In light of the Chinese ASAT test, this old parody post of mine seems prescient now (note the comments, particularly between me and Monte Davis).

Clark Lindsey has some thoughts on the Russian space tug:

A tug might also make practical a single stage to orbit RLV. Since a first generation SSTO will most likely provide a very small payload capacity, it would help if it only had to reach a low orbit where it would transfer cargo/crew to a tug and also pick up cargo/crew to bring back from orbit. Even with small payloads, the simplicity of SSTO RLV operations might lead to reduced LEO delivery costs when combined with a tug.

Yes, this will almost certainly be necessary, in fact, if SSTO is to become feasible with anything resembling current technology. Any SSTO vehicle has very poor off-design performance. That is, if it’s sized for a low-altitude (or a low-inclination) orbit, the performance drop off for it to go higher in either altitude or inclination is very large. For example, one could have a vehicle capable of delivering ten thousand pounds to a hundred fifty miles altitude, that would have zero or negative payload to ISS or a Bigelow hotel). This is an intrinsic problem with SSTO, by the nature of the beast. Since there’s only one stage, the entire vehicle dry weight has to be taken to the final destination, so any additional delta V represents a big payload hit. A two-stage (or more) vehicle suffers much less, because the upper stage is much smaller, and is thus less sensitive to off-design cases.

OK, I hear you saying, aha! Then just make the space station mission the nominal design case. OK, now you just increased your development costs quite a bit, because it’s now a much larger vehicle. And once you’ve done that, you’ll still never take it to the station, because you’ll quickly figure out that it now has humungous payload capability to lower altitudes, that can be transferred with the tug. Regardless of vehicle size, you’ll get a lot more payload to the station if you use the tug (some of the extra payload is used to refuel the tug).

This also allows the station to live higher, which it would like to do to increase solar insolation, and decrease drag and monatomic oxygen degradation (the current ISS altitude is an expensive compromise between the desire to have the station higher, and the need to be able to get to it with the Shuttle). That in turn will result in reduced operating costs (reducing reboost and maintenance issues, and providing more power). I in fact proposed such an architecture back in 1982, in a paper I wrote while at Rockwell. NASA wasn’t interested.

For my entire career (going on thirty years now), I’ve seen the horrible adjective “detail.” As in “detail design.” Funny, I always thought it was a noun.

Why can’t these people use proper English, and call it a “detailed design”?

Was this ongoing atrocity on the language deliberate, and is there some rationale for it? Or is it an accident, a result of the fact that when someone says “give me a detailed design,” the two “d”s run together, and the engineers dutifully wrote down what they heard–“detail design”–and it’s become so embedded in the industry that it’s as impossible to remove as roaches in a Haitian kitchen (sorry, had trouble coming up with a PC simile there…)?

Why yes, as a matter of fact, I am going through an Orion schedule (which is apparently going to slip), line by (eye-crossing) line. Why do you ask?

Is a space elevator a sign of the end times? Will it bring forth the anti-Christ?

I report, you decide.

[Via that well-known persecutor, Brian Dunbar]

The Chair Force Engineer (aka “Mr. X”) likes the TeamVision approach to the VSE. I haven’t read it myself, so I don’t know if they claim that the Shuttle is “man rated” as Mr. X does (though he also uses quotes, so perhaps he’s not really making the claim). It is not, and never has been. “Man rating” is whatever NASA decides that it means, and it’s usually just an excuse to not use a vehicle that they don’t want (for other reasons) to use.

Looks like they lose their March launch window. There was hail damage to the tiles, but it’s described as “cosmetic.” The big problem is the tank.

If hail damaged the foam insulation that much, what did it do to the TPS?

Forty-nine years after its founding, Chair Force Engineer asks if NASA should get out of the manned spaceflight business. I think that’s inevitable, at least for earth to orbit segment (probably beyond as well, once access gets cheap enough for the Planetary or Mars Societies to sponsor their own expeditions, as the National Geographic Society does on earth), but there’s too much political inertia for it to happen before it becomes clear to everyone how absurd its proposed architecture is. That won’t happen, as he notes, until the private sector is launching people into space.

Dan Schrimpsher has a comment on Scaled’s test flight schedule for SS2:

…the test flights are going to have to start soon, perhaps later this year. At 1 flight/week, it would take two years to make 100 test flights.

I see no reason that they shouldn’t have a much higher flight rate than that. I’d think that they could probably fly every day, as long as they make the hybrid motor easy to refuel. I suspect that the only constraint on their test flight rate would be data analysis, and modifications resulting from test flight results. And I also suspect that the high number of “test” flights won’t really be test flights, but rather demonstration flights, to establish reliability confidence. Those could go every day, as long as nothing goes wrong. I doubt if flight test (or at least intrinsic flight rate ability) will be the long pole in the schedule tent–I think that just delivering the initial hardware to be tested will be have much more schedule uncertainty.

[Update in the late afternoon]

Dan follows up:

I assume that in the beginning the flights will be less often as problems will show themselves up front. I see more of an exponential cure of flights starting with one every few weeks to get the kinks out. And closer to once per day when they are close to starting service.

I think we’re now in violent a agreement.

Also, based on history, SS1 was flown months apart except for the X-Prize run, so I am trying to be conservative.

Well, I’m not sure how good a guide history is here. In the one case, they were trying to win a prize, and didn’t need a high-rate vehicle to do it (twice in two weeks, and that was it). I suspect that they’re spending more money this time, in order to hit a market, and get it to market as soon as they can within safety constraints to maximize payback. I’ll be surprised if it’s weeks before the first and second flights.

But I’ve been surprised before. After all, I didn’t think that the stand down after Columbia would be nearly as long as that after Challenger (and neither of them should have been as long as they were), so what do I know?

[Another update a few minutes later]

One other point (see, Anonymous Moron in comments isn’t completely useless–but mostly)…

The other difference (which I didn’t mention, though I also didn’t assume otherwise, contra Anonymous Moron) was that there will be a fleet of vehicles for SS2, though the initial test flights will be only for one, because they’ll want to learn a lot of lessons early to incorporate into the other vehicle builds. So the initial test flight series will be with a single version of each vehicle (White Knight and SS2), and only later, when they’re doing reliability demo flights and building flight experience, will there be multiple vehicles. And the transition from one to a fleet will be part of the exponential increase that Dan described in his follow-up post.

And in the way of disclosure, I should also add that, despite the fact that I occasionally talk to the Virgin consultant responsible for overseeing the vehicle development (who is an old friend of mine), and Alex Tai himself, this is all speculation on my part.

NORAD didn’t see the Iranians launch anything.

It’s possible that they managed to launch something without our detecting it (though if so, as Allen Thompson notes over at sci.space.policy, I want a tax refund), but I think it’s more likely that they just said they launched, but didn’t, for propaganda purposes. Did they actually provide any time-stamped evidence of an actual launch?