The Space Frontier Foundation has gotten a lot of attention from the mainstream press with their latest http://www.space.com/news/060724_cev_needsrevision.html.
They advocate a more extensive support fo free enterprise and entrepreneurship in the American space program. They suggest that NASA should no longer be allowed to develop and own new launch vehicles, and that CEV and CLV development should be cancelled. They also advise that NASA rely on Altas 5 and Delta 4 rockets, and transfer more funding to the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program.
I cannot find the actual white paper on the SFF website. I don't know if SFF is particularly professional (certainly their gaudy website doesn't look it), but I have to agree with some of their points.
I have an uncomfortable feeling that the questions raised in this thread ultimately turn on political ideology, not on science or engineering.
This topic definitely sounds like it belongs more to the http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showforum=49 forum down below.
As policy, there is good reason to want private enterprise to develop technology rather than government agencies. Let me make an analogy:
The computer industry (my profession) is a good example of free enterprise. Innovation has not come from university professors or government agencies. It has come from unlikely sources of commercial activity that focused talent and resources. Computer games, for example, have been the most important driving force behind increased performance of central processors and graphics processors. But if you talked to most "computer scientists", they would be appalled by that notion, and most would have no knowledge whatsoever of computer games. However, everyone benefits from having faster processors and vector math and real-time graphics, whether they are playing a computer game or solving the partial differential equeations of global climate models.
Government burocracies spend resources incompetantly. Years ago, a project led by ITU to replace TCP/IP, was a spectacular and expensive failure. Academics and standards committees generated a series of protocols and formats so complex that when they were finally implemented, the resulting performance was completely unacceptible. TP4, their replacement for TCP, was so slow that it took longer to negotiate the transfer for a packet than TCP's default connection timeout. I'll let you speculate about what the opportunity cost was of delaying European and Japanese adoption of the internet by several years -- billions if not trillions of dollars, I reckon.
This is why economic conservatives want to see space exploration dominated by free enterprise, not by government burocracies and standards committees. At least NASA is required to take bids from mulitple competators, and businesses are free to buy launch services for multiple (even foreign) sources. But I think we have reached a point where the technology and industry is well enough developed to cut back on this kind of sheparding control.
Real talent goes where the action is. Gone are the days of the Apollo program, when NASA was a great adventure that drew in the finest minds of the nation to work on space. Today, those minds are at TRW and Boeing, or more likely, at Intel and Microsoft and Google. NASA and the ESA are not in the business of making bold, novel, and exciting decisions. And while they may waste enormous funds (with taxpayers' money), the do not make risky and adventerous financial moves in the way that a venture capitalist would.
This discution about comparing the merits of free enterprise (US like) versus centralized administration (USSR like) is not just a bit political! I think it would be off-topic to go further in this direction, but I would add some bits of on-topic remarks.
What I basically think is that decisions must be taken by clever people with enough understanding of the problems and its implication in numerous fields (science, philosophy, technology, economy...). After, whatever the system in which these people operate, they will alway do better than people whose mind is bound to only one domain or one idea.
Why the USSR moon program failed? There was a story of a personal disagreement between the responsible of the rocket and the responsible of the engines... and a foolhardy pride-dominated attempt to fix a problem on a fueled rocket which resulted in a terrifying explosion and the loss of tens of highly valuable technicians and engineeers. Would such things be magically removed in a private enterprise? I don't think so, and we know too well how "some" private enterprise are skilfull into "public relations" in order to make forget the problems they create. I quote just one example among many other, because it was condemned by a tribunal: the professor Ragnar Rylander, who was paid for tens of years by tobacco compagnies to publish falsified science studies in order to deny the effects of passive smoking.
So peoples in the world will vote for right or left wings governments, allowing for more or less state centralism or private entrepreneurship, but if we keep the same guies taking the same decisions, the result will be the same.
