…and Sir Richard moves on:
Dulles, Va.-based Orbital is teaming with Virgin Galactic of New Mexico on the Commercial Crew Development 2 (CCDev 2) project. Virgin Galactic will market commercial rides on the spacecraft, conduct drop tests of the orbital space vehicle using its WhiteKnightTwo aircraft and offer transport services for the space vehicle, industry sources said. Although Orbital expects to launch and land the spacecraft at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., in the event of an abort, WhiteKnightTwo would be used to ferry the spaceship between its landing location and the Cape.
Virgin is also expected to announce this week a separate CCDev 2 bid led by Sierra Nevada Corp., the big winner in NASA’s first round of Commercial Crew Development awards earlier this year. The Sparks, Nev.-based firm garnered $20 million in CCDev 1 funds to mature its Dream Chaser orbital spacecraft, a six-passenger lifting-body vehicle based on NASA’s HL-20 concept from the early 1990s that the company has been working on for several years.
I can’t reveal the source, but I am reliably informed that at Burt Rutan’s retirement dinner last week, Sir Richard phoned it in from Necker Island, with a video lamenting Burt’s abandoning the field (though Burt had always been on record as not knowing how to do orbit — at heart he was always an airplane guy, and one of the best ever). With the hybrid engine problems, I take this as a sign that, while he still hopes to make his mark in the suborbital world, his focus has shifted to a higher velocity game. It can’t be a result of SpaceX’s success last week, because both deals have to have been in work for months, but I suspect that the week of the Dragon had some influence as to when to make announcements.
The Congress will do what it does when it reassembles in January, but with Bigelow’s habitats beckoning, I doubt that anything they do will have much influence over our future in space, at this point. At worst, they will only be able to continue to waste the taxpayers’ money.
FWIW,
It appears more likely that the announcement came out today because today is the deadline for the CCDEV2 proposals
http://procurement.jsc.nasa.gov/ccdev2/schedule.htm
I’m not sure the Dragon success had much to do with it.
In any case, it appears there is now a better than even shot at the birth of an actual space INDUSTRY with multiple launchers and space vehicles.
I am not surprised Spaceship Two is the end of the line for the X-Prize. It makes sense for VG to move on.
[[[The Congress will do what it does when it reassembles in January, but with Bigelow’s habitats beckoning, I doubt that anything they do will have much influence over our future in space, at this point. At worst, they will only be able to continue to waste the taxpayers’ money.]]]
No, at worst they will keep SpaceX, Orbital and Sierra Nevada so busy working on NASA contracts true commercial HSF is delayed even further.
I presume they’re going to develop something along these lines:
http://www.aero.org/publications/crosslink/winter2004/01.html
Actually, I would expect the folks who developed the X-37 would have a leg up on this.
so busy working on NASA contracts true commercial HSF is delayed even further
How horrible for them to have a paying customer. NASA doesn’t even have enough business to keep SpaceX half busy.
With the hybrid engine problems, I take this as a sign that, while he still hopes to make his mark in the suborbital world, his focus has shifted to a higher velocity game.
People keep talking about hybrid engine problems as if they were a given, but that is not apparent from the information that has been released. I suspect you have inside information to that effect, is that true?
And wouldn’t the separate bid with SNC still use the same hybrid engines?
From the link…
“Orbital Sciences Corp. is proposing a new lifting-body spacecraft capable of carrying at least four passengers to orbit by 2015 in the competition for a second round of NASA commercial crew taxi development contracts slated for award in March, according to industry sources.”
Hmm… a four crew lifting body spacecraft. What does that remind me of?
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/nasa/1534782
MPM: The “information that has been released” on hybrid engine problems is: (1) a very public and well-documented explosion during ground testing of their “perfectly safe” hybrid, where the (public) incident investigation showed that nitrous is not actually “perfectly safe” to handle; and (2) the public flight test log for White Knight 2/Space Ship 2, which still have never flown with their engine mounted, much less fired it; and (3) the public firing test log for SS2’s engine, which is pretty bare, and (IIRC) mostly mentions sub-scale tests.
