The press conference starts in less than two hours, but I have some reason to believe that it has something to do with this. Whatever it is.
[Update a few minutes later]
Less than an hour before the press conference, Alan Boyle seems to have the scoop. And the web cast is live now. Here’s the low-res version for the bandwidth challenged.
[Update a few minutes before the presser]
They’re playing Elton John’s “Rocket Man” on the webcast, waiting for the event to begin.
[Update during presser]
The wingspan of that aircraft is over three times the distance of the Wright Brothers first flight.
[Update during questions]
An order of magnitude more money than SpaceShipOne. In other words, less than a billion.
[Update a few minutes later]
They’re going to have to certify that aircraft under Part 127. That will triple its cost at least. On the other hand, it might find other markets.
[Update a couple minutes later]
They just asked my question about schedule (though others probably emailed that as well). First aircraft flight 2015, first space flight in the next year. I asked whether they fuel on the ground or in the air, but the question has been asked of the panel yet. It may not be.
[Update a few minutes later]
About an hour into the conference now, and Clark Lindsey has been taking notes.
This sounds suspicously like one of Jon Goff’s ideas.
Well, there have been a lot of people other than me over the years looking at air-launched ideas. While their idea has some similarities to ones I’ve written about on SB, it’s also got plenty of differences. The good news is that it looks like it’s perfectly technically sound. It also looks like they’re still doing the trades at the moment, so they may evolve to something even better during the process.
Will be fun to watch.
~Jon
The amazing part is that Mike Griffin is involved.
Amazing and frightening. Fortunately, he’s just on the board, so he probably won’t do much damage.
Just because a man has a past doesn’t mean he can’t have a future. That said, I believe the man belongs in jail.
I like your first sentence. I’ll admit that I’m worried that I’m already seeing signs of some of Mike Griffin’s less-than-healthy biases, but he *is* pretty technically competent, and he’s not actually running the show, so I’m going to cross my fingers and hope Paul Allen doesn’t end up regretting having Griffin on his board (for Mike’s sake as well).
~Jon
Burt Rutan is good friends with Mike Griffin, who is his golfing partner. There are two sure ways to ruin a man’s judgement — sex and golf.
MG is involved with Elon?!? Cue the Ghostbusters quote:
“Mass hysteria….dogs and cats living together….end of the world”
So… a multistage rocket attached to an air carrier?
Isn’t the whole point of air launch is that the air carrier serves as the first stage?
It looks like the “modified Falcon 9” is more like the old, scrapped Falcon 5 with a pair of stub wings. What happens to it after the second stage separates? Does it fly back and land? Under what power?
What happens to the second stage? Expendable?
I’m not sure I see the advantage of the humongous carrier vehicle…
The principle advantages of air launch are performance, by allowing the nozzle to be optimized for higher altitude, and flexibility, by being able to fly around weather, and launch into any orbital plane (for instance, it makes it much easier to rendezvous in a single orbit).
As for reusability, SpaceX is doing R&D to allow the first stage of the Falcon to fly back and land vertically. This system will presumably add performance margin to allow this.
Well, the main advantage is the ability to hit any azimuth from a single runway. Air launch almost always just buys back all of the performance losses incurred by ruggedizing for horizontal carry, the expensive pull up manuever,etc.
This shows a certain seriousness to space tourism. If you have a space hotel and a transport device (dragon advanced). The only way to get from the ground to the hotel without keeping your very wealthy tourists crammed in the can for 24 to 36 hours is by utilizing air launch. This way, one can go from hatch closed to docking in at most four hours.
Air launching is the only way to achieve a fast rendezvous but it makes it much easier. Several of the Gemini missions achieved rendezvous in 4 revs or less and Gemini 11 did it on the first rev. That tends to take a lot of propellant, though.
Should read: Air launching is not the only way to achieve a fast rendezvous but it makes it much easier.
The only way to get from the ground to the hotel without keeping your very wealthy tourists crammed in the can for 24 to 36 hours is by utilizing air launch. This way, one can go from hatch closed to docking in at most four hours.
Yes.
The aircraft isn’t meaningfully a stage. It buys you altitude but not much velocity. The high altitude takes away one the big drivers – punching through the troposphere.
