A few weeks ago, I mentioned a new space blog, called Parabolic Arc, which had pretty good content. Unfortunately, the colors chosen for it (gray text on black background) made it almost literally unreadable. That problem has been fixed, so I’d urge folks to check it out again. (It’s been in the blogroll for a while. I’m actually tempted to move it up higher in preference to some others that are being updated very infrequently).
Category Archives: Space
Rockets For Sale
John Carmack mentioned this at the conference a week and a half ago, but I don’t think I reported it, at least not in any detail. Armadillo is willing to sell vehicles to anyone who wants to fly them (presumably subject to ITAR restrictions):
The way to look at it is as a “rocket trainer”, rather than a vehicle that can perform any kind of real lunar or suborbital mission. We don’t pretend that the vehicles could actually land on the moon, but if you want to hack on a real, flying system, there is a lot of value to be had.
The price is $500k. The experience of the Lunar Lander Challenge shows quite clearly that you aren’t likely to do it yourself for less, even if you spend a couple years at it. Several intelligent and competent people thought otherwise, and have been proven incorrect.
You can have either a module or a quad, at your choice. The quad has more hover duration, but it is more of a hassle to operate. A module could be fulfilled right now, a quad would take about three months to build, since we are still planning on using Pixel for LLC this year and other tasks. The engine will be one of our new film cooled stainless chambers, and we will warrant it for ten flights. If it blows up or burns through in that time frame, we will replace it. We will not replace the vehicle if it crashes, but historically our engine problems have been visible at startup, and you should have an opportunity to abort the flight. Ground support equipment is included, except for the lox dewar(s), which would be specific to your local lox vendor. We will test the vehicle ourselves, then train your crew to operate it. You get copies of our experimental permit applications and information about the insurance policies we use for permitted flights. Details on modifications to the flight control software are negotiable.
If he got a big order, or multiple customers who wanted delivery ASAP, I wonder how he’d respond? Would he ramp up production (with the intrinsic risks to quality), or keep supply constant and crank up the price? As I’ve said for a long time, at some point this is going to have to transition from a hobby to a business for him, and it seems to me that this has the potential to force that decision, if he has a significant number of takers.
I also wonder how much new engines will cost, assuming that they’re only good for ten flights (he doesn’t say that, but it’s all he’s willing to warrant them for). Let’s say that the engines are half the cost of the vehicle. That would mean a cost of $25K a flight to amortize the engines, which is a lot more than propellant costs. It seems to me that if he only thinks that he can get ten flights, engine life is where his emphasis needs to be for reducing operating costs. It’s also hard to see how he can charge the same amount for a module as a quad, since the latter has four engines in it. I’d really like to understand more about this proposition.
He follows up the offer with his assessment of the industry (and his competition), but I’ll save my thoughts on that for another post.
Griffin’s COTS Contradictions
Jeff Foust reports on the administrator’s testimony before the Senate:
“Do not confuse my desire for international collaboration for a willingness to rely on others for strategic capability,” he said in open remarks at a subcommittee hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee last week. Dependence on Soyuz “is not an option we would choose, but it is where we are today. In fact, we must seek an exception to the Iran Syria North Korea Nonproliferation Act because we have no immediate replacement for the shuttle and no other recourse if we wish to sustain the ISS.”
Given that statement, you would think that Griffin would be interested in accelerating domestic commercial options like COTS that would lessen or eliminate an reliance on the Russians. Yet, in his comments later in the hearing, he was not that interested in pursuing a crew option for COTS (also known as Capability D) on an accelerated schedule.
Yeah, you’d think. But I suspect that he fears that if COTS is seen to be making too-rapid progress, it will jeopardize funding for Ares/Orion, by making them seem superfluous. Of course, the traditional argument is that they are designed for the lunar mission, whereas a station crew transfer capability wouldn’t have that additional capability. And Orion is supposedly not just for going back to the moon but for use in a Mars mission as well (though it is never explained what its role is in such a mission). I can’t believe anyone seriously believes that a Mars mission would be performed in a glorified Apollo capsule–it’s simply too small, and the crew would go nuts. If it’s meant as the means to return them to earth upon return to earth orbit, well, OK, but it’s pretty pathetic to think that, seventy years after the first lunar landing, we would still be returning people to the planet in a capsule on a chute (particularly if they end up with a water landing).
