Speaking of rockets versus airbreathers, there’s a nice interview with Aleta Jackson of XCOR over at the Objective American. They get the company name wrong, though–there’s no “C” at the end of the name.
[Thanks to Thomas James who gave me the heads up via email.]
I’m still busy, but I’ll try to get up a few posts today. I’ll see how long I can go before my outrage boiler is about to blow, and I have to vent some steam…
Australia has beaten the US at one of the holy grails of aerospace technology–on a shoestring budget, they’ve demonstrated a supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet) in flight, for the first time in history. NASA has spent many times as much toward that end and never flown anything.
It’s not that big a deal for space, however, at least in my opinion.
While Leonard David’s article states “scramjet vehicles could launch small space payloads at substantially lower cost” as though it were an established fact, there are actually a lot of reasons to think this is not the case. That people (even otherwise smart engineers) believe this is due to a misunderstanding of the source of the high costs of launch.
If you believe that launch is expensive because rockets have to carry a lot of propellant (needing both oxidizer and fuel), then it makes sense that if you have a vehicle that can get its oxidizer from the atmosphere, it would be much cheaper to operate.
Unfortunately, the underlying premise is false. Rockets aren’t expensive becaue they have to carry a lot of propellant. The propellant costs for a typical rocket is a tiny fraction of the launch cost. Even the fact that the rocket has to be larger in order to carry them is a minor contributor.
As I’ve said repeatedly, the primary driver behind high launch costs is low flight rates, and lack of vehicles specifically designed for high ones. Scramjets are sexy for the “technology uber alles” crowd, but there’s no reason to think that by themselves they can reduce the cost of launch.
Even for a high-flight rate vehicle, it’s likely that their disadvantages will vastly outweigh their benefit of not having to carry oxygen. In order to get their oxygen, they have to spend a lot of time in the atmosphere. Airbreathers moving at hypersonic speeds in the atmosphere have a lot of drag, including the drag of the inlet to the engine itself, and it’s an extremely intense heating environment, as bad or worse in many ways than entry. And once they get out of the atmosphere, they have to fall back on rocket propulsion anyway.
Rockets, on the other hand, get out of the atmosphere as quickly as possible, because they tend to perform better in vacuum, and it reduces the drag and the need for thermal protection during ascent.
Also, airbreathing engines tend to optimize at a certain cruise speed, and perform very poorly in off-design conditions. That’s exactly the propulsion system that you don’t want in a launch system, which is under continuous acceleration. Rocket engines are indifferent to vehicle speed (they’re sensitive only to atmospheric pressure).
Scramjets may have some interesting military applications, but I think that they’re unlikely to play any role in commercial flight, or space launch, for a very long time.
But congratulations to Oz anyway–it’s still a great technical achievement.
I’m on an intensive programming project. Probably little posting today.
Over a decade after the end of the Soviet Union, Russia remains, in the famous words of Winston Churchill, a “…riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma…
Which is one of the reasons why it remains hard to tell whether or not Lance Bass is going to fly to the International Space Station this fall.
The other one, of course, is that American entertainment promoters sometimes lie through their teeth.
Russian space expert Jim Oberg sent me this link. For those who don’t read Russian, here’s Jim’s (admittedly rough) translation:
BASS’S FLIGHT WILL BE FULLY FINANCED
American pop-singer Lance Bass?s flight into space to the international space station (ISS) as “tourist-3” will be fully financed, Hollywood producer David Krief stated to journalists. On this they reported on 9 August at Rosaviakosmos.
Krief noted that he reached an agreement with six sponsors, who agreed to contribute to the flight of Bass on the order of 22 million dollars. Simultaneously, according to him, an agreement is concluded with one of the American television channels, which is ready to show in 40 countries the small TV series which will be taken in connection with the forthcoming flight. As they reported in Rosaviakosmos, Krief made his statement, by his acknowledgement, in connection with the fact that “in the Russian mass media have appeared reports that bring into question the forthcoming flight of Lance Bass and his solvency. We have already filmed interesting material on the preliminary selection of the singer for the flight into space at the Russian ‘Institute of Biomedical Problems’ and on his preparation on the simulators at Starry Town near Moscow,” Krief elaborated. “We hope that not less impressing will be the video of the launch of the singer on 28 October of the present year in the space ship Soyuz at the spaceport Baikonur and his 8-day flight on ISS.”
At the same time, as reports RIA-Novosti, the producer Krief by his appearance attempted to attribute the entire fault for the created crisis situation about the payment of the flight of the singer, to the Russian side.
“We completely and scrupulously follow the letter of contract, and have done nothing to reproach,” they noted in the Russian aerospace department. “We sure would like the American side to strictly carry out its obligations in all stages of the contract concluded with us”, they emphasized at Rosaviakosmos.
