Transterrestrial Musings

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Whaaaaaah!

So now COTS is "crumbs"? $500 mil seems pretty good for
a group of people who have not orbited the proverbial grain
of rice, or in most cases, have not flown anything.

Shut your cake holes and deliver. Something.

I agree the shuttle needs to fly more or not at all. I disagree
that it "completely failed". They promised an F-1 car and
delivered a Model A Ford. No reason to go back to the horse
and buggy.

Posted by Greg at June 29, 2006 07:58 AM

Boy, what a screwed-up set of analogies. NASA promised a truck, but delivered an F-1 car--high performance, temperamental, costly to operate.

And you have no problem with delivering unto Lockheed or Northrop, two companies with zero track record in human spaceflight, but vast experience with massive overruns and schedule slips, tens of billions of taxpayer dollars?

Posted by Rand Simberg at June 29, 2006 08:02 AM

I stand with Robert Zubrin (heh!). Fly the orbiter ONCE - go fix Hubble - then off to the Smithsonian.

Yet we need to remember that decision (orbiter termination) is reserved for people above Mike Griffin's pay grade. Orbiter cancellation should have been announced in January 2004, in my opinion.

Griffin may be doing the next best thing, by demanding that it fly July 1st (weather permitting).

Posted by Bill White at June 29, 2006 08:42 AM

So now COTS is "crumbs"? $500 mil seems pretty good for a group of people who have not orbited the proverbial grain of rice, or in most cases, have not flown anything.

There is absolutely no doubt that the $500m COTS program is just as moronic as ESAS. All we're going to end up with at the end of it is more government subsidised viewgraphs.

Pay for results. Assign a $2B dollar yearly budget for commercial passenger service subsidy. Starting 2010, pay out $15m (reduced by $1.5m each year from 2012) per seat launched to ISS and other american operated stations, filled or not, payed out on safe return to terra firma.

No development money upfront. Big aero and alt.space only get the cash if they manage to deliver a product.

Posted by Chris Mann at June 29, 2006 08:50 AM

I stand with Robert Zubrin (heh!). Fly the orbiter ONCE - go fix Hubble - then off to the Smithsonian.

I'm in the 'send the Shuttle to the Smithsonian now and use the $2B+ required for a Shuttle Hubble repair to launch ten updated replacement Hubbles' crowd myself.

If we started constructing the mirrors now, we could have the first one ready for launch by 2011.

Posted by Chris Mann at June 29, 2006 08:54 AM

I suspect RSC Energia would salivate at your proposal, Chris.

Perhaps Boeing should purchase a license for the R-7 (Soyuz) carrier rocket and start building some in Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia) at those more favorable wage scales.

Posted by Bill White at June 29, 2006 08:56 AM

Lockheed or Northrop, two companies with zero track record in human spaceflight

Well that's not true.

Anyway, much of the money spent of STS is to keep the pads operational. To my knowledge, COTS doesn't have an alternative launch location, so if and until they do, those pads will need to be maintained. And if not maintained for COTS, then Constellation.

I'm not suggesting that costs are not outrageous. They are. And COTS might could do better with more funds and without current NASA infrastructure. However, lets get a little further down the road before we destroy existing infrastructure.

We could reduce cost earlier by decommissioning one of the pads. And in doing so, either not use it all together or begin fitting it for one of the new programs.

Posted by Leland at June 29, 2006 10:58 AM

Anyway, much of the money spent of STS is to keep the pads operational.

Only 39B. No one proposing COTS will use that pad. And most of the pad costs are borne by the Air Force, as part of CCAFS. AirLaunch will certainly not be using government pads. As their name implies, they will be doing air launches.

Posted by at June 29, 2006 11:01 AM

Getting to orbit requires a huge amount of energy, and that will never change. (Rutan didn’t even come close to providing enough energy to reach orbit with his stunt a couple of years ago). Providing that much energy requires gigantic hardware built in gigantic facilities. (Stand next to an Atlas V sometime then remember that it’s probably not big enough for manned space flight) I can only think of a hand full of companies with people and facilities big enough to manage gigantic and complicated hardware like that. That’s why the alt.spacers aren’t taken seriously or given serious money. Unfortunately Lockheed and the others are huge inefficient bureaucratic corporations that make products that cost about twice what they should, but you’re dreaming if you think you can build hardware like that cheap enough to give Joe six pack a Saturday afternoon ride.

But it doesn’t cost very much for me to take an airplane ride, I don’t understand why it should cost so much to go for a space ride? Hint: take a look at energy:mass and power:mass ratios and you’ll find the answer.

Posted by brian d at June 29, 2006 11:31 AM

Stand next to an Atlas V sometime then remember that it’s probably not big enough for manned space flight

Amazing then, that we put a man into space on an Atlas D.

Lockheed and the others are huge inefficient bureaucratic corporations that make products that cost about twice what they should

Would that it were only twice as much.

Getting to orbit requires a huge amount of energy, and that will never change.

It requires little more energy than flying across the Pacific.

Hint: take a look at energy:mass and power:mass ratios and you’ll find the answer.