It’s “evidence of absence” not “absence of evidence” — the rocket motor development was set back quite a bit by the explosion, and all indications are that it’s still not quite ready to go.
The Dream Chaser uses a conventional Atlas 5 rocket for the first stage. The vehicle itself does still use a hybrid, so I think you’re right to say VG isn’t quite giving up on hybrids per se. Nor are they completely giving up on White Knight 2 — but both bid dramatically scale back their reliance on the SS2/WK2/Rocket Motor 2 infrastructure VG has been developing.
One of the completed CCDev milestones was doing three hot firings on a single day.
Three in one day? That’s nothing. XCOR, Masten, and Armadillo routinely do three in one hour without touching the vehicle in between. Heck, some or all of those companies have probably done three in one flight with mid-air restarts. The decision (or lack thereof) to stick with hybrids is and will continue to be the achilles heel of the VG system – cost-wise, operations-wise, reliability-wise, safety-wise, and innovation-wise.
Maybe it is, but I’m still curious if Rand has inside information to that effect.
Don’t confuse problems of ill tempered nitrous oxidizer with problems of the hybrid engine configuration. At the same time, don’t expect the hybrid engine configuration to help much when one of the propellants used has a nasty temper. Hybrid rocket engines work very well when the individual propellants are well behaved.
Ken,
There are paying customers, like Bigelow and the comsat firms, and then there are government contracts. Don’t confuse two as the latter requires complete and absolute submission and obedience to whims that change frequently while the former simply pays for service received. Its why government contracts tend to absorb all the firms time leaving little for paying customers. That is also why outside the aerospace world the government is seen as a customer of last resort, the one you sell to after you run out of paying customers, not the first one you pursue 🙂
Rand says: …at heart he was always an airplane guy, and one of the best ever
Well, it may be heresy, but here’s an airplane guy who has never been all that impressed by His Burtness. Too many of his designs are odd just for the sake of being odd. His distaste for technology such as fly-by-wire seems more Luddite than honest trade study results. I think his biggest technical legacy will be Scaled’s techniques for composite construction, not his corpus of aircraft designs. And no, this is not sour grapes in any way shape or form – I do not compete with Burt at all, nor have I ever.
re: “I can’t reveal the source, but I am reliably informed that at Burt Rutan’s retirement dinner last week, Sir Richard phoned it in from Necker Island, with a video lamenting Burt’s abandoning the field”
Sir Richard’s video expressed comic disbelief that Rutan was truly retiring.
Don’t confuse [the] two as the latter requires complete and absolute submission and obedience to whims that change frequently…
No confusion here Thomas. Since they seem to be pursuing all valuable customers the danger is minimal. If the government becomes too demanding, they can just drop them as a customer. It is a new world thanks mainly to Bigelow.
If you doubt they will be a contendah, just wait and watch.
Ken,
[[[If the government becomes too demanding, they can just drop them as a customer.]]]
They may find that easier said then done given the money they have taken so far. When you think of contracts with NASA think tarbaby.
I wonder, given all the problems and that it is clearly emerging that Spaceshiptwo is a technical dead end, if Sir Branson would have funded the X-Prize winner if he had it to do over. It seems he would have been better off just focusing on a orbital system from the start.
In short, will history judge the X-Prize and the focus on sub-orbital tourism it encouraged as just an expense detour down a dead end street?
…will history judge the X-Prize and the focus on sub-orbital tourism it encouraged as just an expense detour down a dead end street?
No.
They may find that easier said then done given the money they have taken so far.
It’s a clearly defined schedule with an end point. As I understand it, they only get money as mile posts are achieved. Don’t tell me they can’t just not go for any new contracts. SpaceX is in no danger of bankruptcy, so ‘we the people’ will not be buying them any time soon. Although I wish they’d sell some stock to us little people.