“I’m not sure I see the advantage of the humongous carrier vehicle…”
The key is reusability and attempting to approach the asymptotic ‘cost of fuel alone’ launch price.
Iff the added complexity doesn’t screw things, you’ve got at least half-a-stage into airplane-like launch rates, maintenance levels, and fuel costs.
I’m not convinced it is worth it for SpaceX – being distracted by this doesn’t seem fruitful when they’re doing pretty well on the path of engineering the factories and engines into actual mass production methods.
Mr Boyle seems a bit confused: he thinks that Taurus XL is air launched, which would be a great surprise to my friends at Orbital. The payload losses he mentioned were both caused by fairing sep problems, nothing to do with air launch.
Looks like a boatload of technical risk – the A/C and LV structures, stability & control and separation dynamics should be interesting. Just for fun: imagine a rejected takeoff scenario at max GW. Wouldn’t want to be a passenger in the Dragon if there’s an emergency just after takeoff.
Hope it works out fore them, but I wonder how the additional operational complexity figures into their costs. Falcon 9 seems to be a pretty efficient vehicle, with minimal ground support.
I suspect they’ll take off with the Falcon 9 unfueled and fill the tanks in flight. That would make a takeoff abort a lot safer. With the dual fuselage design, you could have the RP-1 in one fuselage and the LOX in the other. The Dragon LES is being designed for a pad abort from a vertical launch. Making it work while the rocket is hanging horizontally is doable given SpaceX’s pusher approach using multiple abort motors.
I suspect a Dragon abort before the Falcon is dropped would be very…… exciting….. for the carrier A/C.
It’d be quite exciting for all involved. The G loads would be quite interesting but trivial compared to impacting the ground. Years ago, I watched a video of an experimental upward seeking ejection seat. The seat knew the airplane’s attitude and gimballed the rocket motor to direct the seatt upwards. It was designed for use on Navy aircraft where things can go to hell in a hurry. The seat was designed so that an airplane could be in a 90 degree bank with one wing on the deck and the pilot could successfully eject. He could even be upside down as low as about 100 feet and survive. It would’ve been one hell of a ride. Modifying the Dragon LES to curve upwards should be achievable if not a pleasant ride.
Assuming the airplane configuration is similar to White Knight Two with the rocket riding between the twin fuselages, an upward abort shouldn’t come too close to any of the structure. Once the capsule is clear, the airplane crew can jettison the rocket if necessary. If the rocket is unfueled, that may not be necessary except in the most extreme emergencies such as losing multiple engines on takeoff.
Mike Griffin has been involved in commercial space ventures before. he will be an asset to this operation.
Not to get too snarky, but I am delighted to see that this is a commercial space company that is actually commercial. It is privately financed and is designed to service a variety of markets, both government and commercial.
This having been said, if this thing works, the justification for spending $6 billion on so-called commercial space is rendered nil.
How about the $20B spent on government space? You simply refuse to get it don’t you?
Payload to LEO is 14k pounds. How it destroys the justification for spending on commercial space is something that needs explaining. (somewhere else hopefully)
It is privately financed and is designed to service a variety of markets, both government and commercial.
You mean like SpaceX is?
But SpaceX (which he hates) is part of this project (which he likes).
And Mark has recently defended Gingrich’s lunar colony ideas against Romny. I guess he didn’t notice Gingri wants the lunar colony to be built, owned, and operated by — are you ready for this, Mark? — boo, hiss, private enterprise!
Illogical, illogical! All units, relate! Norman, coordinate!
So, Mark has finally found one commercial space company he likes? Or at least doesn’t hate?
And he wants them to pursue both government and commercial markets?
But he still doesn’t want Congress to allocate any money to buy those launches???
Can anyone other than Mark not see the contradiction there?
Maybe he thinks Paul Allen should just give the government free launches?
Can anyone other than Mark not see the contradiction there?
Matula will probably be along shortly to claim government purchasing a product is a subsidy.
Leland,
No, in the world of business a subsidy is when the government pays for a firm’s research and development. “Commercial” cargo or crew by itself isn’t, when the government is only paying for seats or cargo by the pound, but COTS/CCDev is because the government is reimbursing the firms for their research and development without any cargo or crew actually being delivered to the ISS.
