Transterrestrial Musings

Comments

Is it SeaLaunch or the Zenit?

Regards,
Ric

Posted by Ric Locke at January 30, 2007 08:58 PM

Rand,
But don't you know, all you need to make an expendable launch vehicle reliable is have Marshall Space Flight Center design it. After all, they've proven by scientific methods performed by Top Men with High IQs (TM) that Ares-I is only going to kill a crew once every 2106 flights or so... ;-)

~Jon

Posted by Jonathan Goff at January 30, 2007 09:05 PM

Wow, and just after the Delta series gets more-or-less withdrawn from service, too.

Don't they use variants of those engines on the Atlas V as well?

Posted by Phil Fraering at January 30, 2007 09:33 PM

BTW, wasn't that launch platform built in Norway?

If it is damaged how much of it can they repair in Long Beach?

Posted by Phil Fraering at January 30, 2007 09:35 PM

"Fly a lot more" seems more important. After all, not much point to having a reusable launch vehicle, if you don't use it.

Posted by Karl Hallowell at January 30, 2007 10:34 PM

Did you see it on YouTube ?
Here's how millions burn.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMG2SBwIcrM

Jon, there are no russian-speaking countdown people at MSFC so obviously this wont happen and Arses are safe.

Posted by kert at January 31, 2007 12:25 AM

Maybe it was a secret CIA rocket designed to fly into the center of the Earth. Notice how it went down instead of up. See I'm smart and figured that out on my own.

Posted by Josh Reiter at January 31, 2007 12:38 AM

So the key to getting a reliable rocket is to build thousands of them and launch one every 3 hours? That's just bogus, Rand. You're talking about moving the reliability number from .92 to .95 or maybe even .98 . Which is meaningless in terms of opening up space.

It's going to take some type of technological breakthrough in terms of materials/energy source/technique to get an airline like commercial space transport system.

Posted by K at January 31, 2007 01:04 AM

Wow, I want the 30 seconds of my life back from reading that pointless crap. My three year old has more interesting things to say.

Posted by Lazy blogs at January 31, 2007 02:05 AM

Rand wrote: “The decision makers must consider the possibility of simply putting out an order for currently-unthinkable numbers of launches and pounds of payload to orbit, to allow the private sector to do what it does best -- driving down costs and increasing quality through competition and volume.”

You seem to be advocating here an immense government subsidy to dramatically increase flight rate. I can not see how such a gratuitous attempt to overwhelm market signals, (current launch oligopolies already do this to a disastrous extent), would not lead to an even worse and more corrupt situation. As you know, one can not achieve low cost access to space by spending lots of money – especially if the government “gives” it away.

It is not just low flight rates that are the problem, but also launch monopolies, and a large government subsidy would only serve to perpetuate this. Governments are monopolies and monopolies are governments, if you want a sustainable commercial solution, then you will need to look for extraordinary markets in the commercial sector.

The easiest and most effective away I can see around this is to bypass the large physical launch vehicle and payload scale bias that has been perpetuated by existing monopolies and which serves to sustain them by raising entry barriers to prevent small non government affiliated low cost competitors. This likely means side stepping the problem of aerodynamic drag at launch and embracing small orbital docking payloads. With such an approach a few hundred million, (a very small fraction of that which is spent on space annually), could bring about the high flight rate, low cost and high reliability future you seek.

Posted by Pete at January 31, 2007 06:00 AM

As you know, one can not achieve low cost access to space by spending lots of money – especially if the government “gives” it away.

I'm not proposing spending any more money on space transportation than we're already spending--I'm just proposing to spend it more intelligently. I'm also not proposing "giving it away." Payments would only occur when flights were provided.

Posted by Rand Simberg at January 31, 2007 06:27 AM

Back in the 1960s and 70s, the Soviet Union launched hundreds of Soyuz/Molnyia (SL-04/06) boosters without a single failure. They did have a spate of failures during development but after that, the Soyuz (such as the 11A511U version) was incredibly reliable. They've launched 720 of that version with 19 failures for a 97.36% success rate. From what I've read, many of those 19 failures happened very early in the program.