As Jim notes, it sounds like Mr. Krief is making himself a real pain in the keester over there.
And now for the latest.
Lance is learning that money talks, and BS…doesn’t fly into space.
Over a decade after the end of the Soviet Union, Russia remains, in the famous words of Winston Churchill, a “…riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma…
Which is one of the reasons why it remains hard to tell whether or not Lance Bass is going to fly to the International Space Station this fall.
The other one, of course, is that American entertainment promoters sometimes lie through their teeth.
Russian space expert Jim Oberg sent me this link. For those who don’t read Russian, here’s Jim’s (admittedly rough) translation:
BASS’S FLIGHT WILL BE FULLY FINANCED
American pop-singer Lance Bass?s flight into space to the international space station (ISS) as “tourist-3” will be fully financed, Hollywood producer David Krief stated to journalists. On this they reported on 9 August at Rosaviakosmos.
Krief noted that he reached an agreement with six sponsors, who agreed to contribute to the flight of Bass on the order of 22 million dollars. Simultaneously, according to him, an agreement is concluded with one of the American television channels, which is ready to show in 40 countries the small TV series which will be taken in connection with the forthcoming flight. As they reported in Rosaviakosmos, Krief made his statement, by his acknowledgement, in connection with the fact that “in the Russian mass media have appeared reports that bring into question the forthcoming flight of Lance Bass and his solvency. We have already filmed interesting material on the preliminary selection of the singer for the flight into space at the Russian ‘Institute of Biomedical Problems’ and on his preparation on the simulators at Starry Town near Moscow,” Krief elaborated. “We hope that not less impressing will be the video of the launch of the singer on 28 October of the present year in the space ship Soyuz at the spaceport Baikonur and his 8-day flight on ISS.”
At the same time, as reports RIA-Novosti, the producer Krief by his appearance attempted to attribute the entire fault for the created crisis situation about the payment of the flight of the singer, to the Russian side.
“We completely and scrupulously follow the letter of contract, and have done nothing to reproach,” they noted in the Russian aerospace department. “We sure would like the American side to strictly carry out its obligations in all stages of the contract concluded with us”, they emphasized at Rosaviakosmos.
As Jim notes, it sounds like Mr. Krief is making himself a real pain in the keester over there.
And now for the latest.
Lance is learning that money talks, and BS…doesn’t fly into space.
Over a decade after the end of the Soviet Union, Russia remains, in the famous words of Winston Churchill, a “…riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma…
Which is one of the reasons why it remains hard to tell whether or not Lance Bass is going to fly to the International Space Station this fall.
The other one, of course, is that American entertainment promoters sometimes lie through their teeth.
Russian space expert Jim Oberg sent me this link. For those who don’t read Russian, here’s Jim’s (admittedly rough) translation:
BASS’S FLIGHT WILL BE FULLY FINANCED
American pop-singer Lance Bass?s flight into space to the international space station (ISS) as “tourist-3” will be fully financed, Hollywood producer David Krief stated to journalists. On this they reported on 9 August at Rosaviakosmos.
Krief noted that he reached an agreement with six sponsors, who agreed to contribute to the flight of Bass on the order of 22 million dollars. Simultaneously, according to him, an agreement is concluded with one of the American television channels, which is ready to show in 40 countries the small TV series which will be taken in connection with the forthcoming flight. As they reported in Rosaviakosmos, Krief made his statement, by his acknowledgement, in connection with the fact that “in the Russian mass media have appeared reports that bring into question the forthcoming flight of Lance Bass and his solvency. We have already filmed interesting material on the preliminary selection of the singer for the flight into space at the Russian ‘Institute of Biomedical Problems’ and on his preparation on the simulators at Starry Town near Moscow,” Krief elaborated. “We hope that not less impressing will be the video of the launch of the singer on 28 October of the present year in the space ship Soyuz at the spaceport Baikonur and his 8-day flight on ISS.”
At the same time, as reports RIA-Novosti, the producer Krief by his appearance attempted to attribute the entire fault for the created crisis situation about the payment of the flight of the singer, to the Russian side.
“We completely and scrupulously follow the letter of contract, and have done nothing to reproach,” they noted in the Russian aerospace department. “We sure would like the American side to strictly carry out its obligations in all stages of the contract concluded with us”, they emphasized at Rosaviakosmos.
As Jim notes, it sounds like Mr. Krief is making himself a real pain in the keester over there.
And now for the latest.
Lance is learning that money talks, and BS…doesn’t fly into space.
…is on full display over at Charles Johnson’s site this morning. He has a letter from a college professor defending the college’s choice of Hanan Ashrawi as keynote speaker at a symposium on the events of September 11.
Well, not exactly, but ISS astronaut Peggy Whitson has been writing a series of “letters home.” Some of the content is a little technical, but it’s also quite descriptive.