Of course, the real danger is that we’ll get the worst of both worlds–a continuation of Ares/Orion, which are supposedly being built because they are necessary to go to the moon, but we drop the lunar mission from the policy, so they revert to simply replacing (or competing with) COTS crew capability. And unfortunately, as devoted Democrat Greg Zsidisin has discovered in a one on one, that seems to be exactly Obama’s plan. The only saving grace of it is that, in delaying the development by five years, it really means that the program will die. But it betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of the nature of space policy, and space hardware and development, on the part of Obama and/or his advisors. You can’t “delay” a program like this and have any hope that it won’t end up costing much more over the long run, particularly because you’ll lose many of the key personnel for it, who aren’t going to sit around twiddling their thumbs at no pay for half a decade while Obama solves the education problem. It’s really quite absurd. But then, most of his proposed policies are–one of the many reasons that he isn’t going to be elected.
As an aside, Jim Muncy said during the wrap-up panel last week in Phoenix that NASA has a bigger problem with the Iran Non-Proliferation Act than buying Soyuzes to replace Shuttle. Because the facilities are in the Russian segment, the ISS astronauts won’t even be able to use the potty if they don’t get a waiver, which could get pretty interesting on a six-month tour. The notion brought up the obvious jokes: “You’ll just have to hold it,” and “You should have gone before you launched…”
[Tuesday morning update]
Jon Goff has further thoughts:
…if you were a congressman or senator with a limited amount of money available, and you have two risky ventures to pick from to try and reduce the gap, what would you do? Would you place all your money on the one option where your money is going to be a relative drop in the bucket, and that even then has little or no chance of actually reducing the gap? Or would you invest at least part of your money in a much smaller program where it has a much higher probability of actually hastening the day when the US once again has manned spaceflight capabilities–and better yet, commercial manned spaceflight capabilities?
You do the math.
Unfortunately, the only math that interests most congresspeople is the number of jobs in their district or state, with “the Gap” a distant second place. Mike knows that, which is why he can get away with this stuff, or at least why he has to date.
Griffin’s COTS Contradictions
Jeff Foust reports on the administrator’s testimony before the Senate:
“Do not confuse my desire for international collaboration for a willingness to rely on others for strategic capability,” he said in open remarks at a subcommittee hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee last week. Dependence on Soyuz “is not an option we would choose, but it is where we are today. In fact, we must seek an exception to the Iran Syria North Korea Nonproliferation Act because we have no immediate replacement for the shuttle and no other recourse if we wish to sustain the ISS.”
Given that statement, you would think that Griffin would be interested in accelerating domestic commercial options like COTS that would lessen or eliminate an reliance on the Russians. Yet, in his comments later in the hearing, he was not that interested in pursuing a crew option for COTS (also known as Capability D) on an accelerated schedule.
Yeah, you’d think. But I suspect that he fears that if COTS is seen to be making too-rapid progress, it will jeopardize funding for Ares/Orion, by making them seem superfluous. Of course, the traditional argument is that they are designed for the lunar mission, whereas a station crew transfer capability wouldn’t have that additional capability. And Orion is supposedly not just for going back to the moon but for use in a Mars mission as well (though it is never explained what its role is in such a mission). I can’t believe anyone seriously believes that a Mars mission would be performed in a glorified Apollo capsule–it’s simply too small, and the crew would go nuts. If it’s meant as the means to return them to earth upon return to earth orbit, well, OK, but it’s pretty pathetic to think that, seventy years after the first lunar landing, we would still be returning people to the planet in a capsule on a chute (particularly if they end up with a water landing).
Of course, the real danger is that we’ll get the worst of both worlds–a continuation of Ares/Orion, which are supposedly being built because they are necessary to go to the moon, but we drop the lunar mission from the policy, so they revert to simply replacing (or competing with) COTS crew capability. And unfortunately, as devoted Democrat Greg Zsidisin has discovered in a one on one, that seems to be exactly Obama’s plan. The only saving grace of it is that, in delaying the development by five years, it really means that the program will die. But it betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of the nature of space policy, and space hardware and development, on the part of Obama and/or his advisors. You can’t “delay” a program like this and have any hope that it won’t end up costing much more over the long run, particularly because you’ll lose many of the key personnel for it, who aren’t going to sit around twiddling their thumbs at no pay for half a decade while Obama solves the education problem. It’s really quite absurd. But then, most of his proposed policies are–one of the many reasons that he isn’t going to be elected.
