Taylor Dinerman says that the administration has to start getting serious about space weapons. I agree.
[Update late afternoon]
There are several good critiques of the piece in comments, that I don’t necessarily disagree with. My only point was that I agree with his bottom line.
Lots of good stuff over at Clark Lindsey’s site yesterday, including a tribute to the failed space entrepreneurs of the past that laid so much of the groundwork for today’s burgeoning industry. He also has some parting thoughts on last weekend’s Space Access Conference, with a link-rich summary of many of the talks.
Over at The Space Review, Jeff Foust takes my “hangover” metaphor and runs with it in describing the state of the industry as represented by the conference (first of two parts–presumably the second will be next Monday).
In response to my previous post citing Orson Scott Card’s Star Trek critique, Tobias Buckell takes issue with my comment (and Jim Oberg’s concurrence) about Trekkers’ interest in space:
Boy, I’d have to quibble with that. I recall ST folk being excited enough to beg NASA to rename the first shuttle Enterprise. That hardly smacks of ‘not being interested in space activities.’
This little episode, dating back to the late 1970s, actually makes my point, not his. OV-101, the test article for the Approach and Landing Tests (ALT), was originally supposed to be called the Constitution, but the Star Trek fans were mobilized to rename it the Enterprise, despite the fact that it would never actually fly in space. Many (including me) attempted to make them aware of this, but they didn’t seem to care, and pressed on regardless.
It was kind of a drive-by interest, and whether or not the vehicle they were attempting to rename would actually be a space vehicle seemed to be of much less importance to them than that it be named after the Enterprise. If they thought that they could have pulled it off, they’d have probably signed a petition and sent in letters demanding that the astronaut uniforms be bell bottoms with boots, a la STTOS. If Mr. Buckell has any other data to indicate interest by Trekkers in space, or reality, I’d be interested to hear it, because this sure isn’t it.
Here’s more description of last weekend’s Space Access Conference with pictures (albeit insufficiently lit ones). There doesn’t seem to be very good navigation to previous posts, but if you’re checking this out in the future, check the later April and early May archives.
The most interesting talk at Space Access was a fill-in that was not blogged by Rand, but was by Clark Lindsey:
a CEV concept [was presented] that Boeing is investigating that involves commercial delivery of fuel to orbiting depots. This so-called “dry launch” approach would mean that vehicles for in-space and lunar transport could be launched without fuel and so, being lighter, they would not need new heavy lifters. This would open a great opportunity for the new launch companies to provide fuel to the depots.
It involves an alternative concept (see page 32) from Boeing. The idea is to launch the lunar transfer vehicle dry and provide commercial propellant delivery. This could result in thousands of metric tons of fuel needing to be delivered to LEO. This might bootstrap the commercial launch industry. There are also opportunities for “the last mile” because some launcher companies will not want to have to figure out how to dock with a fuel depot.
1000 metric tons of fuel would be a cool $3 billion unless someone can undercut Elon Musk. 9000 metric tons through 2030 would be $27 billion at current prices, but would likely spur a tech drive and a bidding war to compete prices down to $1000/kg or less.
I just got an interesting note from Popular Mechanics:
At 12:01 a.m. EST, Popular Mechanics will unveil on its Web site an early look at Lockheed Martin’s proposed Crew Exploration Vehicle — one of two major proposals submitted today to NASA to replace the Space Shuttle and eventually carry us to Mars. We’ll be including images and specs. A larger piece will run in our June issue.
I don’t know if I’ll stay up for it (I’m still recovering from the Space Access Conference sleep deprivation), but comments here are open for anyone who does. I’ll take a look in the morning. I am curious to see what Lockmart will propose, particularly now that the competition has gotten more heated with the apparent decision to only award a single contract.
[Tuesday morning update]
The biggest obvious difference between it and the Boeing concept (at least the Boeing concept that has been on display in the exploration studies–I can’t speak to what was actually proposed) is that it’s got wings. Or at least a body with a lot more lift than a capsule, with supersonic drogues. Despite that, it still lands with chutes and bags, so it’s not clear why they want such a high L/D, except for more cross range and landing site flexibility, and reduced entry gees. What NASA has been calling a Service Module they seem to be calling a Propulsion Stage. It’s not clear whether it also contains life support consumables (as the Apollo Service Module did), though it does mention that the crew module itself has a LOX supply and fuel cells.
