Transterrestrial Musings

Comments

Maybe we should wait and see if they actually do it.

Posted by Dave Renholder at July 28, 2006 02:51 PM

Has anyone actually seen the 50%/75%/XX% complete Kistler rocket? I believe that the concept has some potential, but the varying reports on their completeness has me curious.

Posted by Tom at July 28, 2006 05:44 PM

Reusable rockets still have to overcome the limitations on material lifespans. You may be able to reuse a rocket, but can you reuse it enough so that the added complexity and more expensive materials are worth it? Especially with the thermal/pressure loads they put on engine and heat shield materials.

On the positive side, Kistler was doing a multi-stage rocket, which is the only way I can concieve of a chemical rocket getting the required mass fraction per stage to have enough structural weight to be re-used. SSTO is a bit of a pipe dream, if you're talking about RLVs.

Posted by Aaron at July 28, 2006 06:28 PM

Aaron, this really isn't a very difficult technology problem. The biggest problems at the moment come from the difficulty of convincing investors (who prefer sexy over functional, unfortunately) and the uncertainty of a market where government subsidized projects loom large.

Consider that the first stage of the Saturn V launch vehicle came very close to single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) capability. And there's nothing fundamental about any of its components which would make reusibility overly difficult (indeed, the engines had been tested to be reusible for a large number of cycles). This is a vehicle designed and built with the technology of the mid-1960s. Very straightfoward upgrades to the structure (using more modern alloys and perhaps a few composites), engines, and avionics (the flight control system of the Saturn-IC was the size of a room, and weighed literally tonnes) would allow the addition of robust and fairly low tech heat shields and still allow for a respectable payload.

The problem is that such a vehicle would be very large (it would weigh about as much as the Space Shuttle stack) and yet have a comparatively small payload. Moreover, the sheer size would require a fairly substantial initial investment. Unfortunately, the history of launch vehicles to date has created a zeitgeist which encourages people to focus on the wrong figures of merit. Big, low-tech rockets with moderate payloads are a hard sell because people aren't used to that sort of thing. Even though what they should really be paying attention to are: turnaround time; amortized cost per flight over the lifetime of the vehicle; reliability; robustness; and safety. All of those things are easy to be had if you just throw a bit of mass at the problem and accept a vehicle with a lower payload to gross liftoff weight ratio.

Unfortunately, there are many people, including in the aerospace industry, who are under the mistaken impression that the history of rocketry to date is an impressive achievement that requires emulation rather than improvement and rethinking.

It's somewhat similar to the development of the electronic computer. For decades the model was an impressively complexly designed, room sized behemoth that could only be utilized by experts in computer arcana. When the micro-chip and then the personal computer came around everything got turned on its head and the idea of the computer, in every application, was reinvented and rethought. In rocketry we have not yet had a successful revolution such as has happened in the computer industry. We see some glimmerings of innovation and revolution in companies like Virgin Galactic, XCOR, and Kistler, but there's still a long way to go.

Posted by Robin Goodfellow at July 28, 2006 08:00 PM

The Kistler web page has a diagram showing how they define 75%:

http://www.kistleraerospace.com/

While many of their parts are flight-tested in other programs and/or proof tested, if they had a constructed vehicle I'm sure they'd show the results of their work. I don't buy the 75% argument, and besides even if it were 95%, those last 5% are usually a bear.

Posted by Tom at July 29, 2006 06:35 AM

I agree with Tom. I think that once SpaceX demonstrates a string of successful launches, it will look back and realize that its first unsuccessful launch was an attempt to launch a 95% (or perhaps more generously - 99%) rocket. I am a big fan of SpaceX and want them to succeed. But rocketry is hard, and the devil is in the details. A 75% rocket that is a pile of tech data, an unmanaged drawings package, and powerpoint slides may be more risky to mature than starting with a clean sheet of paper. Corporate knowledge and team continuity is a big help as well (that's why Elon is always looking to the next thing, he doesn't want his team to get bored and drift away, or get poached).

Posted by ts at July 29, 2006 07:39 AM

In rocketry we have not yet had a successful revolution such as has happened in the computer industry.

