Category Archives: Space

A New Heavy Lifter?

Elon Musk seems to be planning an EELV killer. And I’ve added Jon Goff’s Selenian Boondocks to the blogroll, as well as an Air Force procurement officer’s blog (he’s stationed at Kirtland, but reports on Musk’s visit to Wright-Patt recently, where he seems to have been training) from which Jon got the story, and he seems at first glance to be interested in space procurement. In addition to the SpaceX story, Jon has a lot of good reportage of the recent Return to the Moon conference, and some appropriate criticism of NASA’s new lunar return architecture.

A few weeks ago, I solicited suggestions for additions to the space blogroll, and am embarrassed to admit that I never got around to doing the update, so here’s a second call. If you have a partial or fully space blog that you think that Transterrestrial readers will find interesting, point it out in comments (in other words, I’m actually inviting comment spammers to post here, as long as it’s the right flavor), and I’ll try to actually do an update this time, but if nothing else, you’ll get a little PR from the comments section.

A Blast From The Past

“J. Random American” has a bit of fascinating deja vu from Aviation Week about Shuttle tile repair, and some good questions to which I don’t know the answers off the top of my head:

The similarity of the rest of the system to the original tps repair kit makes me curious about the circumstances under which the original tps repair system development was abandoned. Do we have some new 21st century technology that is essential to making it work which just wasn

Whither are flights at $100/lb?

Clark Lindsey touched some nerves at Hobbyspace with his post on flights at $100/lb.

I think we all agree that costs are high now and that in some rosy future with high demand, mass production, high utilization rates, R&D amortized over many units, continuous improvement from families of commercial rockets developed by the same team and other kinds of standard obtanium can get the price down to some single digit multiple of the fuel cost. It probably won’t be 3 like aircraft, but even if it’s 9, that’s only $180/lb at current fuel prices.

The questions are, “How?” and “How soon?” There are a variety of ways to increase utilization. The one economists favor is firms that can’t cover costs going out of business so that the ones that can increase their utilization. For that, we need to get all the governments out of the subsidized rocket business. Another is to really grow demand. I am working on that one.

For “How soon?”, we appear to be a factor of 20 away from $100/lb. If Elon makes $500/lb by 2010 then we will be a factor of 5 away. If improvements continue at that pace, we might see $100/lb in 2015. Others will say we won’t see those prices for 300 years. The latter seems moot to me. At $500/lb, that
is $100,000 to deliver 200lbs to orbit. That looks to me like a price point that would support millions of tourists even if no further improvements in technology are made. Of course, millions of tourists is inconsistent with low utilization and low flight rates that are required to justify high capital costs. (If you throw in ejections seats, non-recyclables and so on, you can still get a week in orbit for much less than the millions that is the current conventional wisdom for the early retail prices).

There is the possibility of a disruptive technology getting us to skip to an interesting future. E.g., a space elevator at $100/lb. would grow demand for rocket propulsion at geo-synch, on the Moon, in LEO, lunar orbit and lots of other places that become accessible for a cheap outgoing trip.

False Choice

William Broad stenographs NASA in this New York Times article, in which a false dichotomy is set up.

For its next generation of space vehicles, NASA has decided to abandon the design principles that went into the aging space shuttle, agency officials and private experts say.

Instead, they say, the new vehicles will rearrange the shuttle’s components into a safer, more powerful family of traditional rockets.

Note the implication here–there are only two ways to build rockets into space. One can use the design principles that went into the Shuttle, or one can go back to the design principles that we used in the past–you know, “traditional” rockets.

[Cue Tevye: “Tradition………Tradition!]

There’s little discussion of what the “design principles” of the Shuttle are that make it so bad, other than it’s allowed to have stuff fall on it during launch. And the “separating crew from cargo” myth prevails:

The plan would separate the jobs of hauling people and cargo into orbit and would put the payloads on top of the rockets – as far as possible from the dangers of firing engines and falling debris, which were responsible for the accidents that destroyed the shuttle Challenger in 1986 and the Columbia in 2003.

No explanation of why separating people and cargo makes people safer (because it doesn’t) or why we should care about losing people, but not payloads or launches that cost tens, or hundreds of millions of dollars.

And of course, there’s the standard confusion about launch system economics:

By making the rockets from shuttle parts, the new plan would draw on the shuttle’s existing network of thousands of contractors and technologies, in theory speeding its completion and lowering its price.

