Transterrestrial Musings

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Spot on, Rand. This is one I'm going to tell my non-space political science student friends to read.

Posted by James at September 8, 2004 08:34 AM

The article printed out just fine for me. That way its easier to use yellow highlighter - - no need to wipe off the screen. ;-)

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Nice article.

One suggested anecdote is the MER rover experience. I read somewhere the reason JPL and Cornell built two rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) was that the added cost to build two at the same time was quite insignificant compared with the cost to build just one.

The additional materials were trivial in cost and the additional labor to build two side by side was only a tiny bit for than the cost to build one.

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Therefore, 5 RLVs or 10 RLVs will be staggeringly expensive per vessel. 500 RLVs or 5000 RLVs and the costs will come way down.

What we need is new DEMAND.

Perhaps by cutting waste, the private sector can build CEV (for example) for 50% of the cost that NASA can going through Boeing/Lockmart. But 50% of too expensive is still too expensive.

If the DEMAND can be created for hundreds or thousands of RLVs then the private sector will build affordable off the shelf spacecraft.

Posted by Bill White at September 8, 2004 10:47 AM

Like Rand said in the article, gov't can play a role in creating demand (i.e. "air mail"). They're going to need a lot of tonnage up in LEO and GEO for the new space initiative - this is an obvious opportunity.

Posted by James at September 8, 2004 11:41 AM

Yes very good. It was high time that the major talking points of Transterrestrial Musings be combined into a proper manifest.

I'm all for big change in the industry and I think we really need to just call NASA out and call the whole thing inherently un-American.

Posted by Josh "Hefty" Reiter at September 8, 2004 12:08 PM

Since "exploration" has not been concisely defined, as far as I can tell, I am less sanguine that the Bush/O'Keefe vision will require "lots of tonnage" - - - If our objective is to send 2,3 or 4 men to the Moon by 2020 and maybe another half dozen times by the latter part of the 2020s how much lift will we really need to do that?

A permanent lunar base?

Sure, that will need a number of flights for logistical support but I do not believe any funding for a permanent base has been included in any of the NASA budget projections, even for the most distant out years.

While the Vision for Space Exploration is far better than what we had before, the VSE still does next to nothing to help us get to the vision found in Rand's essay.

IMHO, as always. ;-)

Posted by Bill White at September 8, 2004 12:13 PM

If our objective is to send 2,3 or 4 men to the Moon by 2020 and maybe another half dozen times by the latter part of the 2020s

Yes, and if our objective is to do nothing, then we won't accomplish anything either. Since neither is our objective, I've no idea what the point of your comment is.

Sometimes I think that you object to the VSE simply because Bush proposed it. You certainly don't seem to pay much attention to what was actually proposed.

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 8, 2004 01:00 PM

Sometimes I think that you object to the VSE simply because Bush proposed it. You certainly don't seem to pay much attention to what was actually proposed.

Got links to refute my point?

Posted by Bill White at September 8, 2004 01:33 PM

Space Ref reports:

NASA's projected budget incorporates the assumption that a first crewed lunar landing will occur in 2020 but does not include explicit plans or schedules for establishing a lunar base or for sending astronauts to Mars. However, the agency proposes to allocate $2.2 billion during the 2018-2020 period to prepare for human missions beyond the first human lunar return landing.

Landing IN 2020 - - no longer BY 2020.

$2.2 billion for follow on missions. Doesn't sound like that agenda will needs tons and tons of lift to LEO.

And after Frances, even if the VSE is fully funded, Kennedy repairs will consuem extra money and delay ISS completion dragging out the whole thing.

Cancel ISS & STS today? Good idea IMHO. Then we can get on with a real space program.

Posted by Bill White at September 8, 2004 02:02 PM

Bill, I don't need "links" to refute your point. The president's own plan refutes your point. Go back and read the January speech.

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 8, 2004 02:21 PM

Come January 2009 (if not sooner) what George Bush "said" becomes irrelevant.

Posted by Bill White at September 8, 2004 02:35 PM

Which is beside the point, since that still doesn't make your weird fantasy about going to the moon, and then having little follow-up activity there, a reality. We will either execute the president's vision, or we won't. There's no basis for declaring, fifteen years prior, that we will do it half way.

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 8, 2004 02:53 PM

Is there anywhere that examines components and breaks their pricetag apart by function?

For example: How much of a shuttle solid rocket booster is fuel, structural, sheathing, nozzle/engine or guidance related? (Ok, not much 'guidance' on one of those ;)

How useful would the solid boosters be if they weren't immersed in salt water? Most of the high temperature insulation I can think of would be... pricey to clean after immersion in salt water. But pretty much undamaged by the heat alone.

Posted by Al at September 8, 2004 06:08 PM

Thiokol RSRM

Mass fraction is .85 which means 85% of the lift off mass is fuel and 15% is other stuff. The RSRM was designed and built with 1970s aluminum technology. 21st century technology and composites could probably increase that fraction (more fuel, less weight) and every pound shaved from the mass fraction throws that much (more or less) to LEO.

