Transterrestrial Musings

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April fools, Rand!

Posted by Daniel Schmelzer at April 1, 2006 06:00 PM

I'm just shocked that when I finally come to a major crossroads in my life, a soul-searing epiphany, that I'm mocked in my own comments section. It makes me think that it's time to start censoring them.

Posted by Rand Simberg at April 1, 2006 06:03 PM

Cobblers. You sound like an old-line NSS member.

Posted by Simon Jester at April 1, 2006 06:15 PM

I know how you feel. I decided today that introducing democracy to the Middle East just isn't worth it. We should just surrender and go home.

If we act humble enough, they'll leave us alone.

Posted by Big D at April 1, 2006 08:16 PM

The Falcon 1 launch failure is disappointing, but not disastrous, and not totally unexpected. Elon Musk has said that he's willing and able to finace several unsucessful launches, if necesary, to develop a successful low cost launch vehicle. We'll have to see if he stands by this.

And yes, it's true that Rutan essentially duplicated duplicated NASA's feats of four decades ago, but I believe that there are some important differences. SS1 is capable of carying three people. I suspect that in constant dollars, the SS1 program was much less costly than the X-15 program, though I don't have the numbers. Funding for SS2 seems assured. The incremental approach to space access has real promise.

Space IS hard. That first step is a real doosey. We'll undoubtably have more failures, but we can succeed if we keep trying. A diversity of approaches improves the chance of success. While many "garage" efforts fail, those that succeed can win big. We don't have to rely exclusively on big government programs.

Posted by Steve Rogers at April 1, 2006 08:26 PM

Buck up, buckeroo. Cavalry's on the way. Best place to fire the rockets is nadir.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at April 1, 2006 08:28 PM

Rand: I agree with most everything that you said, however it still remains that the government and We The People need to be clear about what we wish to accomplish in space and why.
Your comment that it is ultimately for our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren is spot on. In the meantime, I think there are three principle areas that we can help.
1) Help spreading the word.
In this your web site has proven indispensable for me. I actually persuaded one of my friends who is a space fan to vote for President Bush in 2004 solely because of his support for the Vision for Space Exploration. It may be time to consider one-issue voting. This brings me to number 2.

2)Lobbying Congress and letting them know that there is support and a constituency for Space exploration leading toward colonization.

3) Supporting original research to help open the High Frontier. The primary vehicle for this remains the Space Studies Institute which is one of the few space "organizations" that goes beyond lobbying and public relations toward active scientific research. It has recently renewed itself under Dr. Lee Valentine's leadership with a beautiful new web presence and deserves our support.

Posted by Adam at April 1, 2006 08:44 PM

I am tempted to coment, but then Rand would deny that he was making an April Fool's post and would claim that he was being as sarcastic as every other day (g).

Posted by Mark R. Whittington at April 1, 2006 09:06 PM

The latest photos and video on the SpaceX site show what the first few second of what appears to be a good launch. There's no video of the rocket coming down, no photos of the wreckage, not even a photo of the hole in the machine shop roof. When all is said and done, we have only their word that the launch failed.

Darn. I was rather hoping for an April 1st "Actually, we succeded" announcement, real or not.

Posted by Roger Strong at April 1, 2006 09:10 PM

Stay the course, Rand.

Posted by Keith Cowing at April 1, 2006 09:23 PM

Its all about the kids. Until babies are being born "out there" then it ain't nothing but camping.

= = =

If Masten wins the lunar hopper challenge in October and they go on to build a NewSpace re-useable LSAM which lands on the moon, except that the first time it is carried by a LegacySpace carrier rocket (BoLoMart or Thiokol) is that a win or a loss or a draw?

If Masten builds a re-useable LSAM, then the gen-you-ine RLVS can still come later, right?

Posted by Bill White at April 1, 2006 09:40 PM

William Blake: "If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise." :-)

Posted by Monte Davis at April 1, 2006 09:50 PM

Before SpaceX, there were the various space companies of the 90's. (Kelly, Kistler, Beal). Their vehicles crashed with the sattelite market. One day, when the sattelite market picks up again (and we're probably going to need the bandwidth eventually), and assuming no ridiculous barriers imposed by the government, companies will try again for the launch market.

