According to this piece at Popular Mechanics, the new regime at NASA seems to be well disposed to DIRECT.
I remain an indifferent agnostic, because I think that any money spent on a heavy lifter is money wasted that would be better directed toward orbital infrastructure. And the big question that I have is how such a vehicle would be “commercial,” since there are few non-government customers for it.
I don’t think we have to worry about having heavy lift… it will happen when the need comes. We should focus on getting that need up and running.
There are reports that Bigelow is already at work on a much larger hab that needs a Jupiter to be launched.
Also, the DIRECT threads at nasaspaceflight suggest that Bolden & Garver might be interested in selling Bigelow a Jupiter launch at a favorable price point to loft a Bigelow hab larger than anything EELV or Proton can lift.
Do that in synch with the deployment of private crew taxis and the LEO hotel business is in business.
= = =
IMHO – Bolden, Garver and Whitesides will be the folks who will deserve most of the credit if things go well on Monday with Obama getting credit for listening to them.
I do not get it. Was it not the point of Transhab and inflatable modules that you needed less lift capacity for the same habitable volume? So is the deal with needing Jupiter?
According to the study (link below)
http://www.ndu.edu/icaf/industry/reports/2008/pdf/icaf-is-report-space-ay08.pdf
The Global Space Activity spending for 2007 was $251.16 Billion.
US Government, $62.55 Billion (25%)
International Government, $14.70 Billion (6%)
Commercial Infrastructure, $34.35 Billion (14%)
Infrastructure Support Industries, $0.7 Billion (<1%)
Other, $17.22 Billion (7%)
Global Position Satellites, $56.9 Billion (22%)
Direct to Home Television, $65.45 Billion (26%)
Space Commercial Transportation Services, $0.04 Billion (<1%)
First point, launch services are a small part of the overall expense (Estimate $7 Billion 2007 including STS) of utilizing Space for the various activities we are doing today. You might ask yourself where all the other money is being spent if not on the launch services portion.
Second point, paying $2-3 Billion/year to have a heavy-lift launch system that will enable a new era of manned and unmanned missions sure doesn’t seem like it would be the big make or break issue given the overall cost of the ‘entire’ space industry.
Third point, by removing the volume and mass constraints of the existing launch systems, a heavy-lift launch system should be able to more than pay for itself in cost reductions to a portion of the other 97%.
Extra Credit: Assuming that a heavy-lift launch systems cost $3 Billion/year and that only 6% of the total industry cost could be improved by a US based heavy-lift launch system, what savings would be required in order to make this cost neutral……….
………even assuming that the alternate smaller launch systems you advocate were somehow free and won’t somehow negatively impact the spacecraft and mission costs due to their volume and mass constraints?
“Disposed toward Direct” may not be an accurate description. If reports are correct, the new space policy will call for all future space transportation to be procured commercially.
So, if Ross Tierney and Bill White *really* think Jupiter makes sense, they ought to go out and raise the money for it.
If they don’t, they ought to stop asking the taxpayers to fund their hobby horse.
Mr Metschan, the numbers you present also show that the ‘entire’ world’s space economy is still less than the annual turnover of a single large commercial company such as Walmart, which is also as old as the space-age.
The plain fact of the matter is that the space economy has only grown in one niche sector (i.e. telecoms) and that the majority of the money relates to ground-based systems and services (i.e. receivers and user subscriptions). Moreover, the prime reason for this constrained growth is almost entirely due to the lack of low cost, frequent and reliable space launch services.
Given these facts, I’d be interested to know how any large, expendable low frequency launch system (e.g. DIRECT) would address these fundamental constraints and, thereby, enable us to realise the vast economic potential of space-based systems and services?
You might ask yourself where all the other money is being spent if not on the launch services portion.
Those figures are deceptive. For example, $65 billion for “Direct to Home Television” mostly goes to pay for programming — the Disney Channel, ESPN, etc. Counting all of that as “space spending” is like counting all of Apple’s revenues as “food spending” because they have a company cafeteria.
by removing the volume and mass constraints of the existing launch systems, a heavy-lift launch system should be able to more than pay for itself in cost reductions to a portion of the other 97%.
That is a statement based on faith, not engineering analysis. It’s also incorrect because orbital assembly does not have volume and mass constraints. Heavy lifters do (even if those constraints are slightly larger than previous rockets). A space station or lunar base that is limited in size to launch on a single rocket will never amount to more than a Skylab redux.
Extra Credit: Assuming that a heavy-lift launch systems cost $3 Billion/year and that only 6% of the total industry cost could be improved by a US based heavy-lift launch system, what savings would be required in order to make this cost neutral………
A whole lot, because building a heavy lifter won’t reduce make ESPN programming 6% cheaper. Or GPS handsets or any of the other the other things you’re including in the “total industry.” It won’t even reduce the cost of runnings NASA’s R&D labs by 6%.
Henry Spencer once calculated that it never makes economic sense to develop a new launch vehicle unless you plan to launch it at least 1000 times. What near-term market requires 1000 launches of a heavy-lift vehicle? (No, you can’t simply extrapolate out for the next 50 or 60 years — the cost of money matters also.)
