Dave Perron has been engaged in an ongoing discussion with me (and others, but primarily me) in the comments section for this post, which has scrolled off the page, being now over a week old. But he raises some points that are worth discussing, because they contain a number of what I believe to be misperceptions about the space program, space technology, private enterprise, and XCOR in particular, and many people probably share them with Dave.

I appreciate his tenacity, because it actually helps hone arguments for more than one chapter of a book on which I’m laboring, in my copious free time.

He claims not to understand how there is any value of XCOR’s current plans to build a suborbital vehicle, in terms of building an orbital vehicle, particularly if there’s no actual hardware legacy from one to the other (if I’m misstating his view, I’m sure he’ll correct me in the comments).

Once the vehicle is done (provided it can reach 65 km, which I’m not at all convinced that it can given the design constraints)

I don’t understand why he believes that this is a technical challenge, in this day and age. Given smart designers, modern computer-aided design and manufacturing tools, and adequate funding, this is a relatively trivial accomplishment. That it hasn’t been done up to now is only because no one has bothered to fund it (for previous lack of interest in the goal).

then what you have is a carnival ride attempting to raise money to build pretty much the same thing NASA has been trying to build, only on lower cashflow.

The use of the term “carnival ride” is, to me, needlessly denigrating. But even if that’s a good analogy, a lot of people pay money to ride on carnival rides–it’s a thriving business, so I’m not sure what the point is here. If someone can build aerospace hardware, and learn how to routinely operate rocket-powered vehicles (something that NASA has never done, or even seriously attempted to do), and generate revenue from it, building a business to go on to the next step, I don’t understand what’s wrong with that as a market.

And as to the point about building “pretty much the same thing that NASA has been trying to build,” I don’t understand the reference. NASA has never attempted to build anything like this, precisely because it’s viewed by them (and people like them, such as Dave) as a “carnival ride,” having no value, and being beneath them.

Sure, the money is private sector. I want to make it clear that I couldn’t possibly contain any more approval for private-sector space exploration.

Here’s another example of a flawed paradigm. This has nothing to do with “exploration.” As long as we continue to think space=exploration, we’ll make little progress in actually developing it and putting it on a paying basis.

Let’s be clear. This is about space business, and space exploitation. That many think this a bad thing is one of the many flawed perceptions that remain long after the end of the Cold War. If we want to open up the frontier, we’re going to have to think of space as just a place to do business, and if one of those businesses is “carnival rides,” fine. At least we’re doing something, and developing useful technology, which NASA, sadly, is for the most part not.

But we’re talking gigantic sums of money here. Has XCOR shown that it can raise money in these quantities with a carnival ride? I’m curious how many $100k rides there are to sell.

Space Adventures seems to think that there are a lot. And the amount of money that XCOR is talking is a few million, at most. There are many people who have that kind of money, and in fact, some of them would be able to pay a million or three for their own rocketplane (these are the same people who buy their own Gulfstream IVs and Vs, which cost many tens of millions).

Normally when you see someone attempting to attract investors in the attempt to reach a goal, you at least see some level of initial design that’s on a path to meet that goal. I’ve seen nothing of the kind from XCOR, so I’m a little sceptical they have done much other than make and test some rocket engines and fly a rocket-powered subsonic aircraft around for a while.

The Xerus design is exactly that.

Not to denigrate those accomplishments, but they are a small fraction of what needst to be done. I have been unable to obtain so much as a back-of-the- envelope analysis that says “here’s our vehicle; it has X amount of maximum thrust and carries Y kilograms of fuel/oxidizer. Here’s our notional trajectory to 35 km.”

I’m sure they’ll be happy to show you if you’re a qualified, interested investor. They have no obligation to do so if you’re not, since they’re doing it with private funding–not taxpayers’. Knowing the individuals involved closely, there is no doubt in my mind that they have worked out those numbers to agonizing detail.

BTW I’m not affiliated with any part of Lockheed Martin that’s involved with space exploration or payload delivery. My current assignment is a targeting pod for the Air Force. But I have gained some passing familiarity with rocketry, orbital mechanics and aerodynamics, so whenever someone claims to be able to do for a buck and a quarter something that’s not been possible,

Why do you claim that it’s “not been possible”? Can you show me some kind of history of failed attempts to build suborbital passenger vehicles?

No.

The only failure has been in raising money for them.

and do it with rudimentary technology, I have to stop and examine it to see if there’s something squirrely being done.

What does “rudimentary technology” mean? They are using whatever technology level is required to get the job done. The fact that they have a small team says nothing about the level of technology that they’re using.

And why do you think that, in the year 2002, building such a vehicle is an intrinsically high-technology endeavor?

I can’t say that about XCOR because I have been unable to obtain sufficient detail about what’s being planned. But neither can I be satisfied that it’s all on the up- and-up.

“Squirrely.” “All on the up and up.” Just what are you accusing them of? And on what basis? That they don’t publicly disclose their privately-developed and proprietary detailed designs?

Do you believe that Burt (and Dick) Rutan are charlatans, too? They make similar claims.

Dave, space just isn’t as hard as you think it is. But a culture has developed in the aerospace industry over the past fifty years to make it seem hard, and even to believe themselves that it is (because it’s easier to convince others, and to sleep at night, if you believe the same things that you’re telling other people), because the environment has rewarded them for believing that.

After all, if something is hard, it makes it a lot easier to justify large budgets for it, and it provides an excuse if it doesn’t succeed. And because the incentives are in place to create jobs, rather than useful space hardware, it often doesn’t succeed. And then the failure is used as a proof–“See? We told you it was hard!” which becomes an excuse for even more funding in the future.

But this game doesn’t work with private money. Investors (as opposed to politicians who are rewarded by jobs in their districts) expect results.

XCOR has done something that many didn’t believe possible, at least not for the shoestring funding that they’ve received. They’ve developed a safe, reliable, reusable rocket engine, that can be integrated into an existing aircraft, flown repeatedly in a single day.

On the basis of that achievement, they’ve built credibility for the next thing–a suborbital airplane (with a different rocket engine in it). There will be little legacy, in terms of hardware, from EZ-Rocket, to Xerus. But their experience will translate to the new project. This will require a few million dollars.

If they succeed at that, (and succeeding includes not just building the vehicle, but repaying their investors), they’ll have even more credibility for their next goal, which will likely be a higher-performance suborbital vehicle, or an actual orbital vehicle. Will any of Xerus hardware find its way into that vehicle? Maybe, maybe not, but they’ll have the cash flow and track record they need to raise the money for it.

And they will have gotten into space the right way. Instead of making grandiose promises about high technology, and asking for billions of dollars up front, to be spread around to various congressional districts, they’ll have done it step by step, learning as they go, and providing confidence for the next.

The way we might have done it forty years ago if the X-15 program hadn’t been derailed by Apollo…