Ah, it's always good to see this bogus comparison come around again.

The essence of the computer revolution was that computers manipulate massless, energy-independent information: the materials and current involved in a relay, a vacuum tube, a magnetic core or a transistor gate are incidental details of "instantiation," irrelevant to getting the job done. So a microchip can do exactly the same job as a big cabinet full of tubes -- indeed, do it faster and cheaper and more reliably.

That is not the case with putting a kilogram or a tonne into orbit, which requires an absolute, non-negotiable minimum of work and reaction mass (and in the real world, a lot of temperature- and stress-limited hardware to produce and control the forces involved.) If Intel announced tomorrow that it could fabricate 100,000 tiny rockets on a wafer, would that advance access to space?

As for the claim that reusability "really isn't a very difficult technology problem"... true, but not terribly helpful. It's finding someone to pay for the solution -- both the development and tooling for your big, low-tech rockets and the high flight rates necessary to make them pay off -- that's the problem, as it is for any magic CATS solution. Computers didn't have that problem because there was essentially limitless demand for information processing -- again, not the case for access to orbit.

I hereby guarantee that I can build multi-TeV particle accelerators much more cheaply than the blinkered bureaucrats of CERN, Fermilab and SLAC. It really isn't a very difficult technology problem. All I need is your certified check for the first 5000, and I'm ready to go.

Posted by Monte Davis at July 29, 2006 08:18 AM

Nice post, Monte Davis. I see that computer analogy thrown everywhere, pretty good dismantling there.

If one wants to draw really far-out conclusions, one can contemplate that basic heavy technology progress has been slowing down since the fifties and sixties. Ships, nuclear reactors or rockets are almost indistinguishable from those built 40 years ago. Ray Kurzweil and all the fantasies of ever-accelerating progress and people living 200 years seem not to be that close to reality.

What's new? Composites haven't turned out to make that much of a difference, and there's only so much computers and robotics can do to help with your physically limited problems. Everything's somewhat more efficient and available nowadays, but that's about it.

Posted by mz at July 29, 2006 11:10 AM

The dismantling should be credited to Ralph Gomory, who headed IBM research 1970-1986 (when I had the pleasure of doing some speechwriting for him). He's been emphasizing forever that "in IT, we don't do any work" -- or at least try to do as little as possible, in the Carnot sense. It's that which underlies Moore's Law, along with the fab technologies that make IC production more like printing than like piece-parts manufacturing: high setup cost, but really low marginal cost.

Space has been like IT in one important if not revolutionary respect: we keep getting more bang per kg (and therefore per launching buck) from avionics and from the circuitry in comm/sensing/nav satellites, space probes, etc. Unfortunately they're not a very big part of GLOW...

Posted by Monte Davis at July 29, 2006 11:59 AM

Hi Monte,
I disagree. The computer industry analogy is a perfectly valid one when making the point for which it is intended. That point is not that everyone will soon have a personal spaceship in their garages. The point rather is that it is possible for space transport and space development to move from a high cost, low volume, govt/industrial, limited market model to a low cost, high volume, govt/industrial/consumer, broad market model just as the computer industry did.

How fast that move can take place is anyone's guess. I think we agree that the commercial spaceflight industry has the double difficulty of bootstrapping itself with simultaneous development of both hardware (e.g. transport and habitats) and markets (e.g. space tourism). I believe that the suborbital projects are a big part of this bootstrapping process.

With regard to hardware development vs. information processing, I'll note that airlines after deregulation used a low cost, high volume approach that was so successful that they put most long distance bus lines out of business. This happened despite the fact that they were moving kilograms rather than bits around.

With regard to paying for RLV development, my point has been that there is and has been plenty of money at NASA and the Pentagon to fund projects like Kistler but for social, political and other non-technical reasons this wasn't done. Many billions went down the drain of NASA's X projects, SLI, OSP, etc. NASA continued to fly the Shuttle at $5B per year and before Columbia even talked about flying it till 2030. Why all this happened despite low cost alternatives has nothing to do with, say, doubts over the K-1's airbag landing system. It has everything to do with mindsets, conventional wisdom, and self-reinforcing pathologies that form within big organizations.