“The existing components offer us huge cost advantages as opposed to starting from a clean sheet of paper,” the new administrator of NASA, Michael D. Griffin, told reporters on Friday.

“Cost” and “price” seem to be used interchangeably here (as is often the case with government programs, since price is usually just cost plus a fixed percentage). And there’s no distinction between, or discussion of, development costs versus operational costs. Yes, if you’re going to develop a new heavy-lift launch vehicle, or even a new vehicle for the CEV, then using existing components will reduce development costs. But if those components are very costly to procure and operate, the operational costs will remain disastrously, and unsustainably high. When they say “lower price” and “cost advantages” they’re referring to development cost only. They’ve simply thrown in the towel, and given up on getting safe launch.

And of course, no major media piece would be complete without the obligatory quotes from John Pike and Alex Roland, who seem to have an honored place in every reporter’s rolodex, though neither of them really have any expertise in these matters.

John E. Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, a private Washington research group on military and space topics, said he wondered how NASA could remain within its budget while continuing to pay billions of dollars for the shuttle and building a new generation of rockets and capsules.

Alex Roland, a former historian of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration who now teaches at Duke University and is a frequent critic of the space program, said the plan had “the aroma of a quick and dirty solution to a big problem.”

They always justify Roland’s inclusion in these things by saying he is a “former historian” for NASA. They never mention, though, that this was only for a brief period, over two decades ago, and he dealt with aeronautics, not space. But he’s a good gadfly, like Pike, and Robert Park, so of course we should care what he thinks.

And I love this bit:

“The shuttle is not a lemon,” Scott J. Horowitz, an aerospace engineer and former astronaut who helped develop the new plan, said in an interview. “It’s just too complicated. I know from flying it four times. It’s an amazing engineering feat. But there’s a better way.”

Dr. Horowitz was one of a small group of astronauts, shaken by the Columbia disaster, who took it upon themselves in 2003 to come up with a safer approach to exploring space. Their effort, conceived while they were in Lufkin, Tex., helping search for shuttle wreckage, became part of the NASA program to design a successor to the shuttle fleet.

Well, he’s a former astronaut. And an aerospace engineer. He has no axes to grind–he just wants a safer launch system, right?

That’s a useful introduction, I guess, but somehow, I wonder if it’s the whole story. Well, as it turns out, the real agenda starts to dribble out a little later:

“It’s safe, simple and soon,” said Dr. Horowitz, an industry executive since he left the astronaut corps in October. “And it should cost less money” than the shuttles. Their reusability over 100 missions was originally meant to slash expenses but the cost per flight ended up being roughly $1 billion.

Note the implication that Shuttle is expensive because it’s reusable (with the further implication that we shouldn’t build any more reusable vehicles).

Anyway, it’s “safe, simple and soon.” Who could ask for more?

But wait a minute. Haven’t we heard that phrase before?

Well, it does say he’s an industry executive. But what industry? What company?

Oh, here it is, tucked away toward the end of the article:

After leaving the astronaut corps, he went to work for the booster maker, ATK Thiokol, where he now leads the company’s effort to develop the new family of rockets.

Nope, no axes to grind there. Well, at least they did mention it, finally.

My problem with articles like this is that, as I noted above, they set up a false dichotomy. We have other choices than doing it on expendable launch vehicles with capsules, and doing it with an oversized airplane stuck to the side of expendable parts that are a major contributor to the costs, and shed parts onto the reusable portion. Shuttle didn’t have to be the way it is, and it’s not the platonic ideal of a reusable (or even partially reusable) launch system, that allows us to extrapolate its flaws to any conceivable space transport. It was a program that was compromised early in its development by the same need to save development costs that seem to be turning the latest plans into another budding disaster, at least from an operational cost standpoint.

But as long as reporters at the New York Times rely on technologically ignorant naysayers like John Pike and Alex Roland, and breathless industry boosters, we’re never going to have an intelligent discussion of the real alternatives.

One More Thought On Fleet Grounding

I earlier noted the irony that the one part of the Shuttle that has actually been reliable (the Orbiter) is the one that Mike Griffin wants to retire. Both Shuttle disasters were caused by the non-Orbiter parts (SRB in the case of Challenger, ET in the case of Columbia), and those are the pieces that he wants to build the new vehicles out of (SRB as a lower stage for the crew vehicle, and SRB and modified ET for the heavy lifter).