I've looked at them many times, and they don't provide the answer (Hint: high costs of spaceflight have little/nothing do with energy/power ratios.)

Posted by Rand Simberg at June 29, 2006 11:36 AM

I think the biggest problem facing CATS (and by extension COTS) is this: In the short term, the maximum expected market for spaceflight is a few tens of millions of dollars per year - possibly a few hundreds of millions. The current market (where a government pays what is asked) is worth several billion dollars per year. That is the big disconnect - if you lower the price to one tenth the current prices, you only double the launch volume in dollars. That is why the large players do not want small players in the market.

What do you guys think the size of the market will be at $10,000/pound, $5,000/pound, $1,000/pound, $500/pound, and $100/pound?

My guesses:
$10,000/pound: $600M in 10 launches ($60M/launch)
$5,000/pound: $450M in 15 launches ($30M/launch)
$1,000/pound: $120M in 40 launches ($3M/launch)
$500/pound: $160M in 80 launches ($2M/launch)
$100/pound: $250M in 250 launches ($1M/launch)

Of course, this is me pulling numbers out of thin air (but it is of interest because if enough people do this it actually can make relatively good predictions). Where do you think I have gone the most wrong?

Posted by David Summers at June 29, 2006 12:33 PM

It requires little more energy than flying across the Pacific.

I’d say that’s about right to get 30,000 lb to orbit

300,000 lb of energy delivers 700,000 lb across the pacific in about 14 hours (at least that’s how long it took me to get to New Zealand)

It takes about 7M lb to get the same mass to orbit in about 8 minutes. Does a machine that produces 20,000 times more power than another machine cost more? I read a paper from a professor at MIT discussing this very topic, as to why things cost what they do, and what sorts of minimums can be expected. It was amazingly accurate across a very wide range of devices. I just did a quick search but didn’t find it.

Another complication; to get your 747 back you use the same engines, but to get your spacecraft back you have to carry a completely different “device” to get rid of the energy/power.

Posted by brian d at June 29, 2006 01:47 PM

I remember reading somewhere (and have of course forgotten the source) that the 'breakpoint' of the market would probably occur at around $600/lb.

Costs below that point would begin to be cheap enough for Universities, Corporations, private foundations, and moderately rich individuals to send experiments and people into space. It would generate new customers who would never even consider the market at current prices. This type of market elasticity, if it really exists, would greatly expand the number of launches below that cost.

-S

Posted by Stephen Kohls at June 29, 2006 01:48 PM

Does a machine that produces 20,000 times more power than another machine cost more?

Yes, but not as much more as spaceflight costs than air transportation. The biggest difference between the two is flight rate, not power density.

Posted by Rand Simberg at June 29, 2006 02:11 PM

This 'orders of magnitude in energy' arguement is getting old. It takes orders of magnitude more energy to drive to the office than ride a bike. How many do each?

It takes orders of magnitude more energy to oven roast a turkey for hours than the 60 seconds to microwave a burrito. I don't live on nuked burritos.

It takes orders of magnitude more energy to watch TV in the air conditioning than to sit in the dark and sweat.

Will somebody please find a way to lay this crap to rest?

Posted by john hare at June 29, 2006 08:38 PM

No it doesnt. How big are the R-7 and Zenit facilities? Tiny. How about the EELV's? Integration and launch crew is just over a hundred.

You only need huge monolithic infrastructure and a massive support staff when you're vertically assembling heavy segmented solid boosters.

Posted by Chris Mann at June 30, 2006 12:11 AM

Hydrocarbons cost around $10/kg of payload to LEO, getting a little fancier it should be possible to get this down close to $1/kg or so. Hence energy costs are not significant until launch costs get down to a few tens of dollars per kilogram of payload. Perhaps the energy argument could be raised again then…

An orbital rocket vehicle should be capable of near ten times the flight rate of a passenger jet crossing the Pacific, hence it only needs be one tenth the size. The drymass would be significantly less than one tenth and even the drymass cost would still be significantly less.

Per unit of thrust, rocket engines tend to be cheaper than jet engines. The SpaceX’s Merlin engine probably costs around $1-2 million, and delivers around 35-45 ton of thrust. Compare this to a 747 engine.

Posted by Pete Lynn at June 30, 2006 02:36 AM

Rand writes: "Boy, what a screwed-up set of analogies. NASA promised a truck, but delivered an F-1 car--high performance, temperamental, costly to operate."

Rand, you've admitted you're not much of a sports fan so your
misunderstanding is understandable.

Let's try this again. The shuttle only "completely failed" relative
the the promises made by it's initial backers to congress and the
public. It's a tremendous advance over what it replaced at least
in terms of pure performance. It's flight rate over the last
few years has been largely dictated by mgmt, not the system's
limitations.

In re. to the COTS folks, DO something and you'll get more than
crumbs. As much as the alt.space crowd hates NASA-Bo-Lockmart, when it comes right down to it, they seem to want
to BE NASA-Bo-Lockmart.

Prediction: COTS will fail, the $ gets cut and Rand will claim
NASA again "actively sabotaged" the alt.spacers....