If RLV development has to be done purely by commercial operators via the bootstrapping mentioned above, then your pessimism about a near term orbital RLV is quite justifiable (Falcon 9 is nominally reusable but refurbishable seems a more appropriate description). I just think it is a shame that NASA did not play its proper role of technology developer and help make vehicles like the K-1 a reality much sooner.

- C.

p.s. I can put you in touch with some particle physicists who would be keen to learn about your low cost accelerators! ;-)

Posted by Clark at July 29, 2006 12:33 PM

There are many precedents for technologies evolving from high-cost, low-volume to low-cost, high-volume. Some were fast, some slow, some are still hanging fire. I think the frequent appeal by space fans to computer technology -- an especially fast one -- obscures more than it enlightens. (Of course, that may be the point if the goal is to convince oneself there's a breakthrough just around the corner.)

We agree on the "double difficulty" of bootstrapping technologies and markets simultaneously. So why do you then shift the analogy to the massification of air travel (most of which, BTW, had happened with the 707 well before deregulation)? There much of the technology had been paid for and proven on military budgets (B-47, B-52, KC-135), and the market for long-distance intercity travel had been long proven by trains, buses, and families in their cars at every Howard Johnson's. Doesn't seem like a very good analogy to me.

Me, I don't spend much time fuming over NASA's shortcomings, because I think they represent only a small part of the challenge: the technology/cost/market "hump" to get over is the same whether the investment is private or public, and I've seen too much of corporate R&D close-up to believe it's always miraculously efficient compared to Dumb Ol' Governmment. I suspect that a lot of spacers prefer to dwell on them as a distraction from tougher issues.

Posted by Monte Davis at July 29, 2006 04:29 PM

Yes the space revolution comes down to getting over the high volume hump, but the point that many here seem to be missing is that there is pretty much only one way to do this – and that is via the least expensive development paths available.

While in theory one can bulldoze through this market volume/cost hump by spending lots of money, this has the failure rates, corrupting influences and well poisoning side effects typical of Keynesian economics. Success requires minimising such bulldozer use as much as possible.

The old adage that you can not achieve low cost access to space by spending a lot of money is a fundamental constraint. Low cost access to space will likely not happen until the industry refocuses on the minimum cost development path without being distracted by old or dubious alternate markets.

The minimum cost development path means going all the way back to the Wright Brothers type development approach. Even modern aircraft development approaches, (applicable to a mature industry), are far too expensive. Extraneous development constraints have a snowball effect. The development path has to be as little compromised as possible.

What I think is required:
- Very small teams of no more than a few people.
- Well thought out planned and focussed development paths.
- Multiple design/build/test cycles per year.
- Vehicle sizes of one to two person.
- Funding of no more than a few tens of millions of dollars.
(If more funding is available, then sub divide into multiple development paths.)

This necessitates the design of a minimalist development program capable of meeting these requirements, and do not start spending money until you have such a development path thought out. For example, one of the first design trades will be bureaucracy avoidance and minimisation, if this means starting from scratch on a remote desert island to get under the funding cap, then so be it. Similarly a design that effectively scales down to one to two people must be adopted from the start, scaling up comes after the development phase.

XCOR and Masten space systems seem to be adopting such minimalist development approaches. Armadillo seems to be meandering a little, but otherwise on such a track. NASA is off the scale...

Posted by at July 29, 2006 08:11 PM

Hi Monte,
I disagree. Sure there are technologies that have gone from small markets to large ones but for computers people made an unusual and dramatic shift in attitude from believing that such a transition was totally impossibile to taking it for granted. I hope such a dramatic shift in attitudes towards space is now happening.

When I was a kid in the 60's, absolutely no one in the general public thought of computers as being something they would ever directly interact with. In the early seventies, I remember coming across a thin, cheaply made quarterly in the library called Creative Computing. People thought I was joking when I mentioned it. That phrase was an oxymoron to them. When the PC revolution happened (and magazines like CC grew to telephone book thicknesses) over the next couple of decades, there was a 180 degree change in the way people viewed computers.