You mean, in your head it is. The rest of us actually know what a subsidy is.
Trent,
I think the first definition applies well to COTS/CCDev, since both are about systems development with no actual cargo/crew being delivered to the ISS.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/subsidy
[[[sub·si·dy
[suhb-si-dee] Show IPA
noun, plural -dies.
1. a direct pecuniary aid furnished by a government to a private industrial undertaking, a charity organization, or the like.
2. a sum paid, often in accordance with a treaty, by one government to another to secure some service in return.
3. a grant or contribution of money.
4. money formerly granted by the English Parliament to the crown for special needs.
Synonyms
1. Subsidy, subvention are both grants of money, especially governmental, to aid private undertakings. A subsidy is usually given to promote commercial enterprise: a subsidy to manufacturers during a war. A subvention is usually a grant to stimulate enterprises connected with science and the arts: a subvention to a research chemist by a major company. ]]]
I find it interesting how New Spacers, who advocate “free markets”, feel the need to twist logic to deny that COTS/CCDev are government subsidies to the industry. I guess the mental gymnastics are the only way they are able to reconcile reality with their belief systems. But by denying that COTS/CCDev are subsidies they really reduce their creditability, which is probably why the programs are such a hard sell, especially as there in nothing inherently evil in government subsidies, except of course in the minds of libertarians…
I think the first definition applies well to COTS/CCDev, since both are about systems development with no actual cargo/crew being delivered to the ISS.: a direct pecuniary aid furnished by a government to a private industrial undertaking, a charity organization, or the like.
IOW, you are an idiot.
And I was right.
Very exciting. Couple of thoughts:
-Air launch could allow a 1st stage recovery with no turnaround if drop occurred on a path that led straight back to the landing pad. That would be very good for propellant use.
-While I’m not sure about filling after takeoff, LOX would have to be topped off during flight. Most launches today cut LOX flow just a few minutes before liftoff and the system pressurizes very quickly.
-I vaguely remember reading (I think it was in Rick Fleeter’s book) that air launch nets you about 7% increase in capacity, but the biggest advantage is ‘cutting the umbilical’ to the payload earlier leading to more robust satellite design
Carrying a fully fueled Falcon 9 horizontally on the plane is carrying a really big bomb. RP-1 is basically kerosene. It shouldn’t be too difficult to carry the fuel in a fuselage and fill the tanks while in flight. I’d put the LOX in the opposite fuselage. From what I’ve read, they topped off the LOX tank on the old X planes (X-1, X-2, X-15) before release.
For both RP-1 and LOX, I’d include jettison systems to dump the propellant in an emergency. Most of the weigh of any rocket is the propellant. Carrying the rocket unfueled until after takeoff means you might not need to dump the rocket or have the Dragon abort while horizontally at low altitude.
I just read the Spaceflight Now article. Interesting that they’re using a Falcon 5 instead of a 9. Saving 4 engines on the first stage should lower costs and complexity. Cool.
If they fueled the rocket from a modified Air Forcce tanker at altitude, they’d greatly simplify take-off aborts and also have a much larger payload capacity, and if something on the rocket doesn’t check out at altitude, prior to fueling, they wouldn’t need to dump the fuel prior to landing.
That’s true but I suspect the reason the airplane is so big is to give it enough payload capacity to carry the rocket, payload and propellant all in one go. Adding the aerial refueling does offer some advantages but you could end up needing more than one tanker to carry enough propellant for a single rocket. According to the Air Force fact sheets, the maximum fuel offload capacity for a KC-135 is 200,000 pounds. A KC-10 has greater offload capacity, probably enough to refuel the rocket.
Would such a long wing span, somewhat flexible airplane be able to perform the stationkeeping and fine maneuvering necessary for air to air refueling?
Air launch has obvious operational and performance advantages, as Rand outlined, while the twin-fuselage design has fabrication advantages for a low production run vehicle. However, the key element in any such concept is the orbiter so, while the Falcon 9 may be a good starting point, I assume their plan is to eventually develop a fully reusable upper-stage.
One other thing to note about air-launch systems is that the key to getting good orbital performance is the flight path angle at separation, rather than altitude. Previous concepts have envisaged a number of different ways to achieve this (e.g. rockets in the aircraft’s tail, or after-burning in the jet engine’s by-pass duct), so I’ll be interested to see if/how they’re considering this.