What will probably happen, is that, if state agencies don't flush out all their clumsy ideologists, pride defenders and specialty bound thinkers, the decisions and responsabilities will more or less shift to private companies. But space is too large, and has too much implications, to be left completely out of control in the hands of just profit-seeking people.
About solid boosters, it seems that they are the most cost efficient to haul large charges to orbit. But they have an habit to explode at times... (probably because blocks of fuel are thrown through the nozzle)development work should focuse here. And also the space shuttle boosters should be welded...
Messenger, about the SST (Concorde plane) the failure did not came just from a tyre. It was complete far before. The affair went as follow:
-after world war II, the french aircraft manufacturers were several small companies, but this was enough for the small planes of this epoch. Some good planes were produced, with a bit of commercial success, regarding the small market at this epoch. At the same time, USA was producing DC3 at best.
-when came the time to launch large airliners, the french aircraft industry concentrated in two large companies, one producing the Caravelle, which was a good plane for its epoch, and a large commercial success in front of the US Boeing and others.
-encouraged by this success, the airplane industry concentrated still more, to pass to what seemed the next logical step: supersonic. At this time everybody was seeing this as the best thing to do, all the scifi thinkers, bold scientistists and many "forward looking" politicians, none of them suspecting what would happen.
-The supersonic plane Concorde was a tremendous technical success, but a commercial waste. This came from the fact that companies were not interested in a plane which was simply much costy to operate, and passengers were not interested in a double ticket just to earn three hours. And the increase of fuel price will not revert this tendency for long, unless some unforeseeable discovery.
-From this, the french aircraft industry did what was the best thing to do: to swallow their pride. This allowed them to think without inhibition, and resulted into taking the right decision: make a technically good aircraft, but heeding at the demands of companies. So the aircraft industry went at european scale, doing a relable, comfortable, heavy lifter and fuel efficient plane: the Airbus, which is now a tremendous success, both technical and economical, even challenging the US industry, a thing nobody expected at the beginning. (I remember when working on the airbus in the 1970', the first planners allowed only two digits for the serial numbers...)
-the story of the tyre (remember that the incident started from an US plane !!!) just revealed a profound design mistake (the air inlets could swallow exploding tyres bits) which ended the life of an aircraft which had no real life. (To be honest, should such a mistake be discovered on the Airbus, it would arise a much more serious concern).
-in all this story, most decisions, good or bad, were in fact state-led (french, then european) but implemented by private companies which were expected to be making profits, but with a waranty by state funding.
Thanks you ugordan for your informations.
Actualy France and Europe have too an experience in solid boosters. The first french rockets lauched from Sahara all were solid. Liquid rockets like Diamant were considered only when developing a vehicule able to reach orbit.
Now Ariane IV and V have solid strap-on boosters, and the ones of Ariane V are about the size of the shuttle's. They seem to perform well.
Increasing the role of private industry in space is a serious policy issue in America. The parable of the computer industry was meant to point out that free enterprise has a good track record for taking technology in new, important, and unexpected directions. Your nVidia graphics card was not designed by a CCITT committee.
The American space program is already largely privately owned. Even the most secret military space technology is researched and developed by private companies like TRW or Hugues. NASA is largely out of the loop today on commercial satellites, where the US has a huge number of successful ventures -- Boeing, SES Americom, Lockheed Martin, PanAmSat, Loral, Northrop Grumman, DirectTV, Hughes Network Systems, Ball Aerospace, etc. Launch services are privately owned -- Lockheed's Atlas, Boeing's Delta, and hopefully Orbital and SpaceX will be successful too, as well as joint ventures with Russia (ILS/Proton) and the Ukraine (Sea Launch/Zenit). There are at least three American companies making a go of satellite imaging and Earth resources -- DigitalGlobe, Orbimage, Space Imaging.
So, the question being raised is, will manned spaceflight and space stations follow in this path? I don't think that is a ridiculous idea.
