Jon Goff has some useful thoughts on space system design goals, and some advice for Elon Musk:

Take a look at the EELV program, and even SpaceX. EELV’s goal was to reduce the cost of launching satellites for the military from absolutely obscene to merely ridiculous (ie a 50% drop in price IIRC). So, they tried to make some incremental changes to how they build and operate their vehicles. In some areas they’ve gotten a lot better, but the reality is that they didn’t even acheive the modest goals they set out for themselves. It isn’t that they’re dumb, or malicious, or incompetent. It’s just that they set themselves too easy of a goal, so they didn’t actually have to think outside the same high-cost artillery box that they’ve put themselves in over the years.

It should be pointed out that one of the reason that they haven’t achieved the cost reduction goal is the collapse of flight rate. As I pointed out in my New Atlantis piece, flight rate, even for expendables, is a much higher contributor to launch cost than design is.

He also writes something that a younger Jon Goff would have found heresy:

…if they go for the BFR instead of trying to radically change the Earth-to-Orbit transportation market by going fully reusable…They’re probably going to get their lunch eaten. I mean, they could possibly acquire one of the companies that actually develops a fully reusable, high-flight-rate orbital space transport. But the reality is going to be that if they don’t keep pushing more and more reusability into their Falcon line, it’s going to go obsolete.

That’s sort of an inside joke to long-time readers of sci.space.*, but once upon a time, Jon was a, hmmmm…shall we say, vociferous proponent of expendable launchers. It would be interesting (and possibly educational to others) sometime to hear a description of how his thinking has evolved.

Now, we just have to work on his politics…

Ken Murphy has a useful tutorial on the use of Earth-Moon L1 as a staging point to and from the Moon, and to other destinations.

The latest newsletter of the Space Access Society is out, and it has a long, but good rundown of the current situation in space transportation (at least that portion of the industry that actually promises to reduce costs and improve reliability).

We are seeing signs that this industry is growing up fast. One trend is specialization – rocketship builders are starting to differentiate from rocketship operators, something that happened to the air transport industry too around the time it was getting serious.

Another is that rocketship builders are beginning to access a novel method of finance for this industry: Paying customers, both government agencies wanting a mix of tech development and delivered payloads, and commercial operators wanting actual ships to fly.

And while most company finance in this industry is still via some variant of “angel investors”, aka wealthy individuals, there have been a number of signs that the venture capital industry may not be that far behind. First there’s all the positive press buzz of the last year, of course. Never underestimate the herd factor in investment trends.

There are also signs of a fundamental VC investment requirement firming up: The exit strategy. One time-honored way to cash out investment in an innovative startup is by selling out to an established player that wants a foot in the new door. Arianespace showed up at the X-Prize Cup’s Personal Spaceflight Symposium last fall “looking for possible connections” in this new industry. We’ve seen indications the US launch majors too are keeping a close eye on developments among the startups. Looking to eventually buy what they can’t foster internally? It wouldn’t be unprecedented.

I think we’re a long way off from a rocketcom bubble (that would be fun, for a while…), but it’s nice to see the money finally starting to flow.

It also announces the final date and location of the next Space Access conference, which is a must-go for people really into this subject.

Grant Bonin is having a debate on the appropriate launch vehicle size for exploration. My attitude is either use what you have, or if you’re going to spend billions of dollars developing new vehicles, focus it on something that actually reduces cost and improves reliability.

Wayne Eleazer has an interesting brief history of the US military space program at today’s issue of The Space Review. I was working at the Aerospace Corporation when some of the changes described were occurring in the early eighties. Clearly what they’re doing now isn’t working well, but I’m not sure that just going back to the SPOs is going to help. The problem is, as described, that space hardware (at least as historically developed and procured by the Air Force) is not like airplanes. Until they get some fresh thinking there, and try to make it so, I suspect that their woes will continue.

Thomas James has another Carnival of the Space Moonbats.

[Update in the afternoon]

Oh, this is too weird. One of the people that Thomas links to is Elaine Supkis, but in a posting at his blog she calls herself Elaine Meinel (her maiden name, apparently). As an old L-5er, this made my antenna go up.

A little googling reveals something that I didn’t know (assuming it’s true). She’s Carolyn Meinel‘s sister. I didn’t know Carolyn had a sister. I also didn’t know that Aden worked with the CIA.