As an aside, Jim Muncy said during the wrap-up panel last week in Phoenix that NASA has a bigger problem with the Iran Non-Proliferation Act than buying Soyuzes to replace Shuttle. Because the facilities are in the Russian segment, the ISS astronauts won’t even be able to use the potty if they don’t get a waiver, which could get pretty interesting on a six-month tour. The notion brought up the obvious jokes: “You’ll just have to hold it,” and “You should have gone before you launched…”
[Tuesday morning update]
Jon Goff has further thoughts:
…if you were a congressman or senator with a limited amount of money available, and you have two risky ventures to pick from to try and reduce the gap, what would you do? Would you place all your money on the one option where your money is going to be a relative drop in the bucket, and that even then has little or no chance of actually reducing the gap? Or would you invest at least part of your money in a much smaller program where it has a much higher probability of actually hastening the day when the US once again has manned spaceflight capabilities–and better yet, commercial manned spaceflight capabilities?
You do the math.
Unfortunately, the only math that interests most congresspeople is the number of jobs in their district or state, with “the Gap” a distant second place. Mike knows that, which is why he can get away with this stuff, or at least why he has to date.
Griffin’s COTS Contradictions
Jeff Foust reports on the administrator’s testimony before the Senate:
“Do not confuse my desire for international collaboration for a willingness to rely on others for strategic capability,” he said in open remarks at a subcommittee hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee last week. Dependence on Soyuz “is not an option we would choose, but it is where we are today. In fact, we must seek an exception to the Iran Syria North Korea Nonproliferation Act because we have no immediate replacement for the shuttle and no other recourse if we wish to sustain the ISS.”
Given that statement, you would think that Griffin would be interested in accelerating domestic commercial options like COTS that would lessen or eliminate an reliance on the Russians. Yet, in his comments later in the hearing, he was not that interested in pursuing a crew option for COTS (also known as Capability D) on an accelerated schedule.
Yeah, you’d think. But I suspect that he fears that if COTS is seen to be making too-rapid progress, it will jeopardize funding for Ares/Orion, by making them seem superfluous. Of course, the traditional argument is that they are designed for the lunar mission, whereas a station crew transfer capability wouldn’t have that additional capability. And Orion is supposedly not just for going back to the moon but for use in a Mars mission as well (though it is never explained what its role is in such a mission). I can’t believe anyone seriously believes that a Mars mission would be performed in a glorified Apollo capsule–it’s simply too small, and the crew would go nuts. If it’s meant as the means to return them to earth upon return to earth orbit, well, OK, but it’s pretty pathetic to think that, seventy years after the first lunar landing, we would still be returning people to the planet in a capsule on a chute (particularly if they end up with a water landing).
Of course, the real danger is that we’ll get the worst of both worlds–a continuation of Ares/Orion, which are supposedly being built because they are necessary to go to the moon, but we drop the lunar mission from the policy, so they revert to simply replacing (or competing with) COTS crew capability. And unfortunately, as devoted Democrat Greg Zsidisin has discovered in a one on one, that seems to be exactly Obama’s plan. The only saving grace of it is that, in delaying the development by five years, it really means that the program will die. But it betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of the nature of space policy, and space hardware and development, on the part of Obama and/or his advisors. You can’t “delay” a program like this and have any hope that it won’t end up costing much more over the long run, particularly because you’ll lose many of the key personnel for it, who aren’t going to sit around twiddling their thumbs at no pay for half a decade while Obama solves the education problem. It’s really quite absurd. But then, most of his proposed policies are–one of the many reasons that he isn’t going to be elected.
As an aside, Jim Muncy said during the wrap-up panel last week in Phoenix that NASA has a bigger problem with the Iran Non-Proliferation Act than buying Soyuzes to replace Shuttle. Because the facilities are in the Russian segment, the ISS astronauts won’t even be able to use the potty if they don’t get a waiver, which could get pretty interesting on a six-month tour. The notion brought up the obvious jokes: “You’ll just have to hold it,” and “You should have gone before you launched…”
[Tuesday morning update]
Jon Goff has further thoughts:
…if you were a congressman or senator with a limited amount of money available, and you have two risky ventures to pick from to try and reduce the gap, what would you do? Would you place all your money on the one option where your money is going to be a relative drop in the bucket, and that even then has little or no chance of actually reducing the gap? Or would you invest at least part of your money in a much smaller program where it has a much higher probability of actually hastening the day when the US once again has manned spaceflight capabilities–and better yet, commercial manned spaceflight capabilities?
You do the math.
Unfortunately, the only math that interests most congresspeople is the number of jobs in their district or state, with “the Gap” a distant second place. Mike knows that, which is why he can get away with this stuff, or at least why he has to date.
More Propellant Depot Thoughts
Jon Goff has a wrap up of the issues (mostly technical) that came up in the panel discussion last Friday in Phoenix.