I’m not well educated, but I tend to be somewhat well informed based on the way I live my life.
When I was in the Marine Corps, I was often tasked with doing a lot of teaching, (mostly cuz I tutored a lot of people while I was in MOS School) and in my various jobs I was the guy who was always given the new meat to train.
I say that for this reason. When I was in gradeschool I was a part of a program where 4th and 5th graders would spend a few hours a day helping kindergarteners and 1st graders learn what they needed to learn, and one of our supervisors said to me, “Don’t command them support them, make them do it on their own, but that doesn’t mean you can’t keep them from falling.”
I thought that was good advice.
Government shouldn’t COMMAND the effort, they should support the efforts that already exist.
It would certainly appear, based on the reporting of NASAspaceflight.com, that the Ares V design is morphing into something resembling the Jupiter launcher from the DIRECT proposal. It’s certainly a more sane way to build an HLLV, but there’s still unsettled debate over the necessity of an HLLV to begin with.
The last question was a great unanswered one to emerge from the Augustine committee. While the committee saw the need for one, it never decided what the HLLV requirement should be. There was an economic argument made for a 200 tonne payload; Jeff Greason thought that 50 tonnes was more like it. While I’m sympathetic to the Greason POV, it met with a lot of resistance from the rest of the commission.
The big question is over the funding level that the HLLV will receive. I take the pessimistic view that the new HLLV effort will continue at a low level for several more years before its eventual cancellation. It will serve the purpose of softening the blow at KSC, MSFC and elsewhere when Shuttle winds down and jobs are lost.
there’s still unsettled debate over the necessity of an HLLV to begin with.
More importantly, there are good reasons to believe HLV is actually harmful to commercial development of space.
I take the pessimistic view that the new HLLV effort will continue at a low level for several more years before its eventual cancellation.
For those who believe HLV would be harmful at this point in the history of manned spaceflight this not a pessimistic view, but an optimistic one. Although it would have been much preferable if an architecture that uses propellant transfer right from the beginning had been chosen.
Dave, concerning Walmart’s size vs. the Space Industry, I think the point you are trying to make is that there are a number of ‘commercial’ enterprises that easily eclipse the largely government dominated Space Industry significantly. Agreed. I disagree though with the implied ‘solution’ that we need to ‘commercialize’ space by getting ‘government’ out of the way? I think you are confusing cause and effect.
I would suggest that Space is already as ‘commercialized’ as it’s going to get based on current technologies interacting with the products and services that Space can uniquely provide at a profit. Now if we had a significant shift in engine technologies we might be able to say mine Asteroids profitable, but right now it’s really expensive to move mass around in Space. Sure making it cheaper to get mass into LEO or develop the mass we need from in space resources would help but I don’t think even a 10 fold reduction would be sufficient to close the business case.
Also everyone keeps focusing on the launch cost. If you just confine the discussion to the US Government portion of the Space Industry, and assume that the combination of STS and ULA is about $5 Billion per year that leaves another 90% of the cost that is ‘not’ related to the launch cost. Again I realize that this is based on the current launch cost paradigm but it’s still important to point out that for existing uses of Space the launch cost is not the most significant portion of the cost. Point of fact is that commercial services like Direct TV are not going to get significantly less expensive even if the launch cost was free.
The primary cost of Space, limited by current engine technology, is Mission support and Spacecraft. The cost of Spacecraft increases geometrically when they are forced to fit tight volume and mass constraints. Point of fact is that the cost overruns of JWST and MSL (largely due to attempting to fit within the capacity of current launch systems while doing more than past missions) are now many times there respective launch costs. So even if ‘commercial’ vehicles were somehow free the Jupiter would still enable a lower cost mission overall. If you consider just the incremental cost of a Jupiter launch the cost is under $2K/kg.
Further, I consider something ‘commercial’ by the nature of the customers. By that definition New Space is no more or less ‘commercial’ than Old Space. Until something like Asteroid mining is profitable I think the industry will continue to be dominated by a government as the primary customer. This means that politics and national security interests not economics will continue to have a dominate role in what we do, how we do it and where it is done.
As Carl Sagan once said “The Universe is not required to conform to Human ambition”
>=== Now if we had a significant shift in engine technologies we
> might be able to say mine Asteroids profitable, but right now it’s
> really expensive to move mass around in Space. Sure making it
> cheaper to get mass into LEO or develop the mass we need from
> in space resources would help but I don’t think even a 10 fold
> reduction would be sufficient to close the business case.
Certainly not. Current technology is sufficient for over a hundred fold launch cost drop given high utilization (its the overhead to support launches and launchers, not launching and servicing launchers, that’s well over 90%). But no ones figured out what to do in space that need that kind of flight rates. I mean you could move stuff around in space easy enough, but you can’t competitively land ore at airfreight costs per pound.
I would suggest that Space is already as ‘commercialized’ as it’s going to get based on current technologies interacting with the products and services that Space can uniquely provide at a profit.
It’s as commercialized as it’s going to get if we follow your suggestions, certainly. A good reason for anyone who cares about human spaceflight to ignore your suggestions, and the rest of the Direct team. 🙂
There are many products and services that can be produced in space with current technologies. Just because you’re unaware of something does not mean it doesn’t exist.