DonPMitchell, I basically don't agree with your stance, for political/philosophical reasons (but again I don't try to launch the discution that way). But I however must recognize the value of much of your arguments: people do better when they are free.
Not because they would be better, but because there is a kind of "darwinian natural selection" which operates in this case. People with good ideas have success, and people with bad ideas remain ignored.
The problem of rigid administration is however not only in the US, in my country France there are too administrations which only purpose seems to block any innovation. For instance look at tremendous things such as eBay (internet site for selling things among private persons) or Meetic (Adds to encounter peoples, hopefully not just for bed). They are tremendous success stories of private enterprises. Think that I had the idea to build such a service in... 1985. But what happened?
1) banks refused me any loan, unless I had some "caution" (the french name for somebody being able to repay all my loan, in case of a failure of my business!!!)
2) at this epoch there was not yet the Internet, but the Minitel, something much simpler allowing to display texts and rough graphics in 16 colors. They even distributed the terminals for free, but the connection cost was so hight that only some porn sites or administration sites could survive, and some tens of newspapers or association sites. They invented the Internet, but rebuffed the users!
Think that, if they had let me do, I would probably be now in a situation similar to Elon Musk, who made a fortune with the Internet service Paypal, and is now creating his company Spacex, building his own private rockets. Certainly he did not started with courses for unemployed persons to learn how to set their tie to positively impress employers.
Well, I did not so much intend to compare socialism to capitalism. I think the issue is government control vs. private enterprise. From my own experiences in industry, I don't believe private enterprise is simply people thinking about profit, nor do I believe that burocrats and intellectuals are totally selfless in their motivations.
Messenger brought up the issue of future engineers to maintain a "world class rocket program". That's another thing that concerns many people. James Oberg has asserted that Russia is in trouble because its rocket expertise consists mostly of old men, with no young people taking their place. Oberg is something of a Russian-basher, so I don't know if his assertion is true. Similar concerns are expressed about American engineering, although a recent http://www.embedded.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=175006573 suggests that when you count real engineers, the US is not falling behind.
Right now, I believe the USA still leads in rocket technology. Initially, a lot of the R&D behind that was from Von Braun's group, but today the research for new rockets is being done privately by Boeing and Lockheed and a few other companies, not by NASA as such. And I think the Atlas V and Delta IV are excellent results. Russia still has major expertise, especially in rocket engine design (the Atlas V engines are Russian!), but I'd like to see Russia proceed with new vehicle designs like the Angora. A lot of new rocket programs like China's Long March series are not very innovative (non-cryogenic fuel, gas-generator-cycle engines).
As I said, I think people go where the action is, and this is the "computer age", not the "space age". I personally left the space program to do computer research, when I was a graduate student. Perhaps a private space station that was open to the public could fire the imagination of some talented young people and encourage more to consider aerospace engineering as a career. But for that to be a good career path for young people, space exploration has to be a growing concern!
There's no question but that corporations have had and will continue to have a major role in American space-related industries. Whether they are ready, willing, or able to pursue initiatives in space exploration, manned and unmanned, where there are scientific objectives but no profit, is another question -- and one which I don't see being answered in the affirmative. Moreover, I don't see how cutting NASA out of an area where private firms have shown little willingness to take an initiative does anything but kill the United States' role in space exploration altogether.
I think it depends on what you call space exploration. Would a corporation fund the MER rovers on Mars? Not likely, unless they were some future terriforming venture (as we discussed in another thread). But I can see LEO transport and space stations being privately funded.
I believe SFF is advocating policies that would turn over more control to private enterprise in areas where they are ready and willing to take it. For example, they are saying that NASA should buy LEO services to ISS from companies like Boeing and Lockheed, instead of developing CEV BLock 1. But they are not saying that NASA should stop development of CEV Block 2, the Moon and planetary vehicle.