Until recently almost everyone in the US viewed space as NASA - NASA as space. To do anything at all in space required billions of dollars and armies of highly trained engineers and scientists. The suggestion that space development could be done by small companies or that activities involving private individuals like space tourism would happen soon was obviously wild sci-fi.

Today we have several highly funded suborbital spaceflight projects going on, we have a privately developed prototype space habitat in orbit and several more on the way, we have large privately funded orbital rocket projects like SpaceX in action, tourists going to the ISS, etc. The public is becoming increasingly aware of all this and they are starting to make a shift in their outlook towards space. (I'm amazed by how many people I meet that know about the SS1.)

I see this as very similar to the flip in attitude that happened during the PC revolution. We will see how far it goes and what effects it has.

With regard to the airlines, I was just making the point that the decrease in prices and the resulting growth in flight volume had nothing to do with technology but with a different set of operating conditions, i.e. prices would be set by the market rather than the FAA. That change was incredbly jolting for those companies and many of the legacy airlines are still trying to cope with it.

Similarly, a dramatic change in the way space transport is done today, e.g. require NASA and the Pentagon to buy LEO flights from private LV operators with the lowest prices, could cause a big drop in the cost of space access. All without a technology breakthrough.

A theme running both in my postings here and in my website as a whole, is that attitudes, perceptions, conventional thinking, etc. have enormous ramifications. Just because something can be done technically, doesn't mean it will be done. Often there must be a big change in the way people think before that something will be done.

I also don't spend time fuming about NASA. One of the most wonderfully liberating aspects of the emergence of a private spaceflight industry is the realization that space development no longer depends solely on NASA. Even if NASA disappeared tomorrow, human spaceflight in the US would continue.

However, the more space development projects (private, NASA, military) going on, the better. If NASA's billions were spent more effectively, it would benefit everyone and make things happen faster. If adding my voice to those asking NASA to do better with its funding might actually make that happen, then I'm more than happy to yell out along with everybody else.

- C.

Posted by Clark at July 29, 2006 08:30 PM

Clark, while I greatly appreciate this free essay on my site, might I suggest that you should republish it on your own...?

Posted by Rand Simberg at July 29, 2006 08:55 PM

Sorry Rand. Lost track of the length. Won't happen again.
- C.

Posted by Clark at July 29, 2006 09:52 PM

Really, Clark, no need for an apology--it wasn't a complaint. Just a gentle reminder that you should reserve your literary energies for your own site. I'm more than happy to have it here.

Posted by Rand Simberg at July 29, 2006 10:04 PM

The minimum cost development path means going all the way back to the Wright Brothers type development approach...

You go on to describe something much like the approach of Robert Goddard at Roswell. That must be why his work advanced so much farther and faster than that of the poor benighted Germans at Peenemunde -- struggling under a nightmare bureaucracy, bulldozing their way through problems, choking on government money.

Posted by Monte Davis at July 30, 2006 08:09 AM

Didn't the germans actually spy a lot of Goddard's work? I wrote about this on sci.space.history but nobody responded. Turbopumps and gyro guidance and all were pioneered by Goddard, and appeared some years later in Germany.

Posted by mz at July 30, 2006 08:14 AM

Clark, I'd love to believe with you that "attitudes" are the central challenge. But I tried Peter Pan's advice to Wendy and the boys a long long time ago, and it didn't work.

In fact, I believe that lowered expectations would be the best thing that could happen to the space movement. In the 1960s, we told ourselves -- with high expectations -- that short-term public support for a Cold War race to the moon meant long-term public support for an ongoing Conquest of Space agenda. In the 1970s, we told ourselves -- with high expectations -- that routine, affordable access to orbit could be achieved in one step at a cost less than half that of Apollo. In the 1980s, we told ourselves -- with high expectations -- that the outcome of that one step was good enough to kickstart commercialization and build an ambitious space station. In the 1990s, we told ourselves -- with high expectations -- that endless demand for bandwidth would pay for enough commsats to drive launch costs through the floor.