Point of fact is that commercial services like Direct TV are not going to get significantly less expensive even if the launch cost was free.
That’s not a point of “fact”; it’s an opinion.
Unfortunately, you didn’t do your homework before you formed that opinion. You simply assume that other costs are completely independent of transportation costs, but numerous trade studies show that assumption to be incorrect.
Satellites are expensive to design and build, in large part, because they are automated systems that must function for years at a time without any possibility of maintenance. Furthermore, they must be packaged very tightly for launch, because it is not economically feasible to assemble them on orbit. Solar panels and antennas are limited in size by the need to fit them within a payload shroud, so ground stations need to be larger and more powerful. Thus, space transportation costs drive the cost of the ground segment as well as the space segment.
With cheap, reliable access to space, orbital assembly becomes feasible, so engineers no longer have to spend many thousands of hours trying to fit everything into a single launch. Power supplies and antenna apertures can be increased, so ground stations can be smaller and cheaper. Satellites can be repaired and maintained on orbit, so it’s no longer necessary to use ultra-reliable components that cost 10 times as much.
This is almost a side note, however, because most of the commercial space activity enabled by cheap access to space will not involve satellites.
When transportation is expensive and unreliable, commercial activities are rare. When cost and danger are reduced, new industries emerge. If the only way to cross a river is by swimming the rapids, very few people will try to cross the river. That does not mean no industries will emerge if you build a bridge. You can’t predict the demand for a bridge by counting the number of number of people who swim the river.
Point of fact is that the cost overruns of JWST and MSL (largely due to attempting to fit within the capacity of current launch systems while doing more than past missions) are now many times there respective launch costs. So even if ‘commercial’ vehicles were somehow free the Jupiter would still enable a lower cost mission overall.
Again, that is an opinion, not a “fact.” *Please* learn the difference.
History does not support your conclusion. The enormous Saturn V did not enable Apollo to have low mission costs. In fact, the overall costs for project Apollo were much larger than what the overall costs for Lunar Gemini would have been, had Lunar Gemini been allowed to continue. Pound for pound, the Apollo capsule was *more* expensive than the Gemini capsule, not less. Both capsules had cost overruns. The Apollo overruns were larger.
Superheavy lifters did not lower overall mission cost in the 60’s, and there’s no reason to believe it would do so today. Ask yourself why Boeing and Lockheed don’t build Jupiter to launch those Direct TV satellites you talk about.
With low-cost access to space and orbital assembly, the problem of “attempting to fit within the capacity of current launch systems” goes away, entirely.
If you consider just the incremental cost of a Jupiter launch the cost is under $2K/kg.
In other words, even with accounting tricks that deliberately understate the actual costs, it’s still very expensive.
As Carl Sagan once said “The Universe is not required to conform to Human ambition”
So, you take your inspiration from one of the 20th Century’s leading opponents of human spaceflight???
That explains a lot.
But no ones figured out what to do in space that need that kind of flight rates.
Space tourism.
And exploration.
> Edward Wright Says:
> January 30th, 2010 at 10:11 pm
>
> There are many products and services that can be produced in
> space with current technologies. Just because you’re unaware
> of something does not mean it doesn’t exist.
The fact no one seems to know of them, or know how to do them economically, suggests you don’t know what you think you know.
Note that while there were lots of lists of things of great vale that could only be done in space, even companies that invested billions in such back when shuttle was expected to be a frequent flying space truck – found other ways to produce such things on the ground when shuttle – and NASA -became undependable.
>> Point of fact is that commercial services like Direct TV are not
>> going to get significantly less expensive even if the launch cost was free.
> That’s not a point of “fact”; it’s an opinion.
>
> Unfortunately, you didn’t do your homework before you formed
> that opinion. You simply assume that other costs are completely
> independent of transportation costs, but numerous trade studies
> show that assumption to be incorrect.
> Satellites are expensive to design and build, in large part, because
> they are automated systems that must function for years at a time
> without any possibility of maintenance. Furthermore, they must be
> packaged very tightly for launch, because it is not economically
> feasible to assemble them on orbit. Solar panels and antennas are
> limited in size by the need to fit them within a payload shroud, so
> ground stations need to be larger and more powerful. ==
Now whose pouring on incorrect assumptions. He was right and your wrong here. Direct TV wouldn’t save significant money in these ways. The sats have to be autonomous and self repairing indefinitely, since they can’t afford to lose their network for weeks waiting for a repair crew to get to GEO to fix something. much less wait for a replacment if the prime is unrepairable. Really, even if they could get a crew to GEO – it would be cheaper to just launch back up sats in advance. The extra sats, or launches, arn’t the big budget items.
And now a days, its not that hard to design them for several years of service life.
If the volume constraints of small launchers was a important issue – they pay for bigger launchers.
> With cheap, reliable access to space, orbital assembly becomes feasible, ==
In GEO? And why bother given how small the direct TV sats are? And why be so stupid as to launch such a complicated thing unassembled and untested?
SERIOUSLY high risk bad idea.
