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Posted by: DonPMitchell Jul 25 2006, 04:11 AM

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.

Posted by: The Messenger Jul 25 2006, 01:54 PM

Both Lockhead and Boeing presented similar proposals before the CEV and the CLV concepts were developed. To support manned launches and heavy lifts, the Atlas and Delta teams envisioned lots of strap-on solids - strap-ons on strap-ons. The booster people walzed in and said you already have a man-rated heavy lift engine, so why re-invent the wheel?

As long as there is a mandate for a man-rated system, the CEV/CLV approach is reasonable, in my humble, biased opinion.

Posted by: David Jul 25 2006, 02:09 PM

I have an uncomfortable feeling that the questions raised in this thread ultimately turn on political ideology, not on science or engineering.

Posted by: ugordan Jul 25 2006, 02:25 PM

This topic definitely sounds like it belongs more to the http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showforum=49 forum down below.

Posted by: Bjorn Jonsson Jul 25 2006, 03:35 PM

Correct - thread moved.

Posted by: DonPMitchell Jul 25 2006, 10:01 PM

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.

Posted by: David Jul 26 2006, 12:13 AM

I fail to see how prohibiting NASA from developing rocket technologies encourages corporations to do so. If they haven't done so on their own initiative so far -- not seeing any profit in it -- why would they start without NASA? Doubtless there is waste and inefficiency at NASA, but if you're talking about giving government dollars to corporations directly rather than through NASA, you're just moving the waste down the line into a place less susceptible to oversight.

If not, then what's missing from this rosy scenario is any explanation of how the corporations developing these rockets are going to turn a profit on them. You can't mass market "rocket games" to the public -- which is where Don's analogy falls down. Will they make a profit by selling them back to the United States? With a single customer, all the incentives are going to be not on creating competitive technologies but on political deals, lobbying, and padding the bills. By selling the public tickets to space? There's not enough money in that to turn a profit for years. By selling rockets to foreign governments? Those that are interested in a space program are running their own shows already. North Korea apparently could use a little help with its launch technology, but I don't really want to encourage them.

Ultimately, I think both the lack of any immediate return on an extremely expensive investment, and possible security concerns, are going to keep control of launch technologies in government hands for most of the 21st century.

Posted by: Jim from NSF.com Jul 26 2006, 12:48 AM

There are proposal from both LM and Boeing without strapons, that would be cheaper than the "stick" and would use existing infrastructure.

What is the difference between a strap on SRM and the Stick. They both are solids. The 5 segment solid is not yet manrated.

Posted by: The Messenger Jul 26 2006, 02:23 AM

A better analogy might be the French and British investment in the SST. Billions of public dollars paid into a quasi-private corporation chartered to zip the very wealthy around the world...until a single blown tyre collapsed the enterprise.

Ronald Reagen threw the satelite communication industry to private industry, and they went overseas. If the U.S. really wants a world class rocket program, the country needs an aggressive R&D program...and a lot more engineering graduates.

Posted by: Richard Trigaux Jul 26 2006, 07:11 AM

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.

Posted by: ugordan Jul 26 2006, 08:47 AM

Actually, they're not. They might be more cost-efficient for small payloads, but not for large ones. While they can provide high thrust at liftoff, they have an inferior specific impulse compared to liquid fuels. That's the reason they are used to get things off the ground, while the vehicle is still too heavy for the main engines to cope with alone. They don't, however, provide the majority of energy required to reach orbit. Space shuttle boosters for example provide a large fraction of total liftoff thrust, yet they give the vehicle only a small amount of total energy (what was it? 10-15% ?). Their advantage over liquid fuels is their comparable simplicity. The disadvantage is they provide for a pretty bumpy ride. Also, once ignited they cannot be shut down.

Solid boosters are favored by U.S. vehicles probably because they have a long development history (the fuel of choice for ICBM launchers). The Russians, on the other hand, lacked the expertise in developing large solid boosters. As a consequence, their launch vehicles use liquid fuel boosters. Compare Energiya to the Space Shuttle -- 4 Zenit kerosene powered strap-on boosters compared to 2 SRBs on the shuttle.

Posted by: Richard Trigaux Jul 26 2006, 09:18 AM

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.

Posted by: DonPMitchell Jul 26 2006, 09:25 AM

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.

Posted by: Richard Trigaux Jul 26 2006, 11:04 AM

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.

Posted by: DonPMitchell Jul 26 2006, 05:43 PM

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!

Posted by: David Jul 26 2006, 05:53 PM

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.

Posted by: DonPMitchell Jul 26 2006, 09:03 PM

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.

Posted by: DonPMitchell Jul 27 2006, 07:40 AM

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

Posted by: Mariner9 Jul 27 2006, 11:23 PM

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.