The delta IV already does whatever NASA wants to do with the stick. So companies aren't completely helpless. In fact, they're probably still our best bet for vehicle procurement, since they don't operate on the principle of doling out pork to lobbyists and entrenched suppliers. If NASA were to operate on the principle of buying full vehicles from suppliers, then competition could improve that process as well.

In any case, I'm getting my degree in Astro Engineering, so there had better be some space companies when I get out there, or I'll have no competition to stop me. Bwahahaha!

Posted by at April 1, 2006 10:23 PM

(That was me)

Posted by Aaron at April 1, 2006 10:23 PM

The comment that I make is one that I have made before.

It costs about $60M dollars to send a four ton $250M comsat to GTO. If you cut the cost of launch by 50% you cut 12% of the total system cost. Today insurance costs as much as the launch so you still have a problem there.

What happens if I cut the cost of the in-space portion by 50%.

That is where we need to be making progress. That will drive demand. I work right now on a daily basis with Internet over satellite. The demand there is exploding and if we can cut the system costs these satellite systems will flourish even faster.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Ray Wingo at April 1, 2006 10:52 PM

The difference between Burt Rutan and NASA is simple. After NASA flew the X-15 to its heart's content (199 missions,) it was content with the scientific data, and never flew a hypersonic rocketplane again. Burt Rutan sees no reason to stop flying rocketplanes, and has created a system that can be flown repeatedly and profitably.

I can't say that I've agreed with many of the decisions made by Griffin et al regarding the Vision for Space Exploration. Nevertheless, as Americans we face a choice: support a flawed plan to return to the moon, or never dream of an ambitious American space program again. Given such a choice, I'll take the flawed moon plan any day.

There is good reason for pessimism with the alternatives to BLoMart & Orbital regarding space launch; these companies have been doing it (and getting it right) for decades. Is it possible to reinvent the rocket from the ground up, or is the tried-and-true method the only way of getting into space? SpaceX may yet prove BLoMart & Orbital wrong. Keep the faith, and let them keep trying as long as Elon's checkbook will allow. History may view SpaceX as the firm that opened the space frontier; at worst, it will be regarded as a noble failure.

Posted by Chair Force Engineer at April 1, 2006 11:58 PM

We've already been there, and the chinese will recreate what we once had. It isn't advancement, it is dick measuring. And since it took so long for the dinks to match us? we win.

Posted by wickedpinto at April 2, 2006 12:37 AM

Chair Force Engineer?

We KNOW how to get there, they are working at mimicing our efforts from 40 friggen years ago. The Chinese won't "EQUAL" us, they will just bankrupt themselves while trying to COPY US. We haven't moved as fast as we should have, but it would take a national burden before ANYONE that isn't US to hit the move, let alone POPULATE it.

Posted by wickedpinto at April 2, 2006 12:58 AM

jeesh.

three paragraphs in I still thought Rand was getting a realistic feel for the probability of success for CATS, right up till "turn the [the ISS] to the useful ends for which it was intended..." :D Not even I can stomach that one...

Posted by tom at April 2, 2006 01:14 AM

This post is the sickest April Fool's post I've seen anywhere. Geez, Rand. Looks like you've suckered a whole bunch.;-)

Posted by Lee Valentine at April 2, 2006 04:36 AM

Actually, I see that the top post is the second chain janking of the day. Thanks for the pointer to the ThinkGeek spoof page.

Posted by Lee Valentine at April 2, 2006 05:06 AM

"All about the kids?"

Hell, I'd feel pretty good if we simply had the kind of steady, robust infrastructure, (relatively) low cost, low profile operations (including some commercial tourism in the summer) that goes on every day in Antarctica (where, AFAIK, there have been no human births, or child residents yet) happening in LEO and on the Moon...

Having births in either place doesn't necessairily prove colonization and permanence, although, in a rather odd sense, it will mean something positive when someone dies in space, as occasionally must happen in the Antarctic, without it severely impacting overall operations there, or risking their termination (at least by the particular country involved).

Posted by Frank Glover at April 2, 2006 11:21 AM

The Moon as the next Antarctica? Home to scientists and U.N. types and tourists? Why even bother?