It definitely looks more sexy than Boeing’s design–they may be hoping that will help them as it did in X-33, but having that much L/D is a problem for the launch vehicle, because it will impart bending loads (for which it’s not designed) on it from the side force of the lift. It will be interesting to see how they explain this.
I had a long travel day yesterday. My scheduled return flight was supposed to leave Phoenix at 3:30 in the afternoon and arrive in Fort Lauderdale (via DFW) after midnight. I went to the aircraft in the morning, assuming that I could get an earlier flight to Dallas, and thus get home earlier, on standby.
Wrong.
I ended up spending all the time at Skyharbor not getting on to three separate flights, and ended up taking my original flight anyway. Next time I’ll do more than verify that the flights exist–who would have thought that so many others would be so desperate to get out of Phoenix yesterday?
Michael Mealing has a summary of the results of the panel discussion that ended the conference Saturday night. Thanks again to Henry Vanderbilt (and particularly for getting a hotel with wireless everywhere) for putting on another good get-together for this growing community.
[Update at 10:30 AM EDT]
Clark Lindsey has some good further coverage of the sessions that I didn’t get to, or write about.
I’m listening to John Carmack describe future plans for X-Prize Cup and future vehicles and flight tests, but I’m getting sore wrists from blogging in my lap, so I want to conserve keystrokes for Jim Muncy, who is scheduled to speak shortly. I should mention that as a result of switching from peroxide to LOX/methanol as propellants, John says that Armadillo has about fifty thousand dollars worth of good peroxide equipment that he’ll let go cheap. His next vehicle should be a space vehicle, and he expects to crash it a few times in the process of perfecting the design.
3:06 MST: Jim Muncy is coming up to the lectern to speak now. His job as a political consultant is to help space entrepreneurs at the intersection between their endeavors and the political sphere. Talking here primarily about t/Space (among his many other clients). First part of t/Space consortium is AirLaunch (a company of Gary Hudson’s) that has one of the Falcon contracts. The goal is “operationally responsive spacelift.” Joint project between DARPA, Air Force and NASA.
Title of his talk: AirLaunch, t/Space and a Fast Prototyping Path to Prompt Global Strike, Orbital Tourism and Maybe Even the Moon.
Thanking everyone here for getting the regulatory legislation passed last year, for which this conference was a key event.
NASA has decided that working with these crazy people like Scaled Composites and the entrepreneurial space community is a good idea. Goal is to responsively replenish, replace satellites and respond to space threats, a capability which the nation currently doesn’t have. Also able to get several thousand miles in a couple hours and deliver a payload. Key part of program is developing Small Launch Vehicle (hopefully more than one) for smallsats into LEO or hypersonic test vehicles, at less than five million dollars per launch. Trying to return to the launch vehicle paradigm operating in the DC-X program.
Upper stage for launch vehicle isa two-stage self-pressurizing LOX/propane system. Goal is 24-hour response time. It’s launched from a C-17 transport (aircraft can carry two). No aircraft modification required. Benefits of air launch aren’t performance, but safety in ability to abort, and security, provided by the ability to hide launch location until the last minute. Vehicle is deployed by gravity (about a 750-foot drop prior to ignition, with a large right bank by the aircraft to prevent collision).
t/Space has people from both entrepreneurial community and aerospace establishment: David Gump, Gary Hudson, Jim Muncy, Brett Alexander (White House space policy), Jim Voss (veteran NASA astronaut–will run vehicle development). Two key contractors are AirLaunch LLC and Scaled Composites.
A frontier means new resources and opportunities, not just new knowledge. Create the frontier through government leadership, not government ownership. Inviting private sector to party means more affordable and more sustainable.