How did they do it? They mass produced them, lowering the cost. They didn't let engineers tinker with each one, also lowering the cost and increasing reliability. Those boosters are completely expendable and not necessarily simple. In more recent years, they've had some failures but that may be related to changes in the design and to a lower flight rate that reduces the experience level of the people building and flying them.

The key to lower launch costs and higher reliability isn't necessarily through reusables, although a fully reusable system can be much less expensive if (and only if) it is flown often enough to recoup its much higher R&D and manufacturing costs.

Posted by Larry J at January 31, 2007 06:42 AM

Soyuz Soyuz Soyuz

If only there were a market.

Posted by at January 31, 2007 06:46 AM

Read the Fox blog commentary and as much as I agree with the facts presented, I disagree with the conclusion. You don't have to build a reusable system to improve reliability. The military can provide all sorts of destructive products that have good reliability.

I think the issue is the constant desire to "improve" the design with new technology rather than improving the design by working out the flaws in current production capabilities. The Russians have more success with their rockets at this time, because they can't afford to make newer designs. They can only look at ways to improve their production capability and hope to sell as many rockets as possible to pay their engineers.

The only thing a reusable system does is force the suers to stick with an understood level of technology. This could be done without reusable systems, but it requires greater discipline.

I attended several lectures by Deming's protege` Genechi Taguchi. He claimed the American engineers are more like scientist than engineers in that they tackle problems by inventing something new. He pointed out that this has served the USA well and staying on the cutting edge, but the reason the Japanese out sold them on USA invented technology is: Japanese engineers worked to improve and standardize US technology to allow for lower costs of production with greater reliability in the product.

Posted by Leland at January 31, 2007 06:51 AM

So the key to getting a reliable rocket is to build thousands of them and launch one every 3 hours?

Vastly higher flight rates are certainly necessary to get much high reliability. You're not going to weed out the 'unknown unknowns' except through prolonged painful experience. Today's high level of aircraft reliability was built on a mountain of corpses.

Posted by Paul Dietz at January 31, 2007 07:09 AM

I once encountered Leland's point expressed as a quip:

American treat rocket scientists like watch makers; Russians treat rocket scientists like plumbers.

Posted by Bill White at January 31, 2007 07:25 AM

I think the issue is the constant desire to "improve" the design with new technology rather than improving the design by working out the flaws in current production capabilities.

This is the problem with almost all American enterprise. If the words NEW and IMPROVED aren't on the label, manufacturers aren't doing their jobs. In their own minds anyway. Our government overseers in D.C. are fallen prey to it too, so has NASA to appease the money suppliers.

I'll give you two prime examples of what I mean about new and improved products. Pickup trucks and breakfast cereal.

With all the new and improved tasty, toasty, healthy cereals that come out yearly, the number one seller is still Corn Flakes. It's been the same for 100 years.

With all the new and improved "crap" they put on or in new vehicles, pickup trucks haven't changed much. They are still basically the same after all the years they've been made. They still last longer than any other vehicles. Cars on the other hand don't last as long as the payment books they come with. But they're all NEW and IMPROVED.

Only a business expecting trouble would provide an installed service to get you repairs quickly.

OnStar, anyone?

Posted by Steve at January 31, 2007 07:38 AM

Definitely a dark day, but oil rigs are pretty tough. I'm guessing the damage to the launch pad won't be that severe. I find it funny that they immediately cut away. Since this one got on YouTube, I'll bet that the next launch will have a slight delay so that the "Boom" won't get on the internet.

Posted by Tom at January 31, 2007 07:46 AM

"But don't you know, all you need to make an expendable launch vehicle reliable is have Marshall Space Flight Center design it."

A private company using a non-American rocket suffers an accident and your first response is to take a swipe at NASA?

You need to see a doctor about that giant chip on your shoulder.