Except maybe for the platinum. ;-)

Posted by Bill White at April 2, 2006 11:28 AM

Dennis, if you cut the launch cost 80%, you would build satellites differently. You would use more redundancy, cheaper components, cheaper software and so on. If you consider all of the expensive components that go into satellites to save weight, much of that would come out if launch costs were cheaper. I'll bet you satellite costs come down as launch costs come down.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at April 2, 2006 05:37 PM

Sam

You are not going to launch a 4 ton GEO bird for $12M dollars. Even Elon does not claim this. Also, insurance drives the GEO market. Quality of service drives the market. The revenue of a comsat, the big ones exceeds $100M per year. Now cheaper launch, if it lead to widespread on orbit servicing, would have the effect of helping to lower costs, which is what we are driving for.

You have already lost your bet as launch prices to GEO have declined compared to what they were in the 1980's and there have been no commesurate decreases in bird prices. I do grant that if prices dropped as low as you say, along with much more frequent access, but this is a very long way off.

There are ways to lower the costs of birds a lot, even with the current launch prices but that is another discussion.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Wingo at April 2, 2006 10:21 PM

The question for alt. space has always been are we going to be a multi world species and if so, when? Refined further it becomes a question of cost to LEO. Real answers to this question only happen when real rockets get built and flown. Furthermore, the attempt has to be well crafted. A bad attempt is worthless.

Elon has given us one of, if not the best, shots at answering that question. We all begin to dare to hope. Every hickup, failure, and delay in his bid to resolve the "cheap access to space" debate hits surprisingly hard when our hopes are attached to the attempt. I was amazed at how many people, including myself, were hit hard by the launch failure. Very depressing. But hey, I'll vote for having my stomach in my throat every launch if it means an answer, at last, to that damnable cost to orbit debate.

Posted by Dave at April 3, 2006 12:16 AM

"The Moon as the next Antarctica? Home to scientists and U.N. types and tourists? Why even bother?"

When I said I'd be happy with that level of activity and access (which is still more than we can do in space...so far), I didn't mean to suggest that there should be no more of either...

Except maybe for the platinum. ;-)

The moon as Antarctica, *minus* the limitations on resource extraction, yes.

Posted by Frank Glover at April 3, 2006 02:02 PM

> You are not going to launch a 4 ton GEO bird for $12M dollars. Even Elon
> does not claim this. Also, insurance drives the GEO market.

Dennis, insurance rates are based on expected losses. If you lose 1-5% of all payloads (which is true for all ELVs), insurance rates are never going to be less than several percent. Reduce that by a couple orders of magnitude, and you'll see insurance costs fall.

Similarly, if you lose your hull on 100% of all flights, it might indeed be impossible to get costs below $12 million per flight. Again, reduce the loss rate by orders of magnitude, and things change drastically. This isn't rocket science.

> Now cheaper launch, if it lead to widespread on orbit servicing, would have
> the effect of helping to lower costs, which is what we are driving for.

"If"? Why do you doubt that cheap launch would lead to widespread orbital servicing?

> You have already lost your bet as launch prices to GEO have declined
> compared to what they were in the 1980's and there have been no commesurate
> decreases in bird prices. I do grant that if prices dropped as low as you
> say, along with much more frequent access, but this is a very long way off.

The Air Force and Telstar were working on it 40 years ago, before Kennedy decided to give the manned space program to NASA and nationalized the comm sat industry. 40 years is a "long way off" but not in the sense you mean. Cost reductions don't require waiting for NASA to invent some supertechnology like scramjets or laser launchers.

Posted by Edward Wright at April 3, 2006 03:22 PM

Ed.

1. Insurance rates for launch and initial operations is between 20-24%.

2. We already have cheap launch Ed and it is still hard to do. Many barriers to overcome as the Arabsat 4 loss shows.

3. The comsat industry has been pretty commercial for the past 30 years Ed with some tech infusion from DoD and NASA.

4. Cost reductions require doing things differently than how we do them now. Your recent religious conversion to all things DoD would do nothing to foster these changes.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Ray Wingo at April 3, 2006 06:53 PM

We already have cheap launch Ed and it is still hard to do.

Oh, please, Dennis. We have nothing resembling cheap launch. We have launch that's less expensive than it used to be, but it's not cheap, by any English definition of that word. None of it.

When we actually do have cheap launch, then we'll start to see dramatic effects on satellite design and space operations. We're a long, long way from it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at April 3, 2006 07:19 PM

> 1. Insurance rates for launch and initial operations is between 20-24%.

That would mean $5-6 million for SpaceShip One. Burt didn't pay anywhere near that much.