Today, we spend much of the bandwidth at space websites and newsgroups picking through the wreckage of those episodes. And you're telling me that the key to doing it right this time is to have high expectations...

Posted by Monte Davis at July 30, 2006 08:54 AM

mz: David Clary's Goddard biography Rocket Man is the best source I know. German commercial attaches did purchase and send home Goddard's patents -- as they routinely did thousands of others -- but there's no evidence of spying. A few postwar statements by von Braun and others, nodding to Goddard, were as much a matter of tact (to their new paymasters) as of fact. Most of the "V2 was based on Our Guy's ideas" meme came from G's wife's posthumous campaign to burnish his image, and from American embarrassment after Sputnik: we needed a native Space Forefather like Tsiolkovsky or Oberth.

In a larger context, space technology ideas like going from pressure-fed propellants to turbopumps are cheap and abundant. It's turning the ideas into working hardware through sustained R&D support, frequent te$ting, and a broad, deep engineering team (not a lone genius and a few technicians) that's hard... and in that respect the Germans had left Goddard behind by 1935 at the latest.

Posted by Monte Davis at July 30, 2006 09:39 AM

MD - “You go on to describe something much like the approach of Robert Goddard at Roswell. That must be why his work advanced so much farther and faster than that of the poor benighted Germans at Peenemunde -- struggling under a nightmare bureaucracy, bulldozing their way through problems, choking on government money.”

The V2 development was in a time of war. It was focussed on an expendable munitions device, not a commercial vehicle. Driven by military necessity it also had resources beyond those justified by a commercial development project. Still, I suspect it was orders of magnitude better than anything NASA can do now days… :-)

(I apologise for forgetting to sign my original post.)

Posted by Pete Lynn at July 30, 2006 05:26 PM

Rand, Thanks. I do need to be reminded not to get carried away in my comments...

Monte, actually I spend most of the time on my website reporting on all the great stuff that's happening now with private space development, not discussing the past. What things like Genesis 1, SpaceShipTwo, New Shepard, SpaceX Falcons, etc. have to do with Peter Pan is beyond me.

Maybe you are afraid this is all part of a bubble and don't want to feel disappointed when it bursts. I can't guarantee it but I don't think it is a bubble. Having lived through those previous episodes you mentioned, I see no similarities at all with current commericlal spaceflight developments. I could discuss all the differences but I don't want to have another verbosity overload. Let's just see how the next couple of years go and we can review the successes and disappointments then.

In the meantime, I hope managers at NASA/Pentagon have a change in attitude and take full advantage of what is going on.
- C.

Posted by Clark at July 30, 2006 05:41 PM

Maybe you are afraid this is all part of a bubble and don't want to feel disappointed when it bursts.

Thanks for the amateur psychology, Clark. 'Bye now.

Posted by Monte Davis at July 30, 2006 07:48 PM

As Patrick Stiennon and I have argued in "The Rocket Company" and other venues, it's going to take the emergence of commercial spaceships or space transports for any real revolution in the cost of access to space. And, given the technology available today in rocket engines, structures, avionics, etc., we don't have to wait for any technological breakthroughs. What we do need is for somebody, somewhere, to put enough money into the hands of the right team(s) to utilize that technology to build some real spaceships. And that means people-carrying, reusable vehicles. Not glorified skyrockets. I agree with Clark that things do seem to be different in this latest round; SpaceShipOne is a significant indicator. There are enough companies with enough money now that I'm hopeful that something will emerge that will truly make a difference, in a way that something like the Orbital Sciences' Pegasus did not.

The first private, commercial vehicles may not be very productive or profitable. The first generation or two of airplanes wasn't either, at least from the perspective of modern commmercial aviation. Those early airplanes provided the means with which to create the foundations of modern commercial aviation. People didn't have to come up with "payloads" to make those aircraft useful. They just climbed in and flew them! We've got to be able to do that with space vehicles.