Posted by Jerry Perkonin at January 31, 2007 08:01 AM

"Only a business expecting trouble would provide an installed service to get you repairs quickly.
OnStar, anyone?"

Do you even know what OnStar is?

For starters, it's a cell phone. It also gets you directions. And it activates automatically if you get in an accident. It's not about "repairs."

Bad way to make your point.

Posted by Jerry Perkonin at January 31, 2007 08:04 AM

I'm with Rand on this one.

Yeah, the platform itself is pretty tough.

But it's probably easier to build another one than it'll be to pull all the crispy wiring out of this one and re-laying new stuff...

Having the hull probably won't save you that much money, and may even cost stuff. It might be easier to build a new one than to dismantle the old one and try to figure out what's salvagable.

Posted by Phil Fraering at January 31, 2007 08:40 AM

And I just checked, according to Mark Wade's Encyclopedia Astronautica, the engines on the Atlas V have 70% common parts with the engines on Zenit.

While I don't really like the semi-socialist "design bureau" approach to spaceflight, all the effort we've spent subsidizing the Russian Government's factories instead of our own have just been proven to be a bit of a waste.

Posted by Phil Fraering at January 31, 2007 08:55 AM

I would be surprised if the platform had not been designed with launch accidents in mind, with the wiring and whatnot either heavily shielded or designed for easy replacement. Wouldn't the exposed stuff have to be replaced eventually anyway, in the corrosive maritime environment?

Posted by Paul Dietz at January 31, 2007 08:57 AM

The zenit has never been a good rocket. The Zenit-2 had 8 failures out of 36 launches or about a 78% reliability. There is a reason why Zenit is one of the cheapest launch vehicles out there. This will definitely have repercussions in that sea launch as trying to expand their business to include commercial land launches using the zenit. I am assuming this is going to stop those plans also for a time being.

Posted by Ryan Zelnio at January 31, 2007 09:22 AM

Look at the DC-3, The first really successfull airliner. Large enough to make good use of an irreducable crew. Small enough that finding payloads to fill its capacity wasn't too hard, and allowing large numbers of the aircraft to make frequent flights. A good performance margin for design loads. Durability and reliability making maintanance a managable fraction of opperating costs. Design elements such as engine out capability making inevitable mechanical troubles survivable.

This, I think, is a good model for a practical launch system.

Posted by Peter at January 31, 2007 09:55 AM

Until there is a market of sufficient magnitude to justify the development costs, there will never be an RLV. What part of profit us not understood here?

The CATS community has been putting the cart before the horse for almost 20 years now.

Time to wake up.

Posted by Dennis Ray Wingo at January 31, 2007 10:08 AM

Look at the DC-3 . . .

Okay

This, I think, is a good model for a practical launch system.

Would a DC-3 fit on top of a Proton?

Posted by at January 31, 2007 10:42 AM

There is a very old saying "If Wishes were horses beggars would ride" Over and over again I hear people in the Alt Space community wishing for a low cost to operate RLV. While such a thing would be a transformational object, its not going to happen in one step.The problem of reaching orbit is technically non-trivial. I'm personally working ona vehicle to compete in the XPC lunar lander challenge and getting the required mass ratio for a 180 second hover is hard getting a SSTO mass ratio requires a mass ratio improvement of more than 15 times. If a 2liter soda bottle was a rocket the Mass ratio is barely good enough. (Realize that at room temperature the soda bottle material is a better tank than high tech aluminum, it has better strength to weight.) So to make a SSTO RLV one has to build a vehicle with payload, propulsion, guidance, structure,everything where the vehicle
must hold a much propellant Mass as 2l soda bottle for the same weight as an empty bottle.
For dense propellants the weight of the propellant per volume is close to the weight of soda..
For a hydrogen stage, the density of liquid hydrogen is about the same as an empty Styrofoam cup, making the mass ratio problem much worse.
Using chemical rockets in the traditional way, any rocket that can reach orbit will be large,fragile, and have many stages. (pick any two)

Posted by Paul Breed at January 31, 2007 10:47 AM

Paul, SSTO is not synonymous with RLV, so i dont understand why you brought that up ?