They promote commercial delivery of crew, cargo and propellant to LEO. Don’t use CEV as a means of getting crew to orbit–turn that over to the private sector, and use CEV in space. Don’t base the hard part of going to the moon on the system that gets people into orbit. Their CEV would be space based, and return to LEO via aerocapture. Transportation between earth and LEO would be done privately. The proposal is a split-level architecture: ETO and LEO to Moon. Goal of architecture is to get to lunar-produced propellant as soon as possible. They send a convoy of two vehicles to the moon for redundancy and safety.
They propose air launching their crew transfer vehicle on a “stilt” 747 carrier aircraft. It has longer gear to allow the vehicle to be slung underneath to carry peoploe into LEO. It uses LOX/Hydrogen. A second air launch concept is a new airplane by Burt (that he wants to build for other reasons), which is a “White Knight on steroids.”
Goal is to help NASA go faster. Hopeful that new program direction of single CEV contractor will free up funds to allow NASA to have “non-traditional” approach in parallel.
Concerned that Air Force will only have enough money for a single Falcon concept to go forward. Would like us to lobby the Hill to get them to make sure there is sufficient funding for two concepts, to keep the competition going, and keep more companies developing low-cost launch vehicles. Talking about ARES (Affordable REsponsive Spacelift). Not encouraged about it, because it’s being managed by traditional missile guys at the Air Force. Wants to get Congress to encourage the Air Force to work with non-traditional players, and get new management in place. If we can’t get an award to go to the small guys, we should at least get the big guys to get the small guys as suppliers for subsystems.
He’s announcing a new activity that could provide the seed of a new NACA for spaceflight, by developing synergism between the Air Force Research Lab and the entrepreneurial community, called ORSTEP (ORS Technology Enterprise Partnership–where ORS is Operational Responsive Spacelift). Hoping for five million in FY 2006 to get it started.
Rick Tumlinson of the Space Frontier Foundation is starting with his standard greeting–“Welcome to the Revolution!”
Congratulating Henry on the quality of his conference, and comparing it very favorably to the Esther Dyson event. A lot cheaper, and a lot more fun.
2004 was a very important year, beginning with the president’s speech, then the Aldridge Commission speech, then Rutan’s flight, and finally the regulatory legislation, and they’re all tied together. Direction from the White House of permanence and moving outward, working with the private sector–unprecedented. O’Keefe’s job was to bail the water out of the boat, make sure it didn’t sink, but he’s not a ship’s captain. Roadmaps were confusing, and unfocused.
Now new team coming in–boat is floating, has a new rudder, with a new captain and officers. Courtney Stadd, Scott Pace coming in, with O’Neillian viewpoint.
Three kinds of space people:
Saganites: “Space is big, billions of stars, isn’t God’s creation incredible…DON’T TOUCH IT.”
Von Braunians: “We vill go boldly into space, and you vill watch on television, and you vill enjoy it.” That’s the current space program.
O’Neillians: “We will build the tools, go into space, and use its resources to expand humanity and freedom into the cosmos.”
Dichotomy between people who want to “do” space (contractors and NASA), and people who want to actually open space.
Griffin has some of religion and ideas, but “I’m not naive.” Don’t trust, and verify. Griffin is centralizing control–the spirals are going away. He has a mandate to the White House. President screwed up in one big way in his speech when he said “Crew Exploration Vehicle” instead of crew exploration system, which has some thinking that one vehicle has to do the whole job. Griffin using sixties model to accelerate the program, which is strong central control, dictating to the contractors. But underneath, he is sympathetic to permanence, and opening up space, and really wants it to happen. Roadmaps not going away, but wrapping up in the next few weeks (though transportation roadmap is going away).
Looking at creation of a non-traditional programs office (more detail tonight from Jim Muncy). Has had some exchanges with Dr. Griffin about the “Frontier-enabling test.”
Rick reads an email from Griffin (yesterday) explaining that he supports the test, but that it’s not his only goal, and that it would be irresponsible of him to allow NASA to sit on the sidelines hoping that the private sector will deliver (I’ll get an exact copy from Rick after the session and post it here).