Robotic TBM (Tunnel Boring Machine). It seems to me at this point that anyplace that we’re likely to send folk to for the long haul in this solar system is not going to have a local equivalent to the Van Allen belt. Which would mean no meaningful protection from the solar wind, cosmic rays and other suchlike phenomena. I like Zubrin’s idea of setting up propellant factories first in his Mars First smash and grab. Take it a step further and send in the tunnelers for long term habitation. Would a robotic TBM even be possible?
Rand,
[[[…will history judge the X-Prize and the focus on sub-orbital tourism it encouraged as just an expense detour down a dead end street?
No.]]]
So at what point will you accept it was a failure? Or is failure a term you only use for NASA programs like the Shuttle?
The X-Prize was suppose to create a sub-orbital tourists boom. The tourists, at least limited number the bought tickets based on the hype, are still waiting….
I’m sorry you’re so childish and impatient, Thomas. I don’t know how to help you.
Yeah, I believe I said at least 3 years ago that the X-Prize really should have included a rule or two more to encourage the winners to actually build the vehicles that they were going to use for flying paying customers. Of course, 3 years ago everyone knew Scaled was going to be the first to fly paying customers.. and no-one else could get investment. Things have changed since then because, instead of drowning in despair, the rest of the industry kept on keeping on. You can morn about what might have been, or moan about how slow things are going.. or look to the future and try to contribute.
I find this rush to trash suborbital very amusing. All the orbital platforms that we are seeing are all expendable and have very high cost structures. SpaceX for example is quoting at least $100 million dollars for crewed access to LEO. With a high enough flight rate, an Atlas V- bare bones launch vehicule/capsule system may even become roughly competitive price-wise with SpaceX.
It is the suborbital guys (XCOR, Armadillo, Masten and potentially Blue Origin) who will develop scaled up, reusable launch vehicles that will drastically lower the cost to orbit, and enable a whole new market in nanosatellite launches even in the interim once their suborbital vehicles become operational.
Rand,
[[[I’m sorry you’re so childish and impatient, Thomas. I don’t know how to help you.]]]
I asked an honest question. You claim repeatably the Shuttle was a failure because it failed to achieve its program goals. It looks more and more like the X-Prized failed to achieve its program goals, yet you won’t call it a failure. Why the double standard?
Trent,
[[[look to the future and try to contribute.]]]
Part of looking to the future is a willingness to learn from the mistakes of the past so you don’t repeat them. Pointing out why programs failed is also a contribution.
KVY,
The problem is that its difficult to see a path for scaling up Spaceshiptwo to an orbital system, one of the key reasons I suspect Sir Richard Branson is moving forward.
I have long been an advocate for suborbital (even when everyone was SSTO crazy in the 1990’s) but not the Xprize which misdirected many firms into a cul-de-sac in the rush to win. Do you recall the “runner up” that was closest to Spaceshipone in flying? It was a V-2 clone that would be launched from a balloon…
Thomas – I guess you didn’t follow it very closely. The two closest runner ups were a balloon-launched rocket and a V2 replica. Different teams.
Even if suborbital ends up being a dead end technically (which I doubt, since it’s a pretty small step from suborbital to making a cheap smallsat launcher that pays for itself, and from there the story writes itself), the fact that it is being done commercially means it will not be a dead end. Most of the risk was not technical. There was market risk, and having feasible hardware has given a good idea of what the real market is: smaller than ideal, but not so small that it can’t be profitably served (although, fwiw, it’s probably too small for a craft the size of WK2/SS2). Then there was the regulatory and licensing risk, which again having flying hardware has forced the resolution of. And there was financial risk, but several of these companies have shown that it is possible to deliver space hardware at drastically reduced prices compared to traditional sources.
Now, if this had all been a government program, it would probably have failed long ago and told us nothing of value. But the fact is that some dozens of NewSpace firms have succeeded at raising investment, delivering on contracts, winning prizes, and building hardware over the span of a decade and through some of the worst economic times in memory. That means that the capital is likely to continue to at least trickle into the industry for a long time. At that point, it is a waiting game for the first high-profitability business plan to be executed, at which point the trickle becomes a flood.