> == Power supplies and antenna apertures can be increased, so
> ground stations can be smaller and cheaper. ==
Ground stations now for direct TV are the size of a VCR and a dinner plate. They are dwarfed by the TV they feed signal to. Would they really be any cheaper much smaller? Would they really be any more desirable to the customer?
If Direct TV was figuring out where to invest in upgrades – it would be to design the system to be more storm tolerant (a major sticking point with customers) and possibly capable of providing internet or phone. Smaller base units aren’t going to be a big selling point.
> ==When transportation is expensive and unreliable, commercial
> activities are rare. When cost and danger are reduced, new industries
> emerge. ==
Generally true, but no ones figured out one – nor are you listing any.
No ones going to build CATS ships with no buyers. They have been listed and discused by the builders as doable for decades, but still no buyers.
No ones going to build a fleet to no where without someone saying they want build something in that nowhere.
>> So even if ‘commercial’ vehicles were somehow free the Jupiter
>> would still enable a lower cost mission overall.
Here your right Ed. That statement was so based on assumptions with no facts its ridiculous. How much is a Jupiter launch? Total cost per launch for Ares was expected to pus $8 B -$10 B. Are you assuming just margin costs? What is the commercial alternative?
> == Pound for pound, the Apollo capsule was *more* expensive than
> the Gemini capsule, not less. ==
Hell they were both more expensive then the Shuttle Orbiters!
>> kelly
>> But no ones figured out what to do in space that need that kind of flight rates.
> Martijn Meijering Says:
>
>Space tourism.
Possibly, but no one knows. Can space tourism generate enough demand for thousands, preferable millions, of flights a year? That’s the numbers of Airline flights per year, for some individual airliner models! Currently humanity launches 50+ launches to space a year in total. most couldn’t or wouldn’t launch on the same kind of craft.
> And exploration.
Definatly not. We never generated that kind of demand for exploration craft on Earth. Assuming we could in space is completely unreasonable. Certainly gov agencies wouldn’t have the demand and wouldn’t want to outsource the glory.
If your assuming future mining folks or something – I expect the bulk of their exploration craft would need to be converted craft designed for something else with heavy demand. That should be cheaper then custom craft with all new designs and systems.
If your launcher is small, you need less tonnage to get a high flight rate. Propellant is nearly perfectly divisible and exploration requires lots and lots of it.
The fact no one seems to know of them, or know how to do them economically, suggests you don’t know what you think you know.
Lots of people know of them, Kelly. Lots of people know how to do them economically.
The answer is quite simple: to these things economically, we must reduce the cost (and increasing the reliability) of space transportation.
Figuring that out isn’t rocket science. Lots of people have tried to explain that to you. The fact that you still don’t understand is a mystery to me, but the fact that you don’t know something doesn’t mean “no one knows.”
Now whose pouring on incorrect assumptions. He was right and your wrong here. Direct TV wouldn’t save significant money in these ways.
Really? Please tell me what errors you think Boeing, Lockheed, General Dynamics, Rockwell, etc. made in their trade studies, and send me a pointer to your trade study.
The sats have to be autonomous and self repairing indefinitely, since they can’t afford to lose their network for weeks waiting for a repair crew to get to GEO to fix something.
No, you made three mistakes: 1) it doesn’t take “weeks” to get to GEO. Given reliable, cheap transportation, there’s no reason why a repair crew couldn’t get there within 24 hours. 2) Satellite operators already have on-orbit spares because satellites can and do fail. “Self-repairing” satellites don’t exist outside of science fiction. 3) Regular maintenance would make on-orbit failures less likely. Do you really think satellite operators would wait for a failure to actually occur? Do you wait until your car blows a piston before you take it in for an oil change? Does Boeing wait for an engine to blow up before they change a turbine blade?
much less wait for a replacment if the prime is unrepairable. Really, even if they could get a crew to GEO – it would be cheaper to just launch back up sats in advance. The extra sats, or launches, arn’t the big budget items.
Until you show me a trade study with real numbers, your statements are meaningless.
Satellites cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Those are big budget items. With cheap access to space, launching a repair crew wouldn’t cost millions of dollars, but thousands of dollars. Even if it’s many thousands of dollars, that’s much less than building a new satellite.
And now a days, its not that hard to design them for several years of service life.
If it was easy, it wouldn’t cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
If the volume constraints of small launchers was a important issue – they pay for bigger launchers.
What launchers (existing or proposed) can carry a payload structure 20 meters in diameter? Or 50 meters? Even Jupiter couldn’t do that. With orbital assembly, building such structures becomes feasible.
> With cheap, reliable access to space, orbital assembly becomes feasible, ==
In GEO? And why bother given how small the direct TV sats are?
No, it would be easier to do the assembly in LEO, then move the satellite to GEO. And it’s unlikely that anyone would develop this capability just for direct TV satellites (or communication satellites in general). It will be developed for other markets, but once it exists, it can be applied to communication satellites. Just as microprocessors weren’t developed for satellites, but once they existed, satellite manufacturers used them.
And why be so stupid as to launch such a complicated thing unassembled and untested?
Again, that question has been answered by previous trade studies.
You have a severe case of Not Invented Here syndrome.