Posted by Greg at June 30, 2006 08:26 AM

Rand, you've admitted you're not much of a sports fan so your misunderstanding is understandable.

Not really. I am a Formula racing fan. There is no misunderstanding. Your analogy remains nonsensical, and indicates your lack of understanding of the Shuttle and its history, and race cars.

DO something and you'll get more than
crumbs.

You mean like Elon Musk, who has invested a hundred million dollars of his own money?

...they seem to want to BE NASA-Bo-Lockmart.

Horsepoop.

They want to provide a service for a fee, as a commercial operator, not be a cost-plus contractor, paid for time and materials instead of results.

Posted by Rand Simberg at June 30, 2006 08:32 AM

The shuttle only "completely failed" relative
the the promises made by it's initial backers to congress and the public. It's a tremendous advance over what it replaced at least in terms of pure performance.

The first sentence is correct. The shuttle massively failed relative to the reason it was built. This is the relevant criterion for determining its success. Engineering is goal oriented. The shuttle was built for a purpose, to achieve a goal, not as some kind of performance art. The shuttle failed to achieve this goal, by a huge margin. Therefore the shuttle is a failure.

The shuttle's performance, in the relevant metrics (payload per man-hour of labor or payload per dollar) is inferior to the expendables. I'm sure you could find some metric where the shuttle is better, just as you could find some metric in which the Spruce Goose was better than other aircraft of its time, but such metrics wouldn't tell you anything useful.

The failure in the relevant metrics is why the shuttle's being abandoned, and NASA is not even trying to replace it with anything similar. Maybe someone else can succeed where NASA failed, but NASA apparently has no confidence that they themselves can do so.

Posted by Paul Dietz at June 30, 2006 08:52 AM

Will somebody please find a way to lay this crap to rest?

Well you sure didn’t do it. Regarding driving to work taking orders of magnitude more energy than bicycling: Not true if you drive at 30 mph and you’re a fit cycler that can ride at 30mph then ½ ro v^2 is the same, Cd for a car may be lower than for a bike though A is larger so all in all the drag is about the same. Clearly the rolling friction for the car is larger, the human engine is thermodynamically a little more efficient that a car engine so after it’s all said and done a car may need something like double the energy to get you to work, but it’s certainly not orders of magnitude. Interestingly though a bicycle with rider as an engine produces something like a 700W and a car like 150 kW, a ratio of 214 to 1, and that’s about the cost ratio too.

The rest of your examples just show that you don’t understand the principal, which is; compare the power (not energy) produced or consumed by any two machines and compare the price and you’ll find that the cost ratio is similar. Of course there are other factors that go into it and one can find examples where it doesn’t work but largely it’s true (OK everyone start posting your obvious examples and other factors). The reasons are obvious, a device that produces 1200 MW like a nuclear power plant requires high pressures, thick pipes, and lots of expensive controls and careful engineering, your CD player that consumes 100W doesn’t. The shuttle is like a gigantic flying power plant, why would anyone NOT think something like that would be expensive? Spaceflight will always be much more expensive than airplane flight, maybe, as I said, like 2000 times as much.

As I said there’s an excellent paper on this subject that takes care of the other factors that go into this analysis, and if I can find it I’ll post it.

Posted by brian d at June 30, 2006 02:21 PM

Will somebody please find a way to lay this crap to rest?

Consider the possiblity that "this crap" hasn't been laid to rest because it's not crap. All of the people who have posted on this issue have studied it extensively. Well, except you, perhaps. You just spout conventional wisdom, which is what got us where we are.

Posted by Rand Simberg at June 30, 2006 02:29 PM

"Consider the possiblity that "this crap" hasn't been laid to rest because it's not crap." - Rand Simberg

"Will somebody please find a way to lay this crap to rest?" - John Hare, note, not Brian D.

Posted by Pete Lynn at June 30, 2006 07:28 PM

Yes, my response was to Brian Dempsey, who (among other communications deficiencies) doesn't seem to be able to differentiate between his comments and those of others...

Posted by Rand Simberg at June 30, 2006 07:32 PM

"As I said there’s an excellent paper on this subject that takes care of the other factors that go into this analysis, and if I can find it I’ll post it." - Brian D

Comparing the cost a rocket engine to a gas turbine is like comparing the cost of a car engine to a similar capacity plastic drinking bottle, (think bottle rocket if you need to). You need to go and reread that paper and consider what it is really saying.

Posted by at June 30, 2006 07:44 PM

Greg: "DO something and you'll get more than
crumbs."

Rand writes, "You mean like Elon Musk, who has invested a hundred million dollars of his own money?"

A hundred million dollars of his own money for a daytime fire
works show? Maybe I should have replaced DO with ACCOMPLISH.
Even if alt.space manages to orbit that grain of rice, they still have
to do it for a lot less than Bo-LockMart. If they save 10-15%, we'
ll be in the same spot we've been in for 40 years.

Posted by Greg at July 3, 2006 01:05 PM

No, that's not what I mean.

Thanks for playing, though.

Posted by Rand Simberg at July 3, 2006 02:26 PM

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