Posted by kert at January 31, 2007 11:27 AM

I think most people in the Alt Space community do not advocate for a SSTO RLV. While a SSTO RLV is definitely doable (many 1960 era first stages had the required mass ratio), a TSTO gives you much more margin to make the vehicle and engines more robust. And with a TSTO RLV the required mass ratios are definitely doable.

Something like a real reusable vehicle made from falcon parts might do the trick. But dropping the first stage in the ocean does not give you the most important benefits of reusability: easier testing, high flight rate and avoiding "infant mortality".

Posted by Rüdiger Klaehn at January 31, 2007 11:31 AM

And people wonder about all the moon hoax conspiracy mongers; obviously they're taking their cue from all the people who think the Mercury-Atlas flights were faked.

Posted by Phil Fraering at January 31, 2007 12:24 PM

Until there is a market of sufficient magnitude to justify the development costs, there will never be an RLV. What part of profit us not understood here?

There will never be a market of sufficient magnitude without an RLV, because it has been and will remain impossible to develop a market without the tools needed to do so - RLV's with (relatively) low operating costs that can be operated frequently, affordably, and reliably.

A real market for commercial air transportation was developed only after hundreds of (reusable) airplanes had been flying over a period of decades. People built, sold, and flew those airplanes before any serious profits were to be made in air transport services. Somebody is going to have to step up and build a real spaceship, or it ain't gonna happen.

Posted by Dave at January 31, 2007 12:30 PM

Those early airlines didn't operate with the goal of losing money. The early airlines made most of their profit from air mail contracts. It wasn't until more capable and economical planes like the DC-3 came along that they could make a profit carrying only passengers.

Aviation history can give us some ideas about spacecraft development even if it is an imperfect analogy. Based on the cost of aerospace development, the cost of developing a fully reusable spacecraft (even two stage to orbit) would be many billions of dollars, perhaps comparable to developing a new airliner like the 787 or A-380. However, Boeing and Airbus are willing to spend that much money developing airliners because they expect to sell hundreds of them at a couple hundred million dollars each. Airlines are willing to pay that much money per plane because they know they'll fly thousands of flights per plane over the vehicle's operational life. The end result is that an average person can buy a round trip ticket to fly across the Atlantic for well under $1000.

The economics for spacecraft don't compare well to airplanes. Any company that spends several billon dollars to develop the vehicle can expect to have a market of a handful of customers and a total sales in the low two-digits (probably no more than 10-50 worldwide). Even if each vehicle could carry 20,000 pounds of payload to LEO and could achieve 1000 flights each before being retired, how much would the per pound cost be? How many payloads are there to launch even if the price drops to $100 a pound to LEO? Unless they can get the flight rate up, the R&D amortization costs and fixed costs will still lead to high launch costs.

If someone, say SpaceX or Kistler, can achieve a high degree of reusability and reliability, then there's a good chance launch costs can come down. So far, no one has made it happen.

Posted by Larry J at January 31, 2007 01:14 PM

I think that what it comes down to is this: the people who have been designing and building rockets for decades are stupid, witness the SeaLaunch failure. In contrast, the people who have not been building and launching rockets are smart and know how to do it right.

Posted by Jerry Perkonin at January 31, 2007 01:20 PM

The only thing I can really fault SeaLaunch on is having only one platform thus making a single failure point that is not easily recoverable.

Posted by Mike Puckett at January 31, 2007 01:22 PM

I think that what it comes down to is this: the people who have been designing and building rockets for decades are stupid

No, it has nothing to do with the intelligence of the people involved. It has to do with incentives.

Posted by Rand Simberg at January 31, 2007 01:28 PM

> Until there is a market of sufficient magnitude to justify the development
> costs, there will never be an RLV. What part of profit us not understood here?