The International Space Station is a “complicated thing” that was assembled and tested on orbit.
A Bigelow space station is a “complicated thing” that will be assembled and tested on orbit.
An Intel fabrication plant is a very complicated thing (much more complex than a satellite or space station). When Intel needs a new fabrication plant, they build it on site.
Ground stations now for direct TV are the size of a VCR and a dinner plate. They are dwarfed by the TV they feed signal to.
Would they really be any cheaper much smaller? Would they really be any more desirable to the customer?
I guess you’ve never seen the uplink stations.
DirectTV’s high-definition dishes are 36″ by 22″. If that’s the size of your dinner plate, you need to go on a diet.
What makes you think TV displays have to be that huge? There are displays that you can carry around in your pocket. Wouldn’t you consider it desirable to have something smaller than a dinner plate to carry around in your pocket?
> ==When transportation is expensive and unreliable, commercial
> activities are rare. When cost and danger are reduced, new industries
> emerge. ==
Generally true, but no ones figured out one – nor are you listing any.
I’ve listed them for you several times now, but you continue repeating this falsehood. Why is that?
Entertainment. Recreation. Exploration. Scientific research. Point-to-point package service. Rapid global strike. Special forces.
I can lead a man to knowledge, but I cannot make you read.
No ones going to build CATS ships with no buyers. They have been listed and discused by the builders as doable for decades, but still no buyers.
Sorry, Kelly, but that is sheer ignorance. Do a web search for “Richard Branson” and “Robert Bigelow.”
>Space tourism.
Possibly, but no one knows. Can space tourism generate enough demand for thousands, preferable millions, of flights a year? That’s the numbers of Airline flights per year, for some individual airliner models!
What makes you think no one knows, Kelly?
Maybe you haven’t looked at the marketing research data, but many people have.
Airlines didn’t start with millions of flights per year, either. They were profitable long before they reached that level.
Currently humanity launches 50+ launches to space a year in total. most couldn’t or wouldn’t launch on the same kind of craft.
At one time, there were less than 50 airplane flights in total. At one time, there were fewer than 50 computers in the world. Just because something doesn’t exist today doesn’t mean it will never exist in the future.
> And exploration.
Definatly not. We never generated that kind of demand for exploration craft on Earth. Assuming we could in space is completely unreasonable. Certainly gov agencies wouldn’t have the demand and wouldn’t want to outsource the glory.
Once again, Kelly, you need to take off your blinders. You swallowed Mike Griffin’s lie that exploration is something only done by government agencies, and for some reason, you can’t get past it. There are millions of exploration craft sold each year. They’re called watercraft, SUVs, ATVs, snowmobiles, etc.
> Martijn Meijering Says:
> January 31st, 2010 at 11:16 am
>
> If your launcher is small, you need less tonnage to get a high
> flight rate. ==
Doesn’t mater, its the cargos to be launched – not tonage – doesn’t mater unless the customers are willing and able to break them down.
With propellant and crew they can be broken down. The rest can be launched on EELVs, even at current prices, provided landers, capsules etc are reusable.
> Edward Wright Says:
> January 31st, 2010 at 12:22 pm
>> The fact no one seems to know of them, or know how to do them
>> economically, suggests you don’t know what you think you know.
> Lots of people know of them, Kelly. Lots of people know how to do
> them economically.
>
> The answer is quite simple: to these things economically, we must
> reduce the cost (and increasing the reliability) of space transportation.
Doing that requires a bigger market and flight rate. So you on the one hand have a circular argument (they’d do it if there were cheap launchers, but we won’t build the launchers until they do it), on the other hand assume “they” know how, but wont bet enough to place the orders. (Which at theleast shows no one can make a argument that can convince investors that its likely, or more likely then other investments.)
>> Now whose pouring on incorrect assumptions. He was right
>> and your wrong here. Direct TV wouldn’t save significant money in these ways.
> Really? Please tell me what errors you think Boeing, Lockheed,
> General Dynamics, Rockwell, etc. made in their trade studies,
> and send me a pointer to your trade study.
Check out the Direct TV budgets. Or for that mater show me said mentioned Boeing, LM, GD, etc studies that sate they are wrong.
Bottom line building and launching the sats arn’t a big factor in deploying and maintaining the system.
>>The sats have to be autonomous and self repairing indefinitely,
>>since they can’t afford to lose their network for weeks waiting
>> for a repair crew to get to GEO to fix something.
> No, you made three mistakes:
> 1) it doesn’t take “weeks” to get to GEO. Given reliable, cheap
> transportation, there’s no reason why a repair crew couldn’t get
> there within 24 hours.
You can’t assemble a team and get them to Flagstaff in 24 hours. Your assuming the repair team, equipment, and on call launcher, can all be assembled and fielded immediately, and boost you to GEO in 24 hours? I’m not sure you can get to GEO in 24 fro launch. Really not sure you could get a launcher chartered in weeks (rather then years now), then get a LEO to GEO launcher chartered, etc.
>2) Satellite operators already have on-orbit spares because satellites
> can and do fail. ==
Likely much cheaper then the cost of on-call GEO launch repair team.