As he notes, there was little discussion of what other markets we can find than DoD and NASA. The problem is that until the capability is demonstrated, it’s going to be very hard to sell it to the conservative comsat industry. The nearest-term plausible private market that I can conceive of is Bigelow, if he still wants to do his lunar cruises. It would be interesting to put together a business model using Genesis modules swinging around the moon, and see if it’s greater or less than projected NASA Constellation needs.
Only Nine Days Left
Until Yuri’s Night. It will also be the twenty-seventh anniversary of the first Shuttle launch.
Looking at the map, the only Florida party I see is up in Cocoa Beach. Between Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Miami, you’d think that south Florida would be able to come up with something.
Confused, Again
It’s not the space programs that are a fantasy, Mark. The fantasy is the ludicrous wishful thinking on your part that either of them are racing.
Off-Planet Gas Stations
Jon Goff has the Powerpoints of Friday night’s propellant depot panel, including mine.
The New Space Race
Jeff Foust has a story today on the current real space race (as opposed to the fantasy one between the US and China)–the new race for customers in the suborbital market. It’s basically a compilation of last week’s XCOR press conference announcement and this past weekend’s Space Access conference, both of which I attended. This to me is the key point:
“Quietly, this has turned into a horse race,” said conference organizer Henry Vanderbilt during a wrap-up panel at the conclusion of the Space Access conference. “There are a lot of people who could be the first to fly a passenger to suborbit at this point. Two years ago I’m sure the money would have been on Virgin Galactic. It isn’t necessarily so at this point.”
“What struck me about the events of this week was that we have finally, with all due respect, broken the mystique of Burt [Rutan],” Rand Simberg, an aerospace engineer and blogger, said. “He has had setbacks”–referring to the engine test accident last July that killed three Scaled Composites employees–“and, this week, now he has a competitor.” The growing awareness of companies other than Virgin “is going to be very good for the industry.”
“This perception of a horse race is probably a really, really good thing for investment,” said Joe Pistritto, an angel investor. “Ninety-nine percent of the people who could invest in this industry don’t know about this industry” but may start to learn about it as the find out about these competing companies.
If it is a horse race, who will win the ultimate prize: not just the first vehicle to enter the market, but the one that wins the market in the long run? The diversity of technical approaches, from the takeoff and landing techniques to the number of passengers, makes any predictions difficult. “If there’s four different operators flying people into space, their offerings are going to be a little different,” said Pistritto. “So you see an actual segmentation of the market around the experience you want, how much money you have, and where you are.”
What I meant about the “mystique of Burt” was the notion that the winning of the X-Prize was some kind of fluke, enabled only because the most brilliant aeronautical engineer in the world applied his genius to it. Many have used this as an excuse to denigrate the efforts of others building suborbital vehicles, which hasn’t made it any easier to raise money for such ventures.
Many seem to believe that it really takes the genius of a Rutan to build a suborbital vehicle. As evidence of this proposition, they point out that no other suborbital vehicles have been flown since 2004.
But in so doing, they display a fundamental ignorance of the nature of the technology and the requirements. There is no “one way” to skin that cat, and never was. Burt’s design was clever, and perhaps intrinsically safer, but it was not necessary, and there are other, better ways to do the job that are safe enough. It’s not at all clear that the SS1 approach is the best one for a commercial application, and if one includes in that the hybrid propulsion, it’s already caused delays (though those are partly due to Scaled taking on a project outside their area of expertise–they’re an aircraft manufacturer, not a propulsion house) in their development program, and it’s certain to result in higher operational costs and increased turnaround time.
The real point is that if only Burt could win the X-Prize, it wasn’t because he was the only guy smart enough to design a vehicle to do it. It was because he was the only guy with the reputation of being smart enough to be able to raise the money to do it. When it comes to space ventures, the hardest part is always raising the money. The technical challenges generally pale in comparison.
So, with schedule delays in SS2, now comes XCOR. XCOR has a reputation of its own, hard won over the past eight years, of underpromising and overdelivering. So when they have a (rare, almost unheard of) press conference announcing that they have the design and the cash to build a suborbital vehicle, with an endorsement from the Air Force Research Laboratory, the world listens, and suddenly it’s a real race.
Evidence that the mystique has been broken is this CNBC story by Jane Wells from last week, after XCOR’s announcement, with the hed “Branson And Northrop May Be Backing “Wrong” Rocket Man!”
Burt is no longer God, other companies are getting serious attention from both business journalists and investors, and it’s been a very good week for the new space industry and space age.