The part where you add 2 plus 2 and get 22.

Burt Rutan built an RLV for $25 million. He and Richard Branson are developing another RLV right now.

Yes, I know they're only suborbital. I know you and Zubrin don't care about suborbital because you want to go to the Moon, Mars, and Alpha Centauri, and you want to go Right Now.

Too bad. You have to crawl before you walk, Dennis. You and Bob want to run marathons. We need to develop the means to do suborbital affordably before we can do orbital affordably; we need to get to orbit affordably before we can do moon colonies and starships; and we need to develop markets incrementally as we go along.

Developing an orbital RLV incrementally might cost a few billion dollars, but it will generate billions of dollars in incremental revenue as it goes along.

Your "Moon Rush" would cost hundreds of billions and generate no incremental revenues, because you want to skip all the intermediate steps. Just like Von Braun did. Take a look around you, Dennis, and see what remains of Von Braun's life work: a few hunks of rusting metal.

> The CATS community has been putting the cart before the horse for almost 20 years now.

> Time to wake up.

You think that big bad putty CATS caused NASA to fail, Dennis? :-)

NASA has spent the last 20 years doing exactly what you wanted. It killed off anything that might reduce the cost of access to space, and poured $100 billion into building an International Space Station -- just like you wanted. And now it's pouring another $100 billion into building ISS 2 on the Moon -- again, just like you wanted.

If NASA had spent a fraction of that $100 billion to create incentives for low-cost space transportation, we would have had CATS today -- and many space stations.

Instead, ISS has been a complete failure. It has not become a "beachhead in space" as you predicted, nor is it so fantastically affordable that you can pay for all its operating expenses just buy building a few microsats, as you once boasted.

Why? Because contrary to your mantra, transportation costs do matter. ISS 2 on the Moon will fail, for the same reason. And ISS 3 on Mars, if you ever get that far. How long will it take before you face reality and accept that costs do matter, Dennis?

Posted by Edward Wright at January 31, 2007 04:48 PM

"Too bad. You have to crawl before you walk, Dennis."

For somebody who claims to be working so tirelessly to advance human spaceflight, you seem to spend an awful lot of time on the Internet.

So how's your company doing?

Posted by Larry Hansen at January 31, 2007 07:01 PM

“I'm not proposing spending any more money on space transportation than we're already spending--I'm just proposing to spend it more intelligently. I'm also not proposing "giving it away." Payments would only occur when flights were provided.”

By analogy, wind and solar energy have received substantial subsidies for many years. This has encouraged mass production of large old uneconomic designs, stalling development in these industries and actively preventing them from achieving large scale independent economic viability. In contrast a very small proportion of those subsidies spent on aggressive sub scale fast prototyping with an emphasis on independent economic viability and finding their own way to market would have long since achieved the desired end result.

You seem to be advocating the former for CATS, I am suggesting that this will not work, too much government distortion of market signals. Even intelligent spending would invariably end up banging its head against this brick wall.

What is needed is high flight rate markets, and as I always harp on, this is most easily accomplished by changing a small part of the existing market to miniature sized launch payloads. What we need are say 50 ton satellites, and such like, docked primarily on orbit from say standardised 100 kilogram Lego blocks. Follow that path and low cost high flight rate launch vehicles will develop themselves. Obviously this requires rebuilding space markets from the ground up, to which not surprisingly there is serious resistance, however, this is necessary either way. High cost payloads lead to high cost launch vehicles, that vicious circle has to be smashed, and this is one low cost way of doing so. Can you see any better ways?

Posted by Pete at January 31, 2007 07:03 PM

Of course they didn't intend to lose money. But they did (and many still do). My point was that we had airplanes flying that could be used to develop the experience, the engineering, and the initial infrastructure prior to the point where you really could make money in air transportation. I just don't see expendables playing that same role.

I quite agree, and that makes it much more difficult to get the ball rolling. On the other hand, 10-50 RLV's could be a $2-10B market for the company that builds the vehicles.