>3) Regular maintenance would make on-orbit failures less likely. ==
Really? It could as easily INCREASE the likelyhood of failures. After all they are pretty much solid state. No moving parts to speak of. Taking it apart, checking it, reassembling it, is likely to increase failure likelyhood.
==
Satellites cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Those are big budget items. With cheap access to space,
>==launching a repair crew wouldn’t cost millions of dollars, but
> thousands of dollars. ==
Thousands??! Your assuming cost per pound to GEO, on call 24/7, for $ per pound? I mean a couple guys with suits tools and spare parts have got to be a ton or 2. And really whats the likelyhood you can repair it in the field? Hubble took months to years to figure out and train to make specific repairs. it can be done quicker if your not NASA – but its not overnight.
Also your ignoring the cost of downtime for the sats.
Really its cheaper to just keep a couple spar sats on station. Odds are the old sat will wear out or be obsolete before you’ld need to repair them. And as likely as not that anything that knocks out a sat is some accident.
>>And now a days, its not that hard to design them for several years of service life.
> If it was easy, it wouldn’t cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
It costs hundreds of millions to design a new econobox car.
>> If the volume constraints of small launchers was a important
>> issue – they pay for bigger launchers.
> What launchers (existing or proposed) can carry a payload structure 20 meters in diameter?
What sat cargo planed for launch needs it?
>>> With cheap, reliable access to space, orbital assembly becomes feasible, ==
>> In GEO? And why bother given how small the direct TV sats are?
> No, it would be easier to do the assembly in LEO, then move the
> satellite to GEO.
Ignoring the issues of moving a bulky flimsy sat to GEO – its easier to build them in California or where ever, and boost them in one peace, rather then building all the inspace construction and servicing
> And it’s unlikely that anyone would develop this capability just for
> direct TV satellites (or communication satellites in general). It
> will be developed for other markets, ==
Such as?
>>And why be so stupid as to launch such a complicated thing unassembled and untested?
> Again, that question has been answered by previous trade studies.
So you say – yet no one delivers anything that way if they can avoid it. it was a ROYAL pain on the space station program. A big cost driver. NASA trades figured even after eating the cost to develop a shuttle-C like booster, a big 2 launch, 200 ton station would be perhaps90% cheaper adn they wouldn’t have had the tech problems in orbit (where they found the systems not tested together on the ground didn’t work in orbit).
>> A Bigelow space station is a “complicated thing” that will be assembled and tested on orbit.
Actually its doced in a couple peaces, not asembled in the sence your using.
> An Intel fabrication plant is a very complicated thing (much more
> complex than a satellite or space station). When Intel needs a
> new fabrication plant, they build it on site.
You really sound silly here. Factories can’t be shipped in one peace, and are built in place with massive infrastructure to support their construction. not the same in space – and WAY WAY off topic.
>>Ground stations now for direct TV are the size of a VCR and a
>>dinner plate. They are dwarfed by the TV they feed signal to.
>>
>> Would they really be any cheaper much smaller? Would they
>> really be any more desirable to the customer?
> I guess you’ve never seen the uplink stations.
I have, guess you assume (incorrectly) it would be smaller with a higher power GEO sat?
==
> What makes you think TV displays have to be that huge? There
> are displays that you can carry around in your pocket.
Which actually don’t need sats to get their TV network feeds. One other issue is the big sats are becoming obsolete. The big comsat clusters are being driven out of the market by fiber. Its getting so sats are only going to be supporting fringe markets of folks out in the boonies.
=
>>> ==When transportation is expensive and unreliable, commercial
>>> activities are rare. When cost and danger are reduced, new industries
>>> emerge. ==
>> Generally true, but no ones figured out one – nor are you listing any.
> I’ve listed them for you several times now, but you continue repeating
> this falsehood. Why is that?
Because generally none of the ideas you suggest are plausible. Or are so vague as to not be ideas so much as headings. such as:
> Entertainment. Recreation.
Not markets, just terms for fields. What entertainment market? What recreational market? What do you sell to who to do what?
> Exploration. Scientific research.
No market, adn again. What do you sell to who?
> Point-to-point package service. Rapid global strike. Special forces.
These I agree with (tried setting something up to do P2P) but the last 2 don’t have a market scale to drive costs down. Hell the ICBM market was for thousands of boosters and tens of thousands of
> I can lead a man to knowledge, but I cannot make you read.
Your assuming everyone except those you argue with know something – yet never act on it is lame and condescending.
>> No ones going to build CATS ships with no buyers. They have
>> been listed and discused by the builders as doable for decades,
>> but still no buyers.
> Sorry, Kelly, but that is sheer ignorance. Do a web search for “Richard Branson” and “Robert Bigelow.”
Niether are buying CATS launchers, nor have a market big enough to need them. We all hope they can grow toward that, but they NEVER claimed to expect to be there anytime soon. Possibly not anytime ever.
Doing that requires a bigger market and flight rate. So you on the one hand have a circular argument (they’d do it if there were cheap launchers, but we won’t build the launchers until they do it), on the other hand assume “they” know how, but wont bet enough to place the orders. (Which at theleast shows no one can make a argument that can convince investors that its likely, or more likely then other investments.)
