engines is far less vibration and audable noise variation when compared to a solid fuel engine. Ever read about a NASA astronaut's experiences during the solid fuel burn on a shuttle launch? O.K. for heavy lifters but perhaps not for space tourists. :)

As a side note, I am always amazed at concertgoers for not wearing hearing protection for something that sounds almost as loud as a rocket engine.

--Mike

Re:From their faq page

[PhantomHarlock]

I believe our current eastimates for the EPA and various environmental impact reports are based on many different metering levels taken in different situations from varying distances, both from the test stand and on our flying rocket powered airplane, the EZ-Rocket.

Sound levels are indeed very important, not only for employee occupational hazard levels but for sound levels reaching out in to the town of Mojave and the rest of the airport. We like to be good neighbors. We also had to provide estimated sound levels as part of the Mojave Civilian Flight test Center's application to become the nation's first inland space port.

Fortunately, we're within restricted airspace near Edwards Air Force Base where you are allowed to go supersonic and make sonic booms, one of the few places in America where you can do this. The people who live here are used to the occasional BANG! BANG! in the morning as the boys and girls in the fighter jets paint circles into the skies overhead. The rocket taking off is nowhere near the level or type of sound generated by the sonic booms (good booms make your wall art crooked) and our own booms are minimalized on the ground by the fact that the aircraft is at a 70 degree climb angle.

We've been able to come up with a pretty accurate graph of noise falloff. Once we begin testing the next generation of engines on the next generation of flying vehicle we'll have an even better idea of what to expect for the full suborbital flight profile.

--Mike M., XCOR

Re:I guarantee none of this will be covered by MED

[JohnFluxx]

"SpaceDaily.com is reporting that XCOR, a competitor for the X-Prize..."

If it _isn't_ a competitor for the X-Prize as you say, shouldn't you be shouting this out and clarifying this article and that news site?

Re:Thanks PhantomHarlock

[PhantomHarlock]

Well you're welcome...I was just heading out the door when I hit reload one last time, and by golly there's the press release from yesterday. So I decided to stick around and blab. :) Meaningful info is indeed a good thing, brings down the s/n ratio. Education is part of our mission, which is why we started things like the Aerospace reference library and why we take our 15 lb-thrust N2O-Ethane 'teacart' engine to conventions and fire it for people.

Way to go guys

[Alioth]

What XCOR is doing is very interesting, and I wish them every success. I was there for the unveiling of their rocket technology in Mojave, CA. when they flew the rockets (actually for the second time) on a Long-Ez. You can see my writeup of it here (at the risk of a slight Slashdotting).

Re:From their faq page (updates)

[PhantomHarlock]

This morning, due to all the attention, our chief engineer noticed that 138 dB is actually a typo, it's 128 dB. And we do know where it goes off the scale, it's right at that 10 meter mark.

And for runs longer than 10 seconds, both headphones and earplugs are required if you are that close. And there are indeed many good reasons to be that close when it runs. We've had thousands of runs with not a single explosion, but we're not stupid - there is a transparent blast shield made out of several layers of ultra-thick bulletproof bank teller glass, and when we're looking at the engine while its running, it's through the glass. :)

--Mike