Henry Spencer has some useful thoughts (as always) on Armadillo’s accomplishment, and failure.
Category Archives: Space
Don’t Know Much About Launch Costs
The Space Review is up (a little late–it’s usually available first thing Monday morning, but Jeff is probably recovering from his trip to New Mexico), and it has a couple interesting articles. The first one describes the benefits of amateur efforts toward space settlement. The second one is a relook at the economics of O”Neill’s Island One space habitat. It’s nonsensical, because the author doesn’t understand much about the economics of space launch. Let’s start with this:
O’Neill’s expectations about launch costs (like those of other 1970s-era prophets of space development) proved to be highly optimistic, even given the disagreement about how these are to be calculated. A $10,000 a pound ($22,000 per kilogram) Earth-to-LEO price, almost twenty-five times the estimate O’Neill worked with, is considered the reasonable optimum now.
Considered so by whom? Not by ULA. Not by the Russians. Not by SpaceX. The only launch vehicle that has launch costs that high is the Shuttle, and that’s because it flies so seldom that its per-flight cost is on the order of a billion dollars. In a due-east launch, it can get close to sixty thousand pounds to LEO, and if it cost six hundred million per flight (as it did before Columbia, when the flight rate was higher), that would be about ten thousand bucks a pound. But to call this “optimum” is lunacy. Other existing launchers are going for a couple thousand a pound (the Russians are less based on price, but its not clear what their costs are, and if they’re making money). SpaceX is projecting its price for Falcon 9 to be about forty million, to deliver almost thirty thousand pounds to LEO, so that’s a little over a thousand per pound. And that’s without reusing any hardware.
But even these are hardly “optimum.” The true price drops will come from high flight rates of fully-reusable space transports, and there’s no physical reason that these couldn’t deliver payload for on the order of a hundred dollars per pound or less.
Of course we aren’t going to build HLVs for space colonies, as Gerry O’Neill proposed. If it happens, it will happen when the price does come down, as a result of other markets. But if the point is that Island One is unaffordable at current launch costs, it’s a trivial one–most intelligent observers realize that. But it’s ridiculous to think that lower launch costs can’t be achieved, or even that his stated number has any basis in reality.
More LLC Links
Clark Lindsey is back from New Mexico, and has a roundup of links about the Lunar Landing Challenge.
Jeff Foust also has a couple video interviews, with Ken Davidian and John Carmack.
Picky, Picky, Picky
Well, here’s the latest in the Perils of Ares I–it might sideswipe the gantry as it launches:
The issue is known as “liftoff drift.” Ignition of the rocket’s solid-fuel motor makes it “jump” sideways on the pad, and a southeast breeze stronger than 12.7 mph would be enough to push the 309-foot-tall ship into its launch tower.
Worst case, the impact would destroy the rocket. But even if that doesn’t happen, flames from the rocket would scorch the tower, leading to huge repair costs.
“We were told by a person directly involved [in looking at the problem] that as they incorporate more variables into the liftoff-drift-curve model, the worse the curve becomes,” said one NASA contractor, who asked not to be named because he wasn’t authorized to discuss Ares.
“I get the impression that things are quickly going from bad to worse to unrecoverable.”
But all is not lost:
NASA says it can solve — or limit — the problem by repositioning and redesigning the launchpad.
Sure. No problem. Just reposition and redesign the launch pad. Simple, safe, soon.
NASA officials are now looking at ways to speed up the development of Ares and are reluctant to discuss specific problems. But they insist none is insurmountable.
Of course they do.
“There are always issues that crop up when you are developing a new rocket and many opinions about how to deal with them,” said Jeff Hanley, manager of the Constellation program, which includes Ares, the first new U.S. rocket in 35 years.
“We have a lot of data and understanding of what it’s going to take to build this.”
Yes, they have so much data and understanding that they don’t find out about this until after their fake Preliminary Design Review. And (just a guess), I’m betting that if I look at the original budget and development schedule, “repositioning and redesigning the launch pad” isn’t even in or on it.
Look, obviously, if you pick a lousy design, you can eventually make it fly, given enough time and money. But in the process, it may end up bearing little resemblance to the original concept, and if it’s neither simple (which it won’t be with all of the kludges that they’ll have to put on it to make up for its deficiencies), safe (no one really knows what the probability of loss of crew is, since they still haven’t finally even nailed down the launch abort system design) or soon, then the nation has been sold a pig in a poke. And there’s no budget line item for the lipstick either, though NASA has been attempting to tart it up as best they can.
As Einstein once said, a clever man solves a problem–a wise man avoids it. Since Mike Griffin came in, NASA has been too clever by half. Given the budget environment we’ll have next year, it’s hard to see how this unsustainable schedule and budgetary atrocity survives in anything resembling its current form.
Lunar Landing Challenge Day Two
Armadillo’s attempt at Level Two (a million dollar purse) starts in a few minutes. Webcast is here.
[Update]
Well, there was a problem. There was a hard start, and the vehicle fell over on its side. Not clear how recoverable it is.
[Afternoon update]
That’s it for this year. They aren’t going to make another attempt today. Clark Lindsey has the story.
That leaves most of the money still on the table, but at least Armadillo didn’t go home empty handed this time.
[Update an hour or so later]
Jeff Foust has a picture of the burned-through nozzle that resulted from the lean fuel mixture.