My policy of sponsoring realistic space art to spawn realistic space economics may be bearing some fruit. I sponsored this picture from David Robinson first published in September. In January, Aerospace America had this to say:

“Picture a buggy pulled behind a rover that is outfitted with a set of magnetrons,” [Larry Taylor, distinguished professor of planetary sciences at the University of Tennessee] suggests. (A magnetron is the heating element in a microwave oven.) “With the right power and microwave frequency, an astronaut could drive along, sintering the soil as he goes, making continuous brick…”

I read more of the FAA EA (still 6MB) for OSIDA’s spaceport at BFV in CSIA.* The most interesting things I found were the fuel and noise calculations for concepts X, Y and Z. I don’t really like those designators. Concept X, let’s change to concept R. Concept R has a maximum number of launches proposed of 12 in 2006, 12 in 2007, 24 in 2008, 48 in 2009, and 48 in 2010 (p. 4-2). Concept R runs on LOX and RP-1 (4-47) and needs an estimated 5761 kg of LOX and 2404 kg of RP-1. Concept R takes off and lands with a jet engine (4-39) reaches Mach 1 at 9144m (4-40), drops back to Mach 1 at 99,670m and speeds back up to Mach 1 at the same altitude and slows back down to Mach 1 at 16,459m. All these values are approximate. Let’s suppose concept R starts charging $200,000 per seat in 2008. If they sell three seats at that price per flight, they could expect $14.4 million in revenue at this airport in the first year of commercial operation and $28.8 million in their second and third. I am not sure how the maxes of 12 flights in each of the first two years square with a 25-flight test program with a maiden launch in July 2007. Perhaps they will fly out of other spaceports, have some non-rocket flights, or up the maximum number out of Burns Flat.

I don’t like the letter for concept Y either. Let’s call it X’. Concept X’ is scheduled to fly two times per year 2006-2010 (4-2). X’ does not exceed Mach 1 (4-38). Concept X’ runs on LOX and kerosene or alcohol (4-47). Concept X’ has rocket takeoff and glide landing with 1800 lbs thrust (4-40).

I don’t like the letter for concept Z as you might have guessed. Let’s call it concept V. Concept V has max 2 flights in 2006 and 2007 with 3, 4 and 4 in 2008-2010. Concept V vehicles (sic) will take off with a jet engine (4-39). They will carry Jet-A fuel for the carrier vehicle and 1295kg N₂O and some HTPB for the launch vehicle (4-47) (laughing gas and rubber).

You can see pictures of concept R, X’ and V on pages 2-11, 14 and 17 (although V has an Andrews Space Technology logo in the corner even if there might be a “Virgin” on the side of the carrier–it could be a SpaceDev HL-20 but the two tails and canard on the carrier scale back my expectations of that), and the picture of X’ looks like a Xerus instead of a Velocity and concept R has only one tail instead of two).

In layman’s terms? Expect there to be some kind of attempt at a rocket show in Burns Flat. Rocketplane is getting their spaceport. Hard to say what this means for business as the EA process was started in 2002.

*FAA=Federal Aviation Administration, EA=Environmental Assessment, OSIDA=Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority, BFV=the little known designator of the Burns Flat Vortac which I am guessing at to try to be cute, CSIA=Clinton-Sherman Industrial Airpark

–Update 2006-02-18 09:18

–Update 2006-02-18 09:46

It’s actually a Gryphon Aerospace Plane from Andrews. Probably should be concept G.

NY Times has an article on “the Space Tourism Race” which is interesting mostly for the following quote:

Will Whitehorn, the president of Virgin Galactic, said that 157 people have put down deposits totaling $12.2 million to fly…

A race gets interesting when folks are funded and bending metal. Paper planes come and go. We can also have an industry without a race.

Unlike the Chinese versus NASA, this is a space race worth taking seriously:

I do wonder if Virgin Galactic/Spaceship Company will accelerate their vehicle development in response to this project if it looks probable that the Explorer vehicles will start flying next year. I think suborbital space tourism business will grow robustly beyond just those who want to claim that they were the “pioneers” in public space travel. In fact, more people will want to go once there have been lots of flights since this will help to demonstrate safe and reliable operation.