Posted by: The Messenger Jul 28 2006, 04:27 AM

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?

Posted by: Richard Trigaux Jul 28 2006, 06:17 AM

Yes this is true, I am aware that we cannot do manicheism, seeing one of the systems as bad and the other as perfect. This is one of the reasons why I don't want to lead the discution in this direction (even if it was on topic on this forum) and prefered to say that the best choice is to have the right people, clever enough, with enough dedication to their goal and enough awareness of their responsibilities in every field (science, technology, economy, environment, ethical and social impact...)

With my opinion a good project leader would be somebody honest (with himself as well as with others), having some basic culture in many fields, without being a specialist in any (in the concern that a specialist could be blind to other fields). The team itself would gather some other peoples of the same kind, together with several specialists, advisors in every field involved. A project can be discussed, but once started, it must go on even against common obstacles, not depending on minor policy changes. (But we could be able to cancel a project encountering large unexpected problems, like the european Hermes shuttle, which quickly appeared much more expensive than expected). The psychology interaction into such a team is also important. As soon as a relation problem appears, it must be solved, or the person who creates it replaced. (I say this, because my only professional failure in 7 years of working for the space industry came from a little unexpected technical problem, that I was perfectly able to solve, but the responsible engineer was unable to incorporate such aleas in his planning, and he mmediately went conflictual, making of the affair an affair of fault and nearby sabotaging).

Posted by: dvandorn Jul 28 2006, 06:51 AM

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

Posted by: mchan Jul 28 2006, 10:12 AM

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.

Posted by: DonPMitchell Jul 28 2006, 10:37 PM

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.

Posted by: Mariner9 Jul 29 2006, 03:31 PM

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.

Posted by: David Jul 29 2006, 03:42 PM

I thought Roskosmos had cancelled plans for the Kliper vehicle, just in the past couple of weeks.

Posted by: Stephen Jul 31 2006, 11:04 AM

Let's face it. "Regular people" will not be going into orbit any time soon. Space stations--hopefully of a profitably money-making kind--may well get sent up there, but as long as the cost of visiting them requires winning a lottery or two first they and space travel will remain the playground of millionaires and astronauts on government payrolls rather than "regular people".

In fact by the time the cost does come down far enough for "regular people" to go up the ISS will probably have been designated an historical monument.

(In any case an orbital tourist trap does not strike me as the sort of place where much science is likely to be done. How many science laboratories are there in Las Vegas?)

======
Stephen

Posted by: Marz Jul 31 2006, 02:42 PM

This is precisely why I don't get excited about private spaceflight missions. How many ground-based telescopes are private? If there are tourists in space, how does that do anything interesting? At best, it might fuel more interest into spaceflight... at worst, it will just clutter LOE with McCrap.

Posted by: DonPMitchell Jul 31 2006, 06:42 PM

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.

Posted by: Analyst Aug 1 2006, 11:26 AM

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.

Posted by: Jim from NSF.com Aug 1 2006, 11:52 AM

the soviet space stations are not good examples of good science especially wrt human studies. The cosomauts never followed the protocols and so real data was collected.

So X number of space science missions a year is not effective? Private industry doesn't do science. There is no money in it

Posted by: dvandorn Aug 1 2006, 08:32 PM

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

Posted by: djellison Aug 1 2006, 08:39 PM

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

Posted by: dvandorn Aug 1 2006, 08:51 PM

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

Posted by: helvick Aug 1 2006, 09:47 PM

This is OT but it's a very good analogy. At Euro\$15-50m per mile (depending on specification) you can quickly eat up a NASA sized budget building highway\motorway\autobahn's for even a small country.

Governments build them because no end user is currently willing to pay the true economic cost of road use. Governments subsidise them up the ying yang because voters want them and on average they are wealth creating projects. Or at least we'd all better hope they are because they really do cost a lot of money. The difference with spaceflight is that even though they are similar up front (lots of capital expenditure and then some ongoing maintenance at some fraction of that) after the initial investment spend there is no clear link to wealth generation and no-one believes there is any link while they do for highways\motorways.

As an exercise if you believe that highways\motorways generate wealth here's some numbers to ponder.
A highly efficient 3 lane motorway has a safe saturation carrying capacity of around 8.6K vehicles/hr (3 lanes both directions 2.5 seconds separation). If it has a 50% loading on average over a 24 hour period then it has a carrying capacity of around 37M cars per annum. Assume a replacement lifetime of 20 years, a competitive initial construction cost of $20m/mile and a cost of capital of just 3% since the economy is doing so well. Then each mile actually costs $26million in todays money so you have to charge 0.70c per mile in a toll just to break even in this best case scenario. In the real world on a less heavily utilised road a toll of $5-$10 per mile would probably be needed to cover costs. Those numbers get even worse for non highway grade roads because even though the cost per mile is much lower (~$1m/mile) the carrying capacity is far lower still.