You ought to think about that, instead of just assuming 20-24% insurance rates are inevitable.

> 2. We already have cheap launch Ed

When are you boys gonna unveil this cheap launch, Dennis?

The CEV architecture you worked on for Andrews called for an Atlas V/Zenit booster with an estimated cost of $240 million a copy. That's $60 million/pax.

If you call that cheap, I wonder what you'd call expensive?

> 3. The comsat industry has been pretty commercial for the past 30
> years Ed with some tech infusion from DoD and NASA.

You're rewriting history, Dennis. The Comsat Act nationalized the satellite industry in the 60's, creating a mess that took decades to unravel.

> Cost reductions require doing things differently than how we do
> them now. Your recent religious conversion to all things DoD would do
> nothing to foster these changes.

Strapping Zenit boosters to the side of your ELV to get bigger payloads is different? No one's done that before? :-)

Posted by Edward Wright at April 3, 2006 07:59 PM

Rand

How about you put down your preconceived notions and come and take a look at a real contract or two.

I would be more than happy to show you after a very ironclad NDA that launch can be very inexpensive for pretty good sized payloads.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Wingo at April 4, 2006 10:13 AM

I would be more than happy to show you after a very ironclad NDA that launch can be very inexpensive for pretty good sized payloads.

I suspect that we will continue to disagree on the meaning of the word "inexpensive."

Posted by Rand Simberg at April 4, 2006 10:17 AM

Addendum

Rand, the reason that spacecraft are expensive is directly proportional to its intended use. I built my microsatellite for about $6M dollars in 1998 for its remote sensing and amateur radio communications role.

A big BSS GEO comsat, which over its lifetime, will rake in about $1.2-1.5 billion dollars in revenue, costs about $400-500M dollars after launch, insurance, and its cost for a 15 year mission.

We live in an era of status quo in the design and development of large systems and until that status quo is broken by new entrants and new ways of doing business the cost of SPACE systems will continue to be overly expensive. On orbit servicing is just the first step.

For example, if we had been able to do the Arabsat 4A rescue mission, we would have been able to recoup at least 60% of the total value of the bird AND returned it to service where its revenue generating potential would have been equivalent to a new bird. Yes we had a customer as well to buy the bird from us.

It is so funny (tragically so) that the alt.space community is so narrowly focused on making the truck cheaper while ignoring how to improve the value proposition of the cargo. Fire and smoke is fun but the real money is in the cargo. That is why the comsat industry is a $100 billion dollar a year industry and growing while the launch industry barely makes a profit even on a good day.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Wingo at April 4, 2006 10:25 AM

It is so funny (tragically so) that the alt.space community is so narrowly focused on making the truck cheaper while ignoring how to improve the value proposition of the cargo.

Consider the possibility that this is because many in the alt.space community consider themselves to be the cargo. No one is claiming that you can't make money in space at current launch costs, Dennis. But that's beside the point.

Posted by Rand Simberg at April 4, 2006 10:29 AM

> Consider the possibility that this is because many in the alt.space community
> consider themselves to be the cargo. No one is claiming that you can't make money
> in space at current launch costs, Dennis. But that's beside the point.

This is the modern version of the old human-vs-robot debate. The "unmanned space" argument has been broadened a bit to allow for a token number of humans in space, but no more. The argument remains essentially the same: that unmanned (or trivially manned) systems are more cost-effective. That may be arguable for for the limited goals that adherents have set out, but it fails to recognize that other people have different goals.

Posted by Edward Wright at April 4, 2006 12:53 PM

Rand Says

Consider the possibility that this is because many in the alt.space community consider themselves to be the cargo. No one is claiming that you can't make money in space at current launch costs, Dennis. But that's beside the point.

_____________________________________________________

Then let the alt.space guys quit whining about how the government should support their efforts to fly in space. The space economy is more than just flying semi-sentient waterbags into space.

Demand is what is going to drive costs down. By focusing only on flying humans into space you are stuck in the classic chicken/egg delimma. Elon is doing the right thing in focusing on making enough bucks sending hardgoods up to enable him to amortize the cost of developing the systems for humans. Burt will crack the egg by his incrementalist approach but even he does not fantasize about building an orbital human rated system for less than a billion dollars.