Posted by Bill White at September 8, 2004 08:22 PM

A lot of info there, thank you Bill.
I ended up going through Thiokol's pages too.

The pricing I found was $ 24 M per booster... but it didn't go into the detail I was looking for. Any thoughts on the initial construction cost vs. refurbishment cost? And the fuel isn't too expensive independently perhaps, but how much to pour & cast it into the shell?

This page:
http://www.atk.com/ProductSheets/ATKThiokol/2012934.htm
with price tags would be nice.

The question I was trying to answer for myself was how much of this pricetag is spent analyzing for defects. The solid fuel rockets are conceptually simpler, the framework should not cost that much, internal insulation... The nozzle section is the trickiest part. So what sort of price would we end up for one of these if Detroit was churning them out with the automated defect scanning approaches?

Posted by Al at September 8, 2004 09:39 PM

Great article, Rand! Well worth the read. I just hope that someone can jerk NASA's strings enough for them to get into funding those kind of prizes and incentives. That would be the best course for them, deep Solar System probes, space observatories & science missions and as an innovation encourager. The big cntractors, though and certain members of Congress will fight these kind of ideas with more energy than they've ever shown in the war on terror I'm afraid...

Posted by Greg at September 8, 2004 11:41 PM

It looks OK in Mozilla to me - could it be a version issue?

Anyhoo, I have to digest the content better before I can comment. Incisive and well-argued as ever.

Posted by Dominic at September 9, 2004 01:07 AM

Rand writes:
>Bill, I don't need "links" to refute your
>point. The president's own plan refutes your
>point. Go back and read the January speech.

The 'speech' was less a 'plan' than suggestion, and though NASA is trying to keep it 'on-track' it would seem that Congress is less than willing to NOT modify the plan. In the end, NASA will be given it's 'marching-orders' based on what Congress wants rather than any suggestions by the White House.

On another note, anyone catch this:
>http://www.irconnect.com/noc/press/pages/news_releases.mhtml?d=63264
(via HobbySpace)

Seems NASA is still slowly plodding along on RLV development. Actually not a bad plan since it seems to keep the program off of Congress' radar, which means it might actually produce a vehicle :o)

Randy

Posted by at September 9, 2004 06:50 AM

One of the reasons the volume is so low is that the government isn't pricing its "spaceflight product" in an intelligent way. See my post entitled "Governments Don't Price Well" where I discuss this in the context of the Ansari X Prize.

Posted by Dave Tufte at September 10, 2004 10:05 AM

Just put up another complementary post about this at voluntaryXchange entitled "New Growth Theory for Space Travel"

Posted by Dave Tufte at September 10, 2004 10:36 AM

I think you missed a success in the RLV chain: the DC-X.

When rolled out of McDonnell-Douglas it had cost only $60M to build, used NO emergent (what you called "cutting edge") technology and concentrated on applying "off the shelf" hardware. It worked pretty well until it was handed to NASA, who promptly managed to fumble it.

The DC-X started out life "on the cheap" because the BMDO ("Ballistic Missile Defense Organization") wanted to find cheap ways to loft hardware into orbit that the Shuttle could not as easily fly and for a much higher cycle rate.

So, in your essay, you cover enough of the CF's we've seen Dan Goldin's NASA exercise. We've also seen other problems, too.

The Shuttle itself was an interesting project: it contained a LOT of emergent technology and, as they ran into blind alleys, had to spent a LOT of dollars to tunnel out rather than saying "Oops, we blew it!" to Congress.

I've also seen some debate... at one point it looked like Ivan would make an almost direct hit on Capa Canaveral and a question was asked: If we lose all three shuttles in a hurricane... would this be a bad thing, or a good thing?

If we wrote off the Shuttle I'd suspect it'd be a *good* thing. Like those billions of dollars spent in COBOL code, it's money spent, not invested, so, unless we're forced to turn our backs, we'll still spend huge gobs of money.

I'd suspect we'd finally stand a chance to do something right, for a change: encourage competition.

A set of escalating incentives, perhaps backed by the US government (with some rewards flowing back to the US rather than other gov'ts, for instance) would allow us to say "Racing Improves the Breed".

Failures have to happen so that successes can be recognized. Right now, NASA has been suffering from performance anxiety: they can't afford to let the actual level of risk to the participants be recognized to the people at large.

It's been said that people don't know how to manage risk and we've become a risk averse society... but what of motorcyclists? Skiers? Sky-divers? SCUBA divers?

Shuttle was one basket. We should have had two... or even three. We have to have a system that can face failures in a resilient way. (Gawd, this sounds more like Bruce Schneier's "Beyond Fear".)

So let's build a system of multiple pieces. Let's NOT have any monopoly. Let's see what flies!

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