At least the concept they showed didn’t really take this into consideration (it was a drop-and-light, Pegasus style, with only a slight pull-up maneuver prior to separation), but that doesn’t mean that a) the pretty videos they’re showing are perfectly representative of the baseline concept, or b) that they aren’t open to evaluating alternatives during the preliminary design phase. Burt did mention the issue, including things like putting rockets on the aircraft to help it pitch up, but the current concept didn’t reflect anything like that.
It’ll be fun to see where this goes. I’ve got my obvious technical biases on how to approach a project like this, and while they aren’t doing things exactly how I would, I still think they’re likely going to come up with a perfectly workable design that could make a big difference for the industry.
~Jon
I haven’t crunched any numbers, but conventional wing weights don’t scale well with size because you’re building a longer and longer cantilever beam, and stiffness can become a problem. Rutan’s Voyager had severe stiffness problems, but wasn’t big enough to get into the weight penalties.
This makes me wonder if a giant composite Avro Vulcan would be a lower-risk approach, avoiding any potential mechanical resonances between the fuselages with the the central wing section acting as a torque rod, while also allowing a higher speed due to the delta wing and higher altitude due to the very low wing loading, with the potential to allow it slip supersonic during the recovery after a toss release.
Unless you’re able to at least partially recess the rocket into the fuselage, you’d need very long landing gear to provide adequate ground clearance. Think B-58 Hustler style landing gear. That’s doable but heavy.
The low aspect ratio has advantages for high speed flight but high induced drag for low speed flight. An airplane is a series of compromises flying in close formation.
You’re right about the very long wing requiring a heavy spar but I think the twin fuselages reduce the bending moment quite a bit compared to a single fuselage. More of the weight is distributed further out in the wing. I’m sure they learned a lot from the White Knight Two building experience that will factor into this design.
Air launch also lets you operate outside the national boundaries of anyone giving you too many regulatory headaches. ^_^
I wish it was so easy. So long as the company is a US one, the FAA claims jurisdiction wherever they launch (since the US gov’t would, by treaty, be on the hook for damages if that country harmed people or property in another country). That said, having the ability to place your launch point out over water, or in the empty desert, gives you some real safety/regulatory benefits compared to land launch.
~Jon
And as someone mentioned above, if they try to recover the first stage, you can potentially launch towards the recovery area (e.g. over the Gulf of Mexico for a Florida recovery) making it easier. That would eliminate the need to reverse course and return to the takeoff pad.
Yup, I wrote about that concept several years ago. I think John Hare was the one who gave me the idea in the comments section of an earlier installment in that series:
http://selenianboondocks.com/2008/09/orbital-access-methodologies-part-vi-air-launched-glideforward-tsto/
~Jon
Someone should show Paul Allen’s photo to Harry Reid with the caption, “Here’s one of those unicorns you say doesn’t exist, asshole.” The company has already hired 100 people and they’re going to hire more.
The article in today’s wsj stated they will release at 30k feet altitude. Does that seem low to anyone else?
It’s low compared to the White Knight One and Two that drop at 50K but not that different from the Pegasus being dropped from an L-1011. Everything is a trade-off. Carrying the rocket to higher altitude might gain you a little more performance but you’d need a larger wingspan and perhaps larger engines for the airplane.
It looks to me that while this new effort will benefit somewhat in performance of the rocket, the much more important consideration is the operational flexibility this gives SpaceX to meet it’s obligations resulting from it’s healthy launch manifest. All SpaceX is on the hook for. Seems to be the production of an F5 thrust assembly and the wing assembly. Everything stacked on top of the thrust assembly looks like it can be made in the existing F9 hardware manufacturing toolset. Bigelow is also a clear winner if it pans out for xAstrolaunch.
The really interesting development is the addition of Mike Griffin. Has he had his “road to Damascus” conversion to New Space? Will he do for new space what Paul did for the Christians? I’m not holding my breath, but the conversation could get interesting.
Careful with the Paul references, or this thing’s giant hanger will inevitably be dubbed “St. Mike’s Cathedral.”
t/Space air-launch back from the dead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukz5rYnqwWU