Even if each vehicle could carry 20,000 pounds of payload to LEO and could achieve 1000 flights each before being retired, how much would the per pound cost be? How many payloads are there to launch even if the price drops to $100 a pound to LEO? Unless they can get the flight rate up, the R&D amortization costs and fixed costs will still lead to high launch costs.

Precisely - there are nowhere near enough payloads to fill a fleet of RLV's. That's because no one will or can build those payloads until they have some reasonable way to get them into space. We have to have a horse before we get too carried away worrying about what's in the cart...

And yes, development, fixed, and even the initial operational costs will be high, but that's part of the learning process that we are going to have to get through if we are ever to get to the point of real space-faring space ships. RLV's that can operate routinely are the ONLY type of vehicle that is capable of high enough flight rates. And we don't need any fantastic technology breakthroughs to build a reasonable TSTO RLV.

Posted by Dave at January 31, 2007 08:52 PM

Dave wrote: “- there are nowhere near enough payloads to fill a fleet of RLV's. That's because no one will or can build those payloads until they have some reasonable way to get them into space. We have to have a horse before we get too carried away worrying about what's in the cart...”

The world launch market is I think a few hundred ton a year, depending. A fleet of ten RLVs each flying near once a day and launching payloads around a 100kg could serve this. Point being, the payloads would be there if the market had evolved normally, but the HLV mentality prevented this. I do not expect the non-commercial sector, (launch monopolies), to ever rectify this “think big” running before one can crawl mistake.

Posted by Pete at January 31, 2007 10:04 PM

> Precisely - there are nowhere near enough payloads to fill a fleet of RLV's. That's because no
> one will or can build those payloads until they have some reasonable way to get them into space.

There are hundreds of millions of payloads in the United States right now. They are self-loading and readily mass-produced by unskilled labor. The manufacturing process is even said to be somewhat enjoyable. I predict that they will continue to be produced in large numbers regardless of whether there is any reasonable way to get them into space.

Care to bet on it? :-)

Posted by Edward Wright at February 1, 2007 12:19 AM

By analogy, wind and solar energy have received substantial subsidies for many years.

That's not a useful analogy. I'm not proposing that the government subsidize a specific way of doing things. I'm proposing that government provide a market, as it did with airmail, to encourage people to find the cheapest ways to do things.

You seem to be advocating the former for CATS

No.

What is needed is high flight rate markets,

I agree. That's why I think that the government could help by demanding, and paying for, high flight rates, instead of (as it is now) low ones.

Posted by Rand Simberg at February 1, 2007 12:59 AM

btw, government doesnt have to demand high flight rate explicitly, launch-on-demand and fast turnaround pretty much imply capability of high flight rate.
Thats where Air Force and DARPA's "Responsive Space" concept steps in.

Posted by kert at February 1, 2007 01:20 AM

Hard to imagine that the platform is even salvageable.

Well, they salvaged and refit it last time it blew up. It took them about thirty months to rebuild it though.

Personally I wouldn't do it, it should be fairly clear by now that the platform is cursed. They should either call in the ghostbusters or build another rig.

Posted by Adrasteia at February 1, 2007 02:47 AM

Rand wrote: "I'm not proposing that the government subsidize a specific way of doing things."

I doubt that it can be prevented from doing so, except by limiting the proportion of government funding, direct and indirect. Government funding invariably conflicts with commercial necessities.

Do you really see any possibility of NASA putting up a serious non NASA corrupted prize?

Posted by Pete at February 1, 2007 05:44 AM

Care to bet on it? :-)

What's the bet then? I'm happy to take your money Ed.

Posted by Daveon at February 1, 2007 02:36 PM

> What's the bet then? I'm happy to take your money Ed.

Well, I'm betting that Americans will continue to procreate. So you're betting that they, um, won't.

You've said some awfully silly things before, but are you sure you don't want to think this one over, Dave? :-)

Posted by Edward Wright at February 1, 2007 05:07 PM

Post a comment