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.

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.

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.

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.

From the Chair Force Engineer.

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)

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.