I've been trying to find a link to the actual SFF whitepaper, and finally found it here: http://www.space-frontier.org/Presentations/UnaffordableUnsustainable.pdf
A very interesting white paper. I don't agree with a lot of it, in particular it seems to place an almost religous faith on every mention in the Presidential Commision report dealing with commercial resources for low Earth orbit access. Different people have been calling for space commercialization for decades, and the talk eventually seems to fizzle. If I were Dr Giffin I wouldn't want to put too many of my eggs in that basket either.
On the other hand, I think the white paper is dead on when it talks about the evolution of the CLV. What started out as a huge ammount of hardware inheritance has instead evolved into an entirely new vehicle from the ground up, with the exception of the solid rocket motor casings. Not the internals of the motor, which are rather critically altered with the move to the 5 segment design, just the basic shell. At this point I think serious consideration should be given to an evolved Delta IV or Atlas V design for the CLV.
I diverge from their conclusions again when it argues against the heavy lift Ares V. I just don't envision an evolved Delta or Atlas getting much past 100,000 pounds of payload to LEO (which would be double what they can manage today). And the diagrams of the uprated EELVs seem to show a lot of strap ons and maybe even extra staging to acheive this. Every time you add a component to a vehicle you are adding a lot of extra cost, and I seriously doubt the payload cost-per-pound would be all that attractive. Anyone remember what happened when the Titan II morphed into the III and into the III-E, 34D and ultimately the Titan IV? That was one heck of an expensive, and complicated, beast.
Plus, 100K payload is somewhat below what I think would be considered Heavy-Lift.
What this leaves you with is a requirement for all deep space missions to have a large number of assembly flights, with boosters whose cost efficiency is in considerable doubt.
No thanks, I think I'd rather see us invest in some sort of heavy lift like the Ares V.
Ultimately I think Dr Griffin's vision will have to be modified somewhat, but unlike all of the other shuttle follow-on attempts in the last 25 years, I think his will suceed. And even if all we get is Apollo on steroids, 50 years later, at least we got something.
There has been a lot of atropy in the the US rocket program...and progress is slow - the decision to go with the CEV system was made about a year ago, but the funding was not released until ~April. The engineering teams are just coming together. Still, isn't it either too late to start over, or too early to declare the effort a fiscal nightmare?
I think it's important to note that private industry *did* build most of the spacecraft and launch vehicles that the U.S. has deployed over the past 50 years. NASA, DoD or some other federal agency (like, for example, NOAA) were the customers who purchased the spacecraft and launch vehicles, and used them.
The difference between the existing paradigm and the one the SFF seems to be urging is that the federal government has provided these private-industry contractors with detailed specifications for these vehicles (a "we design them, you build them" approach), and has also provided high-level program management. But the manufacture and detailed, day-to-day project management has, in most cases, been done by private industry.
I think this made more sense in the 1960s, when a man like Max Faget and his band of engineering wizards were capable of designing pretty much every manned spacecraft we ever thought we'd need. But the bureaucracy has overwhelmed the engineering ethos at NASA, and I will grant you that perhaps it's time to distribute the responsibilities for the design work out to the industries who have been making the vehicles all along.
Actually, the one area in which this has *not* been the case has been in planetary probes. JPL (with the aid of a number of subcontractors) has actually built a majority of America's lunar and planetary probes, along with a number of other spacecraft. More recently, other NASA centers (such as the APL) have gotten into the act, as well. Building unmanned exploratory spacecraft seems to be something that NASA does best -- at least, I've seen no hue and cry that private industry ought to co-opt that portion of NASA's portfolio...
I know it betrays my rather liberal political leanings, but I truly believe that there are some things that governments can do better than private industry -- and that there are many things that *only* governments can do, since private industry (at least in a capitalist society) will only ever do things that have short-term profit potential. Some things really *need* to be done that only have long-term profit potential (or none whatsoever, at least economically), and only governments can do those things effectively. (Heck, only governments will ever even *try* to do those things.)
At least, that's my $.02 on the subject...