“We need to get the word out about what we’re doing–we’re one of the best-kept secrets around.” “Don’t overpromise.” “We’re space geeks–people don’t believe us when we start talking.” “Stick together, don’t let personal differences keep us from the goal–the trash talk has got to stop.” “Build each other up, not tear down.” “Need to carry on what Henry Vanderbilt has started–the creation of a community.” “Even if we can only agree on three bullets, we need to find them and push them as an industry.”
One of the bullets should be to kill ITAR. “It is killing this industry. All ITAR does is force the foreigners to go and develop it themselves in an uncontrolled way.
Mentions “Teachers in Space” initiative, giving teachers vouchers to fly, and then take the knowledge and enthusiasm back into the classroom.
Wants to create “Port Authority” for ISS that goes beyond NASA, more like and airport authority, to allow everyone to work on free-enterprise activities to the benefit of all. Wants to involve private sector in lunar activities from first landing. Give companies leases to property on the Moon if they can demonstrate capability to utilize it, and allow them to retain intellectual property (with perhaps tax sweeteners). Allow someone to put together a total package for investment, modeled on railroad land grants.
Build and fly, and make sure the world sees it.” “You are the experts, the da Vincis, the Raphaels of building spaceships, and it makes people believe and want to invest their heart, soul and money in what you’re doing.”
Question about raising prize authority from $250,000.
Rick responds that Griffin’s distrust of commercial companies includes the main aerospace industry. As far as prize authority, it should be raised, but probably taken out of NASA, but someone needs to propose a different model or entity for who would manage it.
Jerry Pournelle points out that Rohrabacher wants to start a National Space Foundation that looks like NSF except it can receive private donations as well as government funding, and hand out prizes (preview of his talk tonight). This would help with some of the bookkeeping problems. If this is a bad idea, now is the good time to tell him, because he’s about to tell Rohrabacher that he thinks it’s a good idea.
Len Comier says that investors aren’t interested in one-shot prizes–they want to see steady ongoing markets.
A Bob Ashman says that the people from Griffin’s team at Johns Hopkins are in tune with any of the things that Tumlinson is saying, and he’s supporting this through making videos and documentaries, and wants to serve as an interface between the nascent space industry and the entertainment community.
Breaking for lunch now.
Chuck Lauer is describing Rocketplane Limited‘s activity in Oklahoma, funded by state government tax credits and operating out of the new Oklahoma Spaceport at Burns Flat, at a decommissioned Air Force Base.
Chuck actually gets quite emotional when describing the feeling of going into the hangar and seeing all the people working, earning a living, finally living the dream that he and Mitchell started working on a decade ago.
Their spaceplane will be able to transport at least four people to 330,000 feet and back, with net perceived gees in the range of three or so. It’s a converted Learjet, with new wings and other structure. Their base market is tourism, but they also hope to be able to use the vehicle to demonstrate rapid turnaround to help win future Air Force contracts. The vehicle will have both jet and rocket engines. It’s a completely electric airplane, using lithium-ion batteries, allowing elmination of APUs (this is one technology that wouldn’t have been ready for prime time a few years ago). Using cold-gas for reaction control system, with LOX-kerosene for main propulsion.
Fuselage has already been tested to thirty PSI overpressure. Fact that it’s an older airplane actually gives it more margin for this mission compared to a more modern aircraft with lighter structure. They’ll be doing pressure testing of it in an old missile bunker that was originally a city killer–Chuck likes the swords-to-plowshares symbolism of converting one of the MAD facilities to developing twenty-first century space hardware for human enjoyment.
Vehicle will have automatic flight control, and be capable of autonomous operation, but tests will nominally be piloted. Will allow vehicle to compete in both piloted and unpiloted classes of X-Prize Cup. Room for passengers will be able to unbuckle and stretch out, though cabin will be small. Still determining whether or not they’ll allow people to unbuckle–will determine in atmospheric parabolas to see if they have time to get back and buckled in prior to entry. Full real-time video with views of interior and exterior.
Critical Design Review in August, rollout of vehicle late this year, initial flight test next year, with first revenue flights in 2007.
Long-term view is getting to orbit, doing ISS cargo, and they are interested in ocean hopping as well.
Most amusing comment on the business model:
“Thank you, thank you, Sir Richard, for raising the price to $200,000.”