George Will is still optimistic about Bill Simon’s chances in California.

And Matt Welch will love (or hate?) the tagline:

…Simon resembles the Anaheim Angels: He can?t be where he is ? but he is.

George Will is still optimistic about Bill Simon’s chances in California.

And Matt Welch will love (or hate?) the tagline:

…Simon resembles the Anaheim Angels: He can?t be where he is ? but he is.

Today’s Fox News column is up. It’s basically the post about expendables a couple posts down. I’ve already gotten an email from a Dave in Bellevue, NE, chock full of conventional (and mistaken) wisdom. An amazing number of people actually believe the flawed arguments that Dave presents, even in the industry. That’s why I try to spread the gospel as much as I can.

Hello. I read your article and on the surface it appears to make sense.

It appears to for the simple reason that it actually does make sense.

However, a Russian Soyuz (or Proton or Cosmos) SLV is not the same as a Boeing 757. So the argument of cost related to re-useability is not
relevant. The fact is that ‘disposable’ boosters are the most cost efficient method in existance for routinely putting payloads into space.

Yes, this is true, and has nothing to do with my argument. I’m not talking about existing methods–I’m talking about better ones.

The fact that one blows up every now and then is just a reflection of how out of the ordinary space flight is (accelerating several hundred metric
tons to speeds of 19,000 mph isn’t the same as taking a commuter flight from Philly to DC). After all, some of these systems have reliability rates in the high 90’s (such as the Delta).

Note, he says that as though high 90s is a reliability to be proud of. If aircraft had that poor a reliability, there would be many crashes every day. If cars had that kind of trip reliability, no one would use them except for short distances and unimportant errands–their chances of getting to their destination would simply be too small.

The reliability problem isn’t because of physics–it’s for the reason I stated. Every flight is a first flight, and infant mortality can kill on a mission like that, in which there are no opportunities for a gentle “shake down” cruise.

Also, comparing space vehicles to beer cans!?!?!? Try something with at least more than one moving part next time.

I didn’t compare space vehicles to beer cans. I was simply making the point that it is in both theory and practice possible to build disposable devices that were cheap and reliable. If I were truly making the comparison of which you accuse me, it would weaken my argument, since I’m arguing against expendables.

Simply having a reusable booster will not ensure safety. After all, airplanes crash all the time, and even the ridiculously expensive shuttle has exploded on launch. And after you put all your cash into a reuseable vehicle, you will not build hundreds or even dozens of them, so the reliability won’t necesarily be any better than a disposable system.

This is an amazing paragraph. Yes, there is an occasional airplane crash (though I think that “all the time” is an overstatement). That’s because we have thousands of aircraft flights every day. That airplane crashes are rare enough events to be newsworthy, considering how much they fly, is a testament to their reliability (many nines).

And, WHEN one does explode, the replacement cost will be staggering.

This is making presumptions about replacement costs that are not backed up by any data. Shuttle is useless as a benchmark, because it was built in such small quantities, and it was done on a cost-plus constract, with ancient technology. There’s no reason that space transports should cost much more than air transports (on the order of a hundred million or so) in quantity. And they will rarely “explode.” Most expendable rocket failures are not caused by an explosion, except when range safety blows them up. There will be no range safety device on a piloted space transport, any more than there is on a piloted aircraft. Most failures will be simple mission aborts.

Single Stage to Orbit reusable systems may eventually be developed at staggering cost, but in the meantime, reusable systems are a pretty good deal.

I said nothing about SSTO. No one knows how much a space transport will cost, but if it’s “staggering” it won’t happen. Most studies I’ve seen show that it’s less than staggering.

I suspect that he means that “expendable systems are a pretty good deal.” Expendable systems are a lousy deal, and we will not be able to afford space for anything except government programs and commercial communications and remote sensing satellites, which can afford the high costs, until we develop real space transports for large markets.

There’s a good article today over at CNN about Armadillo Aerospace and other X-Prize contestants. And after six years, the prize finally seems to be fully funded.

[Update at 10:26 AM PDT]

I notice that it also talks about a Romanian team going after the X-Prize. Who woulda thunk it a decade or so ago?

It reminds me, though, of the Romanian pavilion at the World’s Fair in Vancouver, that I attended in 1986. In it, they claimed that the airplane was invented in Romania. In 1906.

Most countries that claim to have beaten the Wrights claim to have, you know, done it first. This display didn’t even acknowledge their existence.

A Russian Soyuz rocket launching a scientific satellite exploded half a minute after launch on Tuesday.

It carried no crew, but it was of a similar type (though out of a different launch site) to the vehicle that delivers Russian cosmonauts (including paying space tourists, such as Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth) to the International Space Station. Had the finances worked out, teen-heartthrob Lance Bass would have been aboard one this month.

The jury is still out as to whether or his loss would have been a net tragedy. For listenable music, perhaps no, but for his friends and family, and the future of spaceflight, almost certainly…

Of course, the vehicle that was planned to carry crew was built to more exacting specifications, so it’s possible, even likely that this particular failure wouldn’t have occurred.

And had crew been aboard, there’s still a reasonable chance that they would have survived, because the manned Soyuz launches have an escape tower in the capsule, which allows the crew module to be rapidly carried away from a disintegrating launch vehicle. This was demonstrated about nineteen years ago, when the Soyuz T-10A mission saved its cosmonauts in this fashion.