-the other Doug
In the launcher industry, governments bring money to enable longer term and bigger developments. The Atlas V and Delta IV EELV's are a case in point.
Before the EELV program, Lockheed and McDonnell-Douglas were spending their own money to develop the Atlas III and Delta III. These were incremental changes to Atlas II and Delta II that increased payload, and in Atlas III case, increased reliability and reduced operations cost. In comparison to the EELV effort, the III's were relatively small investments made to increase profits in near-future sales.
Without the US military bringing a billion dollars to the table, the manufacturers were not inclined to develop substantially different vehicles like the EELV's eventhough they promised further reductions in operations cost and increased payloads but over a much longer term. If the manufacturers had a billion of their own money to invest, they would put it into areas that offer a faster rate of return and not in something like the EELV's.
There certainly is a lot of government involvement in the launch industry. The US military in particular consideres it strategically essential to have multiple vendors. Europe granted a monopoly on commercial launching to Arianespace.
I agree with Richard that in theory a committee made up of ideal people is best. But I've never seen such a thing in my life. Coming out of the research community (in computer science) I am very cynical about the kinds of people who join powerful committees, and the self-serving behavior of those bodies. Industry often is forced to ignore or actively impede imcompetent committees who gain power (e.g., W3C). I've just never seen creative behavior, and I think it is because truly creative people are elsewhere -- they are tinkering in the laboratory and the factory, not serving on committees.
I don't see atropy in the US industry. We don't have an Apollo program going on now, but nobody else seems to be doing better. China's rocket technology is crude. Ariane's use of LH2 is nice, but the Vulcain engines are not particularly modern (still tinkering with gas-generator and gas-expander cycle engines). The Delta IV seems to be a solid design, all LOX/LH2, cheap disposable staged-combustion engines with some distinctly Russian design tricks.
I disagree with the SFF white paper in areas where probably many folks here would not. I'm tired of politically motivated agendas in space, like ISS or Bush's Moon/Mars programs. I'm hoping commercial enterprise will find more intersting things to do. A money-making space station than regular people can visit would make ISS irrelevant.
I've felt for years that if you really want to see human presence in space get affordable (or at least a lot cheaper) the best way to accomplish that is create a tourism market. Profit is such a great motivator.
I've really been wondering what will happen when the six man Kliper (now the evolved Soyuz) comes into being. I don't see it very likely that the US will permit tourists on the CEV, but I'd put money on the Russians taking paying passengers.
Combine the Bigelow inflatable modules with Russian taxi service, and the first orbital 'hotel' is born.
If I were a betting man, I'd give this scenario (or something like it) a 50/50 chance of happening in the next 20 years.
If space is limited to academic science experiments and taxpayer funding, then exploration will never proceed beyond the level we see now -- small robotic probes sent every few years. On the other hand, if private enterprise lowers the cost of reaching space, then science benefits as well.
How much interesting new science is being done by ISS? Low Earth orbit is not a mysterious region today, and Soviet space stations have done years of human, animal and plant studies. The science-per-dollar is not impressive. It's particularly an issue for Americans, who have paid a disproportionate amount for this orbiting boondoggle.
I am both interested to see what private enterprise can do, and I would also like to see the political space burocracy decline. I question whether NASA is even allocating money for science in an effective manner.
Criticising the ISS and the Shuttle as being boring, going around in LEO endlessly and having nothing to do with exploration is en vouge these days. Too complex, expensive, useless ... Like anything the government does. I wonder if the same will be said after the initial lunar (mars, pick your destination) landing too. Actually it has been after Apollo 11.
Assuming manned and unmanned spaceflight should continue, the question is how?