Probably the biggest challenge is the order or more of magnitude greater costs involved in developing new rocket vehicles, whether suborbital or orbital. While those early two-seater aircraft didn't carry much besides the pilot and passenger, they could at least be built, purchased, and operated for reasonable amounts of money. The key too for space transportation is to come up with a vehicle or vehicles that are reasonably affordable to own and operate - and be able to make money by selling them.

Posted by Dave Hoerr at July 30, 2006 09:24 PM

In the 1990s, we told ourselves -- with high expectations -- that endless demand for bandwidth would pay for enough commsats to drive launch costs through the floor

A third of the western world lives out of range of broadband. This is over 250m people with large amounts of disposable income that cannot buy ADSL, cable or fiber internet. There is also a potential market of over 2 billion people in the developing world who do not have access to reliable communications infrastructure.

If someone managed to build and launch a skybridge type constellation on the cheap, I'm not entirely convinced that there wouldn't be a market.

Posted by Chris Mann at July 31, 2006 04:47 AM

What we do need is for somebody, somewhere, to put enough money into the hands of the right team(s) to utilize that technology to build some real spaceships. And that means people-carrying, reusable vehicles.

We don't need reusable vehicles yet, a market of less than a thousand launches a year most certainly cannot support them. What we need is to start punching out cheap mass produced boilerplate pressure fed rockets that can be launched with minimal support crews. Something like Aquarius and Quickreach 1+2 would be pretty much ideal designs.

Posted by Chris Mann at July 31, 2006 04:57 AM

As you know, Dave, I think that in broad outline the technological and economic scenario in The Rocket Company is one of the most coherent and credible anyone has put forward. I just think the steps are likely to come more slowly, scattered across multiple start-ups, with bankruptcies and consolidations along the way. As Sam Dinkin notes, the firms we remember as successful trailblazers in new technologies are typically second- or third-wave entrants who bought up their failed precursors' IP and technical talent at distress prices... :-)

I agree with Clark that things do seem to be different in this latest round...

I do see differences today, and my point in citing previous rounds was not that their history must or will repeat itself. It was that among the 99.9% of people (including legislators and investors) outside our little world of space enthusiasm, there is a real downside to over-selling. NASA is still living with the legacy of over-selling STS and ISS; private start-ups are still living with investor wariness caused by over-selling in the period of Teledesic, Iridium, Globalstar, Beal, and Kistler.

Case in point: a few years back I was struck by the angry, defensive reaction among spacers to Weil's They All Laughed at Christopher Columbus, about the last days of Gary Hudson's Roton. How dare this ignorant outsider question the Vision of a true space pioneer? Wakey-wakey, gang: Roton exemplified poor technical management and disastrous financial (non-)management, and Weil nailed it. If your reaction is to circle the wagons rather than learn from that, the problem is yours and not hers.

Posted by Monte Davis at July 31, 2006 05:15 AM

There is no market for cheap mass produced expendable launch vehicles now, either. The Russians have some pretty low-cost rockets - and it doesn't seem to be making much difference. We have to have new tools to create new markets and new demand. And until we have a way to get people into space - safely, reliably, and affordably (and that won't be on a cheap, mass produced expendable), it's going to be tough to come up with anything different from the status quo.

Posted by Dave Hoerr at July 31, 2006 05:32 AM

If someone managed to build and launch a skybridge type constellation on the cheap...

And if wings for pigs were $39.95 a gross...

What we need is to start punching out cheap mass produced boilerplate pressure fed rockets...

"Punching out" is a snappy phrase. Presumably somewhere behind it is a figure for development? Even "boilerplate" rockets require some design and testing. And presumably a figure for tooling up? Profitable mass production is the gnarly art of balancing the up-front costs for specialized dies, jigs, processes, etc. against the ongoing cost reductions they permit -- and balancing them accurately enough so that the ROI grows faster than the investors' patience shrinks.

As I've said before: if the Space Fairy provides a sufficiently large, long-term, interest-free loan, you can probably make any CATS scheme work: expendable or reusable, Sea Dragon or SSTO, old technology or new. The question that matters is how to make one work in this drab old world where the Space Fairy hasn't shown up -- and you have to sell enough at today's prices to underwrite the path to the much lower prices we all want to see.