This is precisely why HLV is harmful at this point in the history of manned spaceflight. An exploration program could provide the initial demand that reduces launch costs by enough to make large scale LEO tourism viable. And it could do so at precisely no cost to exploration.
This is true whatever the HLV is: EELV Phase 2 or higher, Shuttle-C, Direct or Ares. The only exception is EELV Phase 1 and that is because we need an EDS anyway and because it would scale down to current payload sizes in single stick configuration.
> Edward Wright Says:
> January 31st, 2010 at 12:39 pm
>>>Space tourism.
>> Possibly, but no one knows. Can space tourism generate
>> enough demand for thousands, preferable millions, of flights
>> a year? That’s the numbers of Airline flights per year, for some
>> individual airliner models!
> What makes you think no one knows, Kelly?
No data from any actual market. Lots of poll surveys asking folks if you could go to space for $X would you. But what folks say in surveys are a lot different from what they buy when it actually comes up for sale.
> Airlines didn’t start with millions of flights per year, either. They
> were profitable long before they reached that level.
Yes, but they didn’t need to start with aircraft with trans-pacific range (LEOs about as far away energy wise as a 8000? ish fight in a airliner), and similar craft already had sold in large numbers in WW-I, the airmail contracts, etc. And really more important, the airlines could point to actual numbers of passengers going from A to B, and calculate what % might pay the extra to take the plane.
>> Currently humanity launches 50+ launches to space a year in total.
>> most couldn’t or wouldn’t launch on the same kind of craft.
>== Just because something doesn’t exist today doesn’t mean it will never exist in the future.
True, just mentioning the current global launch market. In contrast when airlines started there weer tens of thousands of folks traveling around to places the planes could go to. So the Airlines could bet they could get some fraction of those folks and make a buck.
>>> And exploration.
>> Definatly not. We never generated that kind of demand for
>> exploration craft on Earth. Assuming we could in space is
>> completely unreasonable. Certainly gov agencies wouldn’t have
>> the demand and wouldn’t want to outsource the glory.
>Once again, Kelly, you need to take off your blinders. You swallowed
> Mike Griffin’s lie that exploration is something only done by
> government agencies, and for some reason, you can’t get past it.
> There are millions of exploration craft sold each year.
> They’re called watercraft, SUVs, ATVs, snowmobiles, etc.
Serouopsly specious argument – though it also confirms what I was saying, not what you were saying.
No, their are millions of ATVs,SUVs, snowmobiles sold each year. Exploration groups USE them, but they were not not the market they were built for, nor are they big enough of a market to justify building for.
> Martijn Meijering Says:
> January 31st, 2010 at 1:21 pm
> With propellant and crew they can be broken down.
??
> The rest can be launched on EELVs, even at current prices,
> provided landers, capsules etc are reusable.
Not exactly a significant market, though I really wish NASA would foster some significant RLV industry. Say sign a contract for launch services for 20 years that would pay enough it could demand a CATS RLV. but they arn’t going to — and really arn’t trustworthy to investors since they often burn folks and reneg on contracts.
> Martijn Meijering Says:
> January 31st, 2010 at 1:48 pm
>> Doing that requires a bigger market and flight rate. So you on
>> the one hand have a circular argument (they’d do it if there were
>> cheap launchers, but we won’t build the launchers until they do
>> it), on the other hand assume “they” know how, but wont bet
>> enough to place the orders. (Which at theleast shows no one
>> can make a argument that can convince investors that its likely,
>> or more likely then other investments.)
> This is precisely why HLV is harmful at this point in the history of
> manned spaceflight. An exploration program could provide the
> initial demand that reduces launch costs by enough to make large
> scale LEO tourism viable. And it could do so at precisely no cost
> to exploration. ==
It actually would have a high cost to exploration – or more precisely NASA- since it would eliminate the HLV development program. NASA was hoping to get over $30 billion to develop that and a billion or two to operate it. Shifting over to a commercial fuel suply contract could be a crippling cost to NASA. Potential one that could end maned exploration, if not the maned space, programs.
Note Martijn, the maned exploration program appears to have been canceled – tommorrow afternoon is apparently the scheduled announcement.
Just like under Clinton, NASA will be refocused on Earth observation.
That may very well be true. If so the HLV will perhaps be canceled before it flies, but probably not before the 2012 elections. SDLV proponents are apparently hoping for a battleship test flight before that. They may barely succeed in doing that.
If there’s no exploration, I have no problem with accepting I may not live to see large scale activity or fully commercial activity in LEO or both. I just want to set the record straight: HLV is not and has never been necessary for exploration. Ruling in SDLV for political reasons is a potentially honourable thing to do if you think exploration is worth taxpayers’ money. Insisting on SDLV and trying to rule out an all-commercial option is not. Lying about the facts and your own motives is wrong either way.
So you on the one hand have a circular argument (they’d do it if there were cheap launchers, but we won’t build the launchers until they do it),
Not correct. Companies like Scaled Composites, XCOR, Armadillo, etc. are developing cheap launchers right now. I’m amazed that you don’t know about them. (Or are you simply pretending?)
Check out the Direct TV budgets.