Private enterprises want profit. Period. This makes our economic system turn. You may not like it, but you have to accept it. Even more, they want profit fast and don't like investment cycles longer than 5 to 10 (?) years. In reality they are calling for the government much earlier because they fear risk (e.g. power plants, oil exploration, Airbus 380, Boeing 787 ...) This rules out private cooporations from almost everything interesting in spaceflight right now:
- building a 400 ton structure in LEO and using it for science and learning (gee, even the government is pulling out)
- studying climate chance
- flying probes to planets and moons and do scientific research there
- fly manned missions to the moon and beyond
- study (insert your object of interest)
- ...
Well, if you want tourists, fine. But this is that bores me. I'm not interested in cruiseships at Antarctica, but in the station at the south pole and the science being done there. And who is doing this? Not the private sector.
I am not against tourists in space (they just bore me). And if this lowers launch prices, science will benefit, great. The private sector should do this. They should do all the other things, too. They claim they can do better than NASA. If so, prove it. If it's true, NASA will be history and the government will be happy to buy their services and get them cheaper. But calling the very same time for money from the evil government (and NASA, who is a part of it) is a little cheap.
Analyst
PS: Does anyone remember the Landsat privatisation fiasco in the 1980ies? No profit, I guess.
And, in defense of ISS, I will just say that ISS is a transition program designed to teach U.S. aerospace engineers and managers how to fly long missions, how to assemble multi-launch spacecraft in LEO, and how to keep crews alive for the time it will take to travel from one planet to another. (Or even to fly to nearby asteroids.)
Does anyone truly believe that NASA could possibly have moved directly from Mercury to Apollo? No -- Gemini was necessary to teach NASA how to fly missions with more than one pilot, to fly missions that lasted longer than a day and a half, to maneuver in space, etc. All things necessary to understand if you're serious about flying to the Moon.
In the same manner, I don't think it's reasonable to *ever* expect NASA to field a manned interplanetary mission without first having gained the hands-on knowledge they have developed in the construction and manning of the ISS.
ISS may not be an effective scientific research platform, but I continue to insist that it is a necessary step in learning how to fly manned interplanetary missions.
-the other Doug
I think there could have been better, cheaper, faster ways to learn how to do manned interplanetary missions ( indeed, Mir could, should and perhaps did teach us those things...particularly given that some people spent up to twice as long on Mir as they ever have on ISS ).
However - given that ISS is what it is, it has a role to play.
Doug
Oh, I don't disagree, Doug. There probably are many, many cheaper ways to gain the knowledge needed to mount interplanetary expeditions. What I'm unsure about, though, is whether the NASA bureaucracy (or any huge government bureaucracy) is capable of learning such lessons cheaply.
I have a gut feeling that it ought to be a lot easier and cheaper to get into orbit than current technology seems to allow, as well -- but I haven't seen anyone prove it yet. And since you need the infrastructure in place before private industry will recognize a profit potential in it, I doubt that private industry is the answer for creating the infrastructure in the first place.
NASA, other governments, and hundreds of private and semi-private concerns have been trying to come up with cheaper, more practical, and still safe ways to allow humans to expand into the solar system. No one has come up with anything that promises success, or that can attract the funding necessary to get it off the ground, other than NASA, the Soviets (and now the Russians), ESA, and the People's Republic of China. And I don't see any of those programs innovating towards inexpensive access to space.
I guess I wonder whether we're running into a basic sociological principle, here. If a given task is so large that it requires a government to fund it, then it becomes almost impossible to hope that the means to accomplishing that task will ever be the cheapest, most elegant, or "best" way to do it.
Here's a good analogy for y'all -- how much does it cost, per mile or km, to build an interstate highway (or autobahn, or whatever-you-call-it)? Why is it that governments, for the most part, are the ones stuck building such highways? And does anyone really think they spend the least money possible to achieve the quality of highway they want? And yet, do we hear people complaining that our transportation infrastructure is unaffordable and unsustainable?
Think about it...
-the other Doug
I certainly don't want to see NASA stop funding science missions to the planets. One of the frustrations with NASA's current agenda has been the amount of funding sucked away from science to keep the Shuttle and ISS going. One reason you are hearing some of us complain. For other nations, ISS is pure gravy, they get to have "astronauts" and pay a very marginal amount of the cost. Talk about space tourism.