Posted by Monte Davis at July 31, 2006 05:45 AM

I am not entirely sure that one or two person rocket vehicles necessarily need to cost that much more than the first airplanes - in adjusted dollars. Especially if the first vehicle is suborbital. But more than this, I think this is what the real design problem actually is – how to do this development at such small scale and low cost.

Inflatable tanks seem possible, for example, Teflon bags surrounded by Kevlar straps. One could conceivably build a SSTO one/two person capsule with inflatable tanks on the top/side. Drymass might be around half a ton, which is not that much greater than the first airplanes. Of course there are many other possible ways of doing it, some with yet lower drymass.

Ideally one might eventually air launch such vehicles from perhaps a WK2, so as to add delta v, avoid small scale drag losses and improve the abort modes. Cutting loose from external inflatable tanks in an emergency sounds like a nice idea.

Such new small scale vehicle designs do require the development of new engines, but people are already doing this and this was similarly required for the first airplanes. As small engines and other systems become increasingly commercially available such small vehicle developments should become considerably easier and within the means of just a few individuals.

Only recently have people really started to reconsider such small space transport possibilities. Funding and R&D thinking derived form the computer revolution probably has a very large part to do with this, as does the new sub orbital stepping stone focus. This is I think mostly what is different this time round, and I suspect it is enough – not that it will come easily.

Posted by Pete Lynn at July 31, 2006 05:59 AM

I just think the steps are likely to come more slowly, scattered across multiple start-ups, with bankruptcies and consolidations along the way.

No disagreement there, Monte! That was certainly the way it went in the early days (often referred to as the "Golden Age") of aviation. Messy, but very productive. "Slowly" is a relative term, though.

It was that among the 99.9% of people (including legislators and investors) outside our little world of space enthusiasm, there is a real downside to over-selling. NASA is still living with the legacy of over-selling STS and ISS; private start-ups are still living with investor wariness caused by over-selling in the period of Teledesic, Iridium, Globalstar, Beal, and Kistler.

On the other hand, there needs to be a certain amount of "buzz", or investor wariness will predominate and stifle the flow of capital that is needed. The key is to have some real, physical embodiment of the dreams and concepts - the public needs to see spaces vehicles flying. Lindbergh's flight did not demonstrate any technological advances, but it sure raised the profile of aviation among the public - and the expectations for its potential. The X-Prize has had a similar, but less significant impact, it seems. There need to be more flights, more "firsts", to keep the momentum going.

Posted by Dave Hoerr at July 31, 2006 06:09 AM

"Even if NASA disappeared tomorrow, human spaceflight in the US would continue."

If NASA was disbanded tomorrow, there would be thousands of engineers and technicians receiving severance packages. One would assume that many of these people would band together and form hundreds if not thousands of new space companies (note to the space cynics: these companies would be headed by people who had actually built hardware that went into space). Venture capitalists would no longer be scared off by a government program with comparatively bottomless pockets as a direct competitor. Not only would US spaceflight continue, but with hundreds or thousands of experienced new entrants into the market the cost of access to space would of necessity drop dramatically.

Posted by Ed Minchau at July 31, 2006 06:55 AM

Monte Sez

mz: David Clary's Goddard biography Rocket Man is the best source I know. German commercial attaches did purchase and send home Goddard's patents -- as they routinely did thousands of others -- but there's no evidence of spying. A few postwar statements by von Braun and others, nodding to Goddard, were as much a matter of tact (to their new paymasters) as of fact. Most of the "V2 was based on Our Guy's ideas" meme came from G's wife's posthumous campaign to burnish his image, and from American embarrassment after Sputnik: we needed a native Space Forefather like Tsiolkovsky or Oberth.

****************

Historical Note

I happen to know the guy that did the patent infringement analysis for the Army of the Goddard Patents vis a vie, the V2 system. They did find that there was infringement of the patents but the response was that this was unintentional and that there was not much knowledge of the details of Goddard's work within the German team until that time.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Wingo at August 1, 2006 10:48 AM

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