One of the really striking things that I had noticed when I first saw the Earth’s horizon, is that the atmosphere that protects the Earth is so small compared to the relative size of the Earth. As you might expect, the appearance of the horizon can vary dramatically, depending on the lighting (sunrise/sunset or just daytime). As the sun rises (approaches us from behind the Earth), initially, only a thin, very bright band of light is visible. A deep royal blue line appears first, followed by the addition of oranges and reds. The rays of light seem to wrap fingers of light around the planet, and reflect from the upper atmosphere downward onto Earth, all within the thin layer of the atmosphere.
I don’t know how anyone can read letters like these and think that there’s no market for public space travel.
As I noted earlier, now that the 90s tech bubble has popped, some of the former dotcommers are learning what business is like in the real world.
Their entrepreneurial spirit undaunted by the false dreams of their recent past, they’re starting new businesses–ones that actually create and deliver products that people can use, rather than hype, even if those products are more mundane than the next New Thing.
They’ve plummeted from a rarefied world in which unlimited money was flung at them, business clothes were eschewed, and they were worshipped as the next phase in human and industrial evolution. Now, rather than being courted by venture capitalists, they’re simply scraping by on the funds borrowed from friends and relatives, rolling up their sleeves, figuring out what customers want, and working long hours to deliver it.
They’re not the only class of people who will have to learn new ways in a new industry. While the government space program is by no means withering away any time soon, it no longer represents the bright future of space activities. That future lies in commercial activities, providing services that have traditionally been far afield from aerospace, at least the “space” part of it.
Like the deflated dotcoms, the government-contracting civil space industry is a hothouse plant, sustainable only in a peculiar environment, and perhaps, ultimately, doomed to failure if it cannot adapt to the new circumstances. Over a decade after the end of the Cold War, it moves forward mostly from inertia and momentum of past relics of that era, such as the International Space Station.
Unfortunately for the major aerospace contractors (but fortunately for their smaller but more nimble competition), they’re ill suited, by corporate culture and experience, to take advantage of new commercial opportunities. Over four decades of working for the government have made them too expensive to compete in a truly competitive marketplace, and they have inculcated management attitudes that will prevent them from taking the risks that may be necessary in order to stay in the forefront of the industry.
Government contractors in the space business work, for the most part, on what are called “cost-plus” contracts. That means that they are paid on the basis of time and material for the effort, plus some percentage of profit. While this may be necessary in order to get companies to bid on high-risk government programs, it doesn’t encourage a culture of low cost because, perversely, the higher the cost, the more the contractor makes (within certain limitations).
As an example, I’ve often mentioned XCOR as an exemplar of the new way of doing space business. If the cost of their activities to date had been estimated ahead of time using a conventional aerospace industry cost model, it would almost certainly have predicted at least one, and perhaps two orders of magnitude higher cost than they’ve actually spent to date.
Yet despite their low costs, there are companies hungry for lower costs yet. John Carmack, the founder of Armadillo Aerospace (who also happens to be the man behind many successful video games, including Doom and Quake, and is funding Armadillo with his own fortune), recently posted on Usenet:
I did get a price quote from XCOR early on, and it just didn’t make sense for us. Four or five engines from XCOR would have cost more than our entire first year of development. I think hard about all large $$$ purchases, because it is a slippery slope to get on, where you just throw money at a problem.
This exemplifies the ethos that must, and will, rule the new space age. The small mammal is dancing around the toes of the dinosaurs, and is being nipped at by a tiny rodent that has an even faster metabolism and motivation.
But it’s not just the inability to run projects “lean and mean” that will hold back big aerospace. It’s their attitude and approach to business.
Large public corporations, particularly ones to whom research and development is a profit center (with the government as a customer), rather than an expense of doing business, will be loathe to risk their own money on uncertain markets, even with potentially high payoff.
It involves such a radically different way of doing business that it falls well outside their comfort zone. It means identifying commercial customers, rather than selling to a single government customer, who is amenable to pressure from lobbying Congress, and providing them with something that they have to purchase with their own money, rather than that of anonymous and, for the most part, oblivious taxpayers.
Long ago, when I worked for a major aerospace contractor, I and some colleagues tried in vain to get management to consider a commercial project. The conversation went something like this:
“So, you want to put investors’ money into the development of this new system that will be superior to the competition.”
“That’s right.”
“And you propose to sell the services that it offers to the commercial market?”
“Right.”
“And you’ll take the profits from that, and repay the investors?”
“You got it.”
“???…You people don’t seem to understand anything about business–why don’t you just go out and win a government contract?”
Old economy…new economy. May the best company win…
Galen Rowell, and his wife Barbara, were killed in a plane crash in the eastern Sierra.
His work will be missed, particularly by readers of National Geographic.