Of course, the response will be that the only reason those failures were a problem was because of the overall system configuration with the Orbiter. Since both the new concepts will have the payload on top, where blow torching from joint leaks, and falling foam won’t cause problems, that makes it OK (though that’s actually not true with the heavy lifter, since the ET was the first casualty from the SRB failure, before the Orbiter broke up).

Which brings up a question: how much side forces were detected during the Challenger launch from the SRB leak (presumably from attempts by the TVC to keep the vehicle straight)? Does anyone know (I assume that the data may be in the Rogers Commission Report)? Would it have caused a problem with “the stick”?

Grounded Fleet

Just a few random thoughts before crashing.

I haven’t had time to read much about the fleet grounding thing, but I’ve often said that when government occasionally does the right thing, it’s almost always for the wrong reason. If we end up retiring the Shuttle now, it won’t be because it costs too much for what it does, and soaks up a lot of money that could (at least in theory, though probably not in practice, given the way our space policy seems to work) be used for something more productive in terms of moving humanity into space. It will be because we got better cameras so that we could finally see the rain of debris that’s been falling from every ET every time we fly, and we’re nervous about killing astronauts (even though taking such risks is, at least in theory, part of their job description). Ignorance was bliss, at least if you make a healthy living off operating Space Shuttles.

I frankly think that it’s a dumb reason, but if it happens, I also think it’s a good outcome, so I won’t complain too much. But here’s the problem. There’s an old saying about some businesses being “too big to fail” (e.g., Lockheed, various banks in the eighties, perhaps GM)–that is, the political consequences of letting them go out of business are viewed as sufficiently dire that the government will continue to prop them up, a la Weekend at Bernies, even when the carcass begins to stink. Shuttle, I’m afraid, is like that.

What I suspect is going on is that the declaration of fleet grounding is to piously show NASA’s contrition over Columbia, and to demonstrate that they have a new “safety culture.” What it really means is that they’ll do some kind of kabuki dance to come up with another “solution” to the foam-falling-off problem, and then launch again. And when it falls off again, they’ll say, “time to ground the fleet again, back to the drawing board.” And then they’ll do another test flight. It could plod along in this manner for years, if JSC and Huntsville are lucky, and the rest of us (those who pay taxes and care about a serious space program, anyway)…less so.

Anyway, off to bed, and (oh, joy) another airplane ride at the crack of dawn.

Problem On Orbit?

It’s too soon to say. The coverage of it has been disappointing so far as I’ve heard (just listening to Fox News getting ready to come to the office). They said that “if the Shuttle is damaged, NASA has to choose between repairing it on orbit, or abandoning the Shuttle and sending Atlantis up to rescue them.”

No. Repairing it on orbit is probably pretty much a non starter, but there’s another choice (and I suspect the most likely outcome). The Shuttle is damaged, but no more so than previous flights from which it has returned safely.

Thomas James gets to the nub of it:

Given the fact that foam has typically fallen off the ET on ascent, I have to wonder how much what concern there is over the insulation is motivated by new data: being able to actually see the problem happening for once, instead of only seeing the effect of foam shedding post-landing. Perhaps the ET routinely sheds cable-tray foam (or whatever it ends up being identified as) with no ill effects.

Losing a tile around the nose gear door, however, is a little more concerning. It’s hard to tell from the picture and the data provided so far how serious it is, or whether it too is in-family with prior tile damage.

“In-family” is NASA-speak for “within a class of previously-experienced anomalies.” I’m quite certain that NASA has an extensive data base of tile damage from every single flight, organized by section of the orbiter in which it occurred (and if they don’t, someone should certainly be keelhauled across Atlantis), and are even now scouring it to see if there was similar damage in a similar location on some previous flight, including notes of any structural insult observed when the offending tile was removed and replaced. That, and perhaps a closer inspection by EVA, will determine the resolution of this.

I think that it’s most likely that they will decide to come home with it as is. And if they do, I also think that they will undergo a great deal of ignorant criticism for this decision, because they’ve “lost their safety culture,” just one flight after they killed all those astronauts, and now they’re recklessly gambling their lives again (disregarding the fact that throwing away a two-billion dollar vehicle, and a third of the remaining fleet, is not a decision to be taken lightly either).