Why should I? You’re making the same mistake as President of DEC, who said no one would ever want a computer on his desk — because none of his customers told him they wanted a computer.
DEC’s customers may not have wanted microcomputers, but the development of microcomputers created new classes of customers while the people who told DEC that they didn’t want microcomputers either changed their minds, or went out of business.
Markets are dynamic, not static. A short while ago, there was no market for suborbital research. Now that companies are building suborbital vehicles, researchers who want to do suborbital science are popping up right and left. At one time, no one wanted to travel by airplane. Then companies like Boeing started to build airliners, and suddenly lots of people wanted to fly.
Bottom line building and launching the sats arn’t a big factor in deploying and maintaining the system.
Bottom line is that you don’t understand the effect of indirect transportation costs, which has been noted by numerous studies, some performed by your own company.
Top line is that you’re fixated on existing markets like satellites and ignore emerging markets that have the potential to be much larger.
You can’t assemble a team and get them to Flagstaff in 24 hours.
Maybe you can’t, Kelly. Don’t assume your limitations apply to everyone, and whatever you do, please don’t go into emergency medicine, firefighting, police work, critical tech support, etc.
Even Boeing has emergency response teams.
Really not sure you could get a launcher chartered in weeks (rather then years now
That’s another symptom of your chronic NIH syndrome. Call Net Jets and ask if it’s possible to get a charter in less than weeks or years. Tell me what they say when they quit laughing.
> Again, that question has been answered by previous trade studies.
So you say – yet no one delivers anything that way if they can avoid it.
No, Boeing, Lockheed, and a lot of other companies said that. If you refuse to read any any study that disproves your preconceived notions, I can’t help that.
Not markets, just terms for fields. What entertainment market? What recreational market?
Are you serious???
Quit playing stupid, Kelly. No one could be that ignorant, and I have better uses for my time than playing stupid games.
> Exploration. Scientific research.
No market, adn again. What do you sell to who?
You’ve never heard of NASA? ESA? NSF? The Suborbital Application Researchers Group? What about Dennis Tito? Richard Garriott? Charles Simonyi?
Go register for the Next Generation Suborbital Application Researchers Group. Meet some of the people you think don’t exist. Do *some* research, Kelly. Ignorance is not bliss, it’s just ignorance.
> Point-to-point package service. Rapid global strike. Special forces.
These I agree with (tried setting something up to do P2P) but the last 2 don’t have a market scale to drive costs down. Hell the ICBM market was for thousands of boosters and tens of thousands of
Global strike has nothing to do with ICBMs. There’s a big difference between warfighting requirements and blowing up the world. The military has flown hundreds of thousands of sorties in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Your assuming everyone except those you argue with know something
I don’t assume anything. I know that the people who wrote the trade students have knowledge because I’ve seen their studies. When I ask to see your studies, you duck the question — so I suspect the studies don’t exist. If you can’t back your claims with math, then the claims are worthless.
> Sorry, Kelly, but that is sheer ignorance. Do a web search for “Richard Branson” and “Robert Bigelow.”
Niether are buying CATS launchers
Eyeballs rolling. Are you serious? Are you really that uninformed???
Richard Branson is paying Scaled Composites to develop SpaceShip Two (a suborbital CATS vehicle) and SpaceShip Three (an orbital CATS vehicle).
Robert Bigelow is in the market for vehicles to carry passengers and supplies to his space stations.
If you didn’t know that, please go do some reading. If you did know it and are just playing games, please stop wasting my time.
>Martijn Meijering Says:
> January 31st, 2010 at 2:22 pm
>
> That may very well be true. If so the HLV will perhaps be canceled
> before it flies, but probably not before the 2012 elections.
> SDLV proponents are apparently hoping for a battleship test
> flight before that. They may barely succeed in doing that.
Ironically, the HLV will likely be funded as a crumb to folks. But the exploration program to use it will be canceled.
I guess they can justify it as a system that can launch replacement ISS parts or something.
Still a huge step backwards.
> If there’s no exploration, I have no problem with accepting I may not
> live to see large scale activity or fully commercial activity in LEO or
> both. ==
Yup. And just to burn a little more, its just been 29 years since i first started at NASA on the shuttle program at JSC.
>== I just want to set the record straight: HLV is not and has never
> been necessary for exploration. ==
Agreed, but it might be politically necessary for exploration programs.
🙁
O’Keefe wanted to reform NASA into a productive efficient organization. He hit a wall in Congress and gave up. Griffen embraced pork as a goal, and specked out a launch configuration that cost (in inflation adjusted $’s) about 3 times as much as shuttle to develop, and nearly as much as the total moon race!! A STAGGERING expense for such a crappy backward systems. Worse it bored the crap out of folks. He called it Apollo on steroids, others called it Apollo the rerun, but for that kind of money we should be fielding something out of 2001, not a systems rejected in the ’60’s.
>== Insisting on SDLV and trying to rule out an all-commercial option
> is not. Lying about the facts and your own motives is wrong either way.
Yeah, but it works in Washington.
They now have to fight a movement that wasn’t nipped in the bud and is not amenable to the “take out the leaders” strategy. At present it also has the advantage of being too diffuse for the leadership to be bought off.