Lunar Landing Challenge
First attempts start in an hour and a half. Clark Lindsey is heading out to the site at the Las Cruces Airport. Wish I were there.
Good luck to all the contestants.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Here’s the webcast.
[Update about 10:30 AM EDT]
If you’re watching the webcast (or even if not), it’s about four to five minutes from Armadillo’s first attempt.
[Update a few minutes later]
They had a successful first flight, except it ran short. They didn’t make it to ninety seconds. The judges just gave permission for two more legs within this window, but they have only forty-five minutes left, which includes getting back to the departure point with the vehicle.
[Update a few minutes later]
They’re about to make another attempt at the first successful leg. They’re cleared for flight.
[Update a few minutes later]
They just had a first successful 90-second flight. They have fifteen minutes left before their FAA window closes (though they have longer to get back to the staging area). It’s going to be a tight turnaround.
[Update at 11:30 AM EDT]
Too tight a window. They’re detanking. Level One remains unwon. There are three or four windows left. TrueZero will make the next attempt later today.
[A little before 2 PM EDT]
TrueZero is about to make their attempt. This will be interesting–it’s the first time they’ve ever flown the vehicle untethered…
[Update a few minutes later]
Well, it was interesting. Brief, but interesting. It ascended to altitude, but when it started its translation, it keeled over and dove to the ground, making a little smoking hole in the desert. There’s a small fire, no one was hurt, and the vehicle is lying on its side and vented. Fire department on the way. Do they have other vehicles, or was that their shot?
This is why you do full flight tests. They had no experience with untethered flight. They just got some.
[Update at 4 PM EDT]
Armadillo is going to make their second attempt of the day in half an hour. If they don’t make it, they’ll have at least two more shots tomorrow. Barring a disaster, they should be able to go home with some prize money this year, but there will still be some on the table for next year.
[Update at quarter to five Eastern]
Well, this will be controversial. The judges have allowed them to just do the return flight, picking up where they left off this morning, because they weren’t given the time earlier that the prize allowed, due to the unrelated FAA restriction. While one can understand the sentiment, technically they are not doing what the prize requires in terms of turnaround, and if they win today under the rule waiver, I fear that many will think it tainted.
[Update while listening to all the speechifying]
Clark has the story on what happened with TrueZer0. As noted they had one vehicle, and it was totaled.
[Update after the flight]
Well, they just had a successful flight. If they get back to the staging area in half an hour, they’ll have one first place for Level One, $350K. Congratulations to the Amadillo team.
[Evening update
Clark Lindsey reports that tomorrow could be exciting for Armadillo and the crowd:
This will be the first time they have done the tip and translation with a full 3 minute fuel load on Pixel. Always a chance it will come crashing down like TrueZer0 but with 1500 lbs of propellants
Again, like last year, I can’t understand why they haven’t done a full dress rehearsal.
A Depressing Comment
Over at Samizdata, Jonathan Pearce wonders if freedom seekers will be heading the other way after the election:
Occasionally, whenever one of us Samizdata scribes writes about events in the UK, such as loss of civil liberties, or the latest financial disasters perpetrated by the government, or crime, or whatnot, there is sometimes a comment from an expatriate writer, or US citizen in particular, suggesting that we moaners should pack our bags, cancel the mail and come on over to America. Like Brian Micklethwait of this parish, I occasionally find such comments a bit annoying; it is not as if the situation in Jefferson’s Republic is particularly great just now, although a lot depends on where you live (Texas is very different from say, Vermont or for that matter, Colorado).
But considering what might happen if Obama wins the White House and the Dems increase or retain their hold on Congress, I also wonder whether we might encounter the example of enterprising Americans coming to Britain, not the other way round. The dollar is rising against the pound, so any assets that are transferred from the US to Britain go further. Taxes are likely to rise quite a bit if The One gets in, although they are likely to rise in the UK too to pay for the enormous increase in public debt, even if the Tories win the next election in 2010.
For a number of reasons stated over there, it seems unlikely, but this comment stood out:
I think the general message here should be that the whole western world is on the same trajectory, and shopping around for liberty is going to be ultimately futile. In a sense, we all need to be “liberty patriots” and do our best in our own countries to reverse the rot, because wherever you flee to, it’s happening there too, if at a different pace or in in slightly different ways. The anti-liberty movement is operating in every nation, and trans and supra-nationally, and everywhere it is winning. There is nowhere to run.
Well, as I’ve long noted on this blog, that’s what space programs are for.
More On NASA Morale
From the Chair Force Engineer.
ISPCS Reporting
Clark Lindsey has his first report up, on this morning’s session on suborbital vehicles. Jeff Foust has a report on one of the talks as well, from Virgin Galactic.
[Thursday afternoon update]
Lots more over at Clark’s place. Just keep scrolling. It’s not a permalink, but I assume that he’ll put together a page of links to the posts when he gets back next week.
(Bumped from yesterday)
Personal Spaceflight Symposium
I’ve attended this event the past two years, but couldn’t make it this year, for lack of time, funds and justification. I also was demotivated by the cancellation of the Lunar Landing Challenge (which was recently reinstated), which was held in conjunction with it.
I’d actually like to go now, and I could afford it now, but I’m busy, and a last-minute ticket would have been pricy. But Clark Lindsey and Jeff Foust are attending, and will no doubt be providing updates over the next couple days.