Right now there is a nascent explosion in the making for Internet over satellite. Hughes has run out of transponder space for the higher data rates for Directway and the current Wild Blue system on Ka band is actually not very good for the mobile market. Our new company is looking to deploy well over a thousand units within the next 24 months with an aggregate data rate of over a gigabit/sec and that is just us.

Things are actually starting to look very interesting as we move into the new replacement cycle for the GEO fleet.

Ed it is fine that you have different goals. What is starting to bother me though is that you expect the government to pay for YOUR goals rather than deal which require a LOT more capital than more immediate efforts. Humans in space mean nothing unless there is something for them to do. Tourism is fine but it is humans living and working in space that is going to be the tipping point for commercial space.

This is where Marburger was going in his speech.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Wingo at April 4, 2006 03:21 PM

> The space economy is more than just flying semi-sentient waterbags into space.

Dennis, if that's what you really think of people, fine.

But please, then, stop asking us "semi-sentient waterbags" to spend hundreds of billions of dollars so your Cylon friends can take cool vacations.

> Burt will crack the egg by his incrementalist approach but even he does
> not fantasize about building an orbital human rated system for less than
> a billion dollars.

Here we go again. :-) What makes you think an orbital system should be "human rated"? Airliners are not human rated, neither are military aircraft, and there's little evidence that human rating affects anything except cost.

> Ed it is fine that you have different goals. What is starting to bother me
> though is that you expect the government to pay for YOUR goals

Do you ever look in the mirror, Dennis? Who wanted the government to build ISS? EELV? Who said the US should leave Saddam in power and give the invasion money to NASA so they could go back to the Moon?

The role of government is not to operate airlines, build hotels, or run mines and factories. The role of government is to create conditions under which the private sector can do those things. The first duty of government is "to provide for the common defense" -- oddly, the one role you don't advocate for the government in space.

Posted by Edward Wright at April 4, 2006 06:48 PM

Laf

Poor Ed is so caught up that he does not even recognize a joke.

Ed, I don't think or care (I have already shown numerous times that the NASA statistically derived reliability for the Saturn 1B (0.88) is less than the expected reliability of both the Atlas V and the Delta IV. Its just that NASA does not understand this anymore. You don't either but that is another story.

ISS at least has the *potential* to positively contribute to a net gain in wealth for the nation as a waypoint to the planets. Space tourism is a wealth depleter, not a wealth maker. As for your other statements well that is just your fertile imagination at work again.

Good luck with that.

I do absolutely agree that it is the government's role to create the conditions to allow free enterprise to flourish. That is why you and I both agree on Zero G Zero Tax and other such incentives. Where you have lost the mark is to believe that the military is any better than NASA at a statist approach to space development.

You have not been talking about the military's use in defending us from the Beta Reteculi but having the military underwrite space development. I actually agree that the military has a role there but not as an entity providing large sums of development capital, rather services contracts where the private enterprise has to raise the money to execute on the service and then gets paid by the military (or NASA) for that service. This keeps them out of your financials and control of your developmental process.

I have had a lot of discussions relative to this model recently with some interesting DoD folks. It is workable. You have recently went over to the communist model and that is what I decry.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Wingo at April 5, 2006 03:16 PM

Space tourism is a wealth depleter, not a wealth maker.

Huh?

Posted by at April 5, 2006 03:31 PM

> I don't think or care (I have already shown numerous times that the NASA statistically derived reliability
> for the Saturn 1B (0.88) is less than the expected reliability of both the Atlas V and the Delta IV.

Yes, they all had crappy reliability. What's your point?

> I actually agree that the military has a role there but not as an entity providing large sums of development capital

I haven't said the military should provide large sums of development capital, and you know it, Dennis.

What I'm talking about is creating prizes, like the DARPA Grand Challenge prize for autonomous land vehicles. Or the Centennial Challenges, which NASA talks about but Griffin doesn't want to fund.

> rather services contracts where the private enterprise has to raise the money to execute on the service
> and then gets paid by the military (or NASA) for that service. This keeps them out of your financials
> and control of your developmental process.

That's not what you said when you wanted the government to fund EELV. ISS. CEV. Etc.

> I have had a lot of discussions relative to this model recently with some interesting DoD folks. It is workable.

Of course, it's workable. DoD does it all the time. I don't know why you think that's a revelation.

Posted by Edward Wright at April 5, 2006 05:31 PM

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