Category Archives: Space

Space

What’s Going On Around The World In Space

The Friday post-dinner panel consists of Clark Lindsey, Henry Spencer and Dave Salt, talking about what’s going on in NewSpace outside of the US.

Clark starts by defining it as innovative small ventures with an emphasis on lowering costs of space access. Most of them are private.

Europe/UK’s most prominent one is Virgin Galactic. Anchor tenant for Spaceport America and trying to operate out of other spaceports.

Dave Salt notes that they may be teaming with Surrey satellite to use WK2 as a first stage to get to orbit. They have propulsion systems but could use a launch platform. Notes that Surrey is owned by EADS.

Now talking about Star Chaser, who haven’t launched much lately but had some launches a few years ago and are doing engine testing. Dave notes that ESA has been looking at Star Chaser, and is interested in space tourism, but is very cautious about it, and there’s nothing significant going on at the moment.

Next company discussed is Reaction Engines. Henry Spencer says that for those of a certain age, Skylon looks like Fireball XL-5.

Talking about the STERN project, which is collaboration between a university and Reaction Engines on an altitude-compensating nozzle.

Notes that Surrey Satellite is an example of how a small company can outdo a big company. Henry says that ESA and others behind Galileo came to the realization that their frequency reservations were about to expire because they hadn’t gotten anything into the sky. They put out an RFP for a placeholder/satellite, and expected only one response from the Galileo Industries consortium, but they got a second bid from Surrey that was a whole lot cheaper. They compromised by giving both bidders money. Surrey got its modest request to build JOVI A, and the other company got three times as much to build JOVI B, and GI said that it was a waste of time because they would launch first anyway. Surrey came in on time and within budget, while GI overran and ran behind. Surrey got a second contract as a backup in case GI’s launch failed. GI collapsed from embarrassment, to the amusement of the observing NewSpacers. Unfortunately, Surrey has since been absorbed into EADS.

Discussing Project Enterprise, a continental NewSpace company that is going to be talking tomorrow.

Dave Salt suggesting that we shouldn’t include the EADS space tourism venture because it’s so much larger (even though there’s no rational business case for it). He’s talked to one of the principals who is still behind it, but Dave’s not sure whether it’s alive or really dead, or just resting.

[Update after discussion]

I got distracted and waylaid just after they finished up the UK, so I missed the rest of the globe. But I expect that Henry Cate will pick up the slack. He’s been putting me to shame this weekend.

Space

Lies, Damned Lies, And Launch Costs

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I gave my talk about 10 AM. The briefing can be downloaded here. Clark Lindsey and Henry Cate blogged it.

I should note (and I appreciate that he was in a hurry) that when Clark writes:

EELV- drop in number of commercial flights expected raised marginal costs because of low flight rate.
— Wiped out savings from hardware improvements.
– Expendables have high marginal costs
– Reusables have low marginal cost IF they have high flight rates.

The drop in the commercial flight rate didn’t increase EELV marginal costs, it increased average costs (which are what the price has to be based on, other than loss leaders for marketing). If you price below your average cost, you’ll lose money. Increasing rate doesn’t help, because you can’t make it up in volume.

Similarly, reusables have low marginal cost regardless of flight rate. Increasing flight rate reduces average cost per flight, allowing it to approach the marginal cost as the rate increases.

Popular Culture, Space

New Space Libertarian In The Blogosphere

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I first met Terry Savage almost thirty years ago when I first drove out to California, looking for jobs in the aerospace industry as I was on the verge of graduating from Michigan. He was one of the founders of OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Space Industrialization and Settlement), the Los Angeles chapter of the L-5 Society (now National Space Society), and offered me a place to crash while in Redondo Beach. I’ve kept up with him, on and off, ever since.

He’s finally decided to dip his toe into the blogosphere, and started a new blog associated with his first (but hopefully not last) SF novel. Go check it out.

Business, Space

The Road To Suborbit

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Henry Spencer is describing the technical issues of the realm between low suborbit and orbit. His bottom line (which which I agree): there’s not a lot of market to justify investment for mid-range performance, including ballistic trajectories, because they need almost as much performance as orbit.

Thinks that there may be a role for suborbitals as a first stage for nanosats, and it may be possible to make some money on it, but they’re not going to be willing to pay a lot for a launch, particularly considering that piggybacking on orbital launches isn’t that expensive. Not a lot of utility to cubesats to date, most of them “solar arrays with radios.”

[Update a while later]

Sorry, there was a whole lot of other discussion, but it wasn’t completely jointed, and I was distracted. I saw Clark Lindsey taking notes, though, so I’ll bet he’ll have something posted later this evening.

Sure enough, here it is. He also has some notes from the later afternoon sessions.

Administrative, Space

Off To Phoenix

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I’m driving over from LA this morning, and hope to arrive in time for conference start. I’ll blog from there as possible.

Oh, and the title of my talk will be “Lies, Damned Lies, and Launch Costs.”

OK, I’m at the conference, listening to Henry Spencer describe the technical route from suborbit to orbit.

[Bumped]

Administrative, Space

In CA

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I got into LA about 5 PM, and American managed to not lose my luggage this time. Henry Vanderbilt called me while I was grabbing some stuff at Trader Joe’s for dinner, and apparently I’m now scheduled to be a speaker tomorrow, if I can drive over to Phoenix in the morning sans incident. And think of something non-useless to say.

Actually, if Henry is reading this and wants to update the program, I’m going to talk about one of the most misunderstood and ignored (at least by the main aerospace establishment) topics that have kept us stuck on the planet — marginal costs.

Media Criticism, Space

More Popular Than Science

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Can anyone figure out how this story about the Falcon 9 justifies its headline?

What is the “crucial step”? When did it occur? All the story says is that the vehicle has been sitting on the pad since January which, at the end of March, hardly seems like hard, breaking news.

I’m also amused that PopSci accepts the characterization of the vehicle as “reusable.” While I hope that they can ultimately achieve that goal, that’s all it is, as I understand it. It’s not a current design feature.

Political Commentary, Space

Are You As Shocked As I Am?

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If you are, you’re not very shocked. Ares 1/Orion is looking at an eighteen-month schedule slip. And no, it’s not because it was starved for money:

The problem isn’t just funding – which has become problematic for CxP over the last few years – but also what is described as “serious disconnects” between related departments, such as Orion, Ground Ops and Ares.

While continued changes to the designs of Ares and Orion are part of the natural development cycle, issues such as Thrust Oscillation and vehicle performance have come at a price for both schedule and costings, despite fine work from the engineering teams tasked with mitigating the issues.

a314CxP attempted to protect the schedule and budgetary pressures by offsetting these additional strains by deleting test items – notably on the Upper Stage. However, this only proved to cause further disconnects throughout the program.

Gosh, who could have foreseen that?

I haven’t read through the whole thing in detail, and I can see at a glance that there’s a lot to chew on, but the main point that seems to be lost is that, even if it was on budget, and on schedule, it is an intrinsic programmatic disaster from the standpoint of affordability and sustainability. Each mission would still cost billions of dollars, not even attempting to amortize the development costs, and there would be no more than a couple a year, into the indefinite future. This is not something that any sane person should be willing to spend fifty billion dollars on.

Doing Apollo made sense in the context of the Cold War, if not in opening up the space frontier. Repeating it half a century later makes absolutely no sense at all.