In general, I think government should encourage private enterprise to step in, they should encourage multiple vendors, and they should never compete with private enterprise. The commercial statellite business is a good example of this policy in action in the US.
Precisely, the commercial satellite business is private now because it makes money, so NASA doesn't oversee it. Why do probes like Mars Express look like a Boeing 601 comsat? Because so many standard systems have evolved to satisfy the needs of a market.
Where are innovative launch vehicles? The Delta IV is an entirely new launch vehicle. Doesn't look anything like a Delta II. It is all LOX/LH2 and has a large new first stage engine with staged-combustion and a novel low-cost design for cooling. It seems that the comsat and milsat businesses are stimulating innovation and efficiency.
The major launch vehicles are very big. They're designed to put payloads into GSO or low polar orbit -- both very energetically expensive operations. In the case of Dnepr, you have a very dumb rocket that can boost a medium-size payload into LEO, with no large change of the orbital plane. There hasn't been a big market for that, but perhaps that will change. Polar orbit is getting cheaper with new northern launch facilities like Kodiak.
The white paper suggests that servicing ISS is ready for privatization. In theory I agree, but I doubt if the EU would stop subsidizing the Ariane/ATV plan -- even though it is not a great idea to go from Kourou to the highly inclined ISS orbit. But now who would ever pay for the real cost of a launch? This is why, if there is a viable market, you want the government to stay out.
then why do the russians launch polar satellites from Plesetsk?
Trajectory purposes I would have thought - same reason they launch polar from Vandenberg and not Florida.
Given that you are further from the centre of the earth at the equator - you start off with slightly less gravity to deal with A tiny fraction....but a fraction none the less.
Velocity advantages from Equatorial launch sites fall off with increasing orbit inclination and trend to zero for a polar orbit I would have thought.
Doug
I believe the vandenberg launch option is because otherwise you would launch over land for the florida case.
The most efficient orbital launch is made eastward with engine burnout at perigee. That leaves you with an orbit inclined at the same angle as the latitude of the launch site. And if you don't care what the orbital plane is, then you get the most boost from the Earth (0.46 km/sec) by launching from the equator. At Cape Canaveral, you get 0.41 km/sec. Not a big deal. Kourou wasn't built to get an extra 50 m/sec. It was built to launch geosynchronous communications satellites with a big simple rocket.
The equator is a bad place to launch to polar orbit. You have to spend energy to cancel that 0.46 km/sec, because the angular momentum is entirely in the wrong direction. Furthermore, to make that big change in orbital plane needs tricky and expensive technology -- a Centaur, Briz or Fregat stage. The best places to get into polar orbit are Plesetsk or Kodiak.
Interesting, Jim. I should be more careful with absolute statements. What does this tell us about efficiency in gerneral? Is there a different optimal launch site for any given inclination, e.g. 57 degress inclination best from x degrees latitude, 28 degrees inclination best from y degree latitude?
Analyst
By default, a launch going due east (90 degrees azimuth) will be at the inclination equal to the latitude
The perigee of the orbit will be approximately where the launch site was (where engine burnout occured actually). Consider the velocity vector at that point on the orbit. The magnitude of that vector must be 7.9 km/sec to sustain orbit. At the equator, the Earth gives you a free eastward component of 0.49 km/sec, and the rest of the velocity vector has to be supplied by the rocket.
So I believe as long as the inclination is less than Arccos(0.49/7.9), then it is most efficient to launch from the equator. That's about 86 degrees. To get a true polar orbit (90 degree inclination) then you have to fight the Earth's motion by launching the rocket somewhat westward. So I think Analyst was right, except for the case of an orbit that is greater than 86 degrees of inclination.