But even if the vehicle is “safe” in the sense that the crew can survive such catastrophes, its reliability would be considered unacceptable for any other mode of transportation. And the cost would still be horrendous, because the mission would be delayed, and another vehicle would have to be prepared and flown to complete it.

While the version that failed wasn’t “man rated,” and this rocket is one of the most highly-used and reliable in the world, the failure points up the continuing folly of relying on converted munitions for delivering people to space, which some NASA plans would seem to perpetuate. Unfortunately, many people still propose, as the future of US manned space transportation, putting a reusable module on top of an expendable launch system.

The failure of expendable launchers isn’t the fault of engineers. Or at least, it’s not a result of bad engineering per se (though it may be a result of bad engineering management judgment). It’s an intrinsic problem with expendable launch vehicles flown at low flight rates.

The argument over reusable versus expendable launch systems generally is an argument of economics. At least for high flight rates, reusable systems, in theory, should be much less costly because the main costs are the consumables (primarily propellants) whereas in the case of the expendable launcher, the entire vehicle has to be replaced each time. But reliability is an issue beyond cost (though in fact, it’s a part of cost, because failures are costly in themselves).

Can expendable systems be made reliable? Yes.

Soft-drink and beer containers are expendable, they are produced and used in the millions, they are light weight, and they rarely fail.

But expendable rockets are not produced in those numbers, and they consequently don’t have a high enough production and flight rate to develop the kind of statistical quality control that, say, bean canneries have. There may be a market for which throwing rockets away can provide both low costs and high reliability, but we haven’t seen it to date.

And if such a market exists, I suspect that it will be better satisfied by a reusable system. Reusable space transports (that is to say, truly reusable rockets, which have never been seen to date–Shuttle doesn’t really count, because much of it is expended, and the rest is extensively rebuilt between flights) have a much higher potential for not just low per-flight costs, but very high reliability.

The reason for this is that a truly reusable vehicle has a flight history. Every flight of an expendable rocket is the first flight. No matter how many have been built, each one is new, and may have manufacturing problems that cannot be wrung out, because each flight of the vehicle is not only its first, but also its last. It suffers from what engineers call the “infant mortality” problem.

Imagine that every time you went to the store, you did it in a different car. Even though the quality at the factory might be high, you’d still have more confidence in a car that you’d driven previously without incident, than one that had never been driven anywhere. Yet that’s what expendable vehicle manufacturers are asking us to buy–a virgin system that has never had its integrated systems tested as one, let along flown.

But getting back to the cost issue, there is no other mode of transportation in which we expect to throw the vehicle away with every trip. If we did, we certainly wouldn’t expect to pay a low cost for the ride–we all know how much transportation hardware can cost. As an example, consider the Boeing 757. The current price for such an aircraft is about eighty million dollars, ignoring various options. It has a capacity of about 200 passengers.

Now imagine that we flew cross country with it, which in fact many do. If, at the end of the flight, the airplane was taken out to the end of the field and blown up, the lowest possible ticket price that would allow an airline to break even (forget about profit, or even the other costs of running an airline of the marketing, kerosene, crew and various overhead functions) would be $80M/200 or $400,00 per one-way ticket. Even ignoring the reliability implications that arise from the fact that every flight is a first flight, does anyone think that there would be anything resembling the present airline industry at prices like that?

Yet in space transportation, we accept this as a normal state of affairs. As long as we continue to do so, space will remain a sterile place, empty of not just human life, but as far as we know, all life. It will continue to be reserved only for the very wealthy or very well connected, and for the most part, irrelevant to the lives of everyday people.

That’s the title of the satire that I would write on Saddam’s “election” if I weren’t so busy with paying work and writing tomorrow’s Fox column. (By the way, why does Reuters use scare quotes on “terrorist” but not on Saddam’s “election”?)

I offer it up to the blogosphere. Do it justice.

So to speak.

That’s the title of the satire that I would write on Saddam’s “election” if I weren’t so busy with paying work and writing tomorrow’s Fox column. (By the way, why does Reuters use scare quotes on “terrorist” but not on Saddam’s “election”?)

I offer it up to the blogosphere. Do it justice.

So to speak.

That’s the title of the satire that I would write on Saddam’s “election” if I weren’t so busy with paying work and writing tomorrow’s Fox column. (By the way, why does Reuters use scare quotes on “terrorist” but not on Saddam’s “election”?)

I offer it up to the blogosphere. Do it justice.

So to speak.

A food inspector in Salt Lake City told a restaurant that made four-egg quiches that they were unhealthy, because an FDA study indicated that one of every four eggs contains salmonella. She proposed that they only use three eggs, thus saving customers from the deadly fourth one.

The manager on duty wondered aloud if simply throwing out three eggs from each dozen and using the remaining nine in four-egg-quiches would serve the same purpose.

The inspector wasn’t sure, but she said she would research it.

Now don’t you folks up in Salt Lake City feel safer?

This reminds me of the story about the guy who, after hearing that most auto accidents occur within twenty-five miles of home, moved away.

Carter and Clinton don’t like Bush’s Iraq plan.