The oldest equatorial launch site is the http://www.fas.org/spp/military/facility/kwaj.htm, a complex of island radar, telemetry and launch facilities operated by the US Army. SpaceX is planning to launch their Falcon rockets from there. Like Kourou and the island Sea Launch site, there are no logistic constraints on the direction of launch, from east to north.
The ideal launch site should be:
1. On the Equator
2. As high as possible
3. Have ocean or sparsely inhabited territory to the east
So, disregarding logistics, Mount Kenya, Chimborazo or Sangay would seem to be the best places.
tty
Some of these effects are more important than others. At sea level on the equator, you get a tangential velocity of 0.464 km/sec from the Earth's rotation. If you started on a mountain 8 kilometers high, you would only get 0.5 m/sec more velocity. So altitude is irrelevant. Also, google reveals that Sangay is a very active volcano, which I think we would catagorize as a "logistic concern". :-)
Cape Canaveral is at 28 degrees latitude, so it gets 0.410 km/sec of velocity boost. Only 50 m/sec less than the Equator, which isn't really very important. What is important is that you cannot launch into an initial orbit with an inclination less than 28 degrees.
The Russians and Americans do multiple-burn maneuvers to get into less inclined orbits. Evidently the most efficent maneuver is to increase the apogee, then at apogee fire perpendicular to the orbital plane to change its angle, and then reduce the apogee.
Ah, right you are tty, lower air pressure is an advantage.
The Chinese don't seem to worry about impacting their territory, nor do they seem to worry about using horribly toxic non-cryogenic fuel. The controversy about using NDMH and N2O4 goes back to the old feuds between Korolev and Glushko.
When the second M-69 launch exploded near the launchpad, a kiloton of this toxic mixture went off -- the yield of a tactical nuclear weapon! When people saw the poisonous orange cloud, there was pandemonium as they rushed to their cars to escape. I'm amazed that anyone would use this for manned launches.
Oh dear, this thread is really meandering. But I think the original white-paper discussion was beaten to death.
"Toxic" fuels do not necessarily yield highly toxic reaction products. Hydrazine reduces to nitrogen and ammonia. The sodium azide burned in early air bags yielded almost pure nitrogen.
Shuttle propellant is not very toxic, although there is evidence exposure to one of the main ingredients (perchlorates) can cantribute to thyroid problems. Shuttle exhaust fumes do contain hydrochloric acid, although direct contact with the exhaust, after it has cooled, will usually only be slightly irritating, unless inhaled.
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UDMH is both toxic and carcinogenic. It's been a big concern in Kazakhstan for some time now, and Russia is developing the Kerosene/LOX Angara first stage as a replacement for the Proton. When spent rocket stages from Baikonur fall to Earth, the local residents rush out and begin cutting them up to sell the titanium scrap metal. Children play in the wreckage, herds of farm animals die mysteriously. You also get considerable contamination around the launch site, because combustion is not perfect during startup.
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Titan II was an ICBM developed in 1959, and hastily pressed into service as a manned launcher when the space race first began. The Ariane 1 also used this fuel, but it was developed with extensive Soviet assistance -- they even supplied UDMH to France. But for a country to use this technology for manned flight in 2006 is not very advanced.
Looks like NASA has decided to put some serious money into COTS, the program to boost new private-sector space efforts.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14411983/
It's a gamble, but I would like to see SpaceX succeed with the Falcon series. In interesting feature of Kistler is that they are using Russian engines designed for the N-1 moon rocket -- LOX/Kerosine staged-combustion engines.
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.nl.html?pid=23230
NASA OIG Report: NASA's Plan for Space Shuttle Transition Could Be Improved by Following Project Management Guidelines
NASA has decided to end its use of the Boeing Delta II rocket.
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2007/08/17/216087/delta-ii-dropped-as-nasa-changes-rocket-purchasing.html
In my opinion it's very bad decision, Delta II is so cheap and reliable launch vehicle.
What you think about this decision ?
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=4626 is a discussion on that issue
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