Now for the kicker - road damage is roughly proportional to the 4th power of the per axle vehicle weight. That's nasty because it means that large commercial trucks actually end up causing 5000-10000 times as much damage to roads as non commercial private vehicles do. And we never ever charge them for that because doing so would prevent the motorways generating wealth. Kind of funny that.

So in the end do motorways generate wealth or not and if not why do we spend so much money on them?

Posted by: DonPMitchell Aug 1 2006, 10:27 PM

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.

Posted by: Stephen Aug 2 2006, 08:49 AM

I was under the impression NASA long encouraged multiple vendors. Didn't multiple vendors compete to produce the LM way back in the Apollo era? And doesn't it currently have two competing to produce the CEV?


Actually your analogy with the commercial satellite business doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. For a start there is a large market for commercial satellites. Or at least the communications & weather sorts; and probably a growing one for certain other kinds, like the Landsat sort. That's why you have private enterprise building those and sending them into orbit.

By comparison where is the market for doing the kind of scientific investigations that NASA was (originally at any rate) going to do with the ISS or sending probes to other planets?

More specifically, Bigelow may want to put an orbital hotel in space, but where are all the private entrepreneurs competing to put a private enterprise version of the ISS in orbit? Or rather (given all the complaints about the ISS) one closer to the original vision for the ISS?

The ISS as it stands certainly has its problems, but I do not see anybody in private enterprise prepared to step forward and use their own money (or their investors') to do a better job. They seem to be quite willing to build something if somebody else (like NASA) pays for it, but that is as far as their interest seems to go;and as far as I can see that is as far as it is likely to go for some time yet.

That being the case just how exactly is NASA "competing" with private enterprise at all? In which fields do you see NASA competing against private enterprise?

======
Stephen

Posted by: Stephen Aug 2 2006, 11:17 AM

I don't doubt you're right about the fate of taxpayer funded efforts; and also about the benefits that would come if private enterprise could indeed invent a way to lower the cost of "reaching space". But the fact remains that whether any of us like it or not every single scientific mission thus far sent into deep space has been conceived by a government or academic agency (American, Soviet, European, or Japanese), paid for by taxpayer funds, and launched on a rocket whose development was paid for by the taxpayers of one country or another. That may well change eventually, but I would not count on it changing soon.

Next year is the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1. In that time NASA has sent (or are sending) probes to every planet in the solar system, and has even landed men on the Moon. Yet where has private enterprise been?

Back in the 1990s various commercial outfits conceived plans for sending missions to the Moon. Orbiters, landers, even rovers. Yet thus far not one has been launched.

Innovative launch vehicles of assorted kinds have been conceived. Yet where are most of them today? (Even Bigelow's Genesis-1 module was launched on a standard Russian rocket.) Furthermore, AFAIK they were all targeted towards the LEO market.

Then there was the http://www.spacedev.com/newsite/templates/subpage3.php?pid=191&subNav=11&subSel=3 mission, which was going to be the first commercial deep space mission. Yet it too has not yet reached the launch pad. (In fact it is unclear whether any actual hardware has ever been built for it.)

So while none of us may like the pace at which space exploration is proceeding, at the moment and for the foreseeable future government space programs would seem to be the only shows in town as far as (deep) space exploration is concerned.

======
Stephen

Posted by: The Messenger Aug 2 2006, 02:22 PM

There are two primes, but some of the subsystems can only be supplied by single vendors, most notably, the solid first stage.

In practice, this can get pretty interesting during the proposal stage: Two proposal workers may work for the same company, even share an office, and be completely embargoed from discussing their work, even though they are doing exactly the same thing.

Posted by: DonPMitchell Aug 2 2006, 05:27 PM

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.

Posted by: Analyst Aug 2 2006, 06:50 PM

If you launch from the equator you are never worse off (for any inclination) than launching from another place north or south. You are better or the same, but never worse.

Analyst

Posted by: RNeuhaus Aug 2 2006, 07:00 PM

Trying to understand your suposition:
At the equator line, the atmosphere is denser and highe altitude than others latitudes but the vector's velocity helps much to accelerate the spacecraft into the orbit?

Rodolfo

Posted by: remcook Aug 2 2006, 07:38 PM

then why do the russians launch polar satellites from Plesetsk?

Posted by: djellison Aug 2 2006, 08:29 PM

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

Posted by: remcook Aug 2 2006, 09:16 PM

I believe the vandenberg launch option is because otherwise you would launch over land for the florida case.

Posted by: DonPMitchell Aug 2 2006, 10:30 PM

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.

Posted by: David Aug 3 2006, 12:20 AM

I can't really follow your argument. You seem to be saying that the government is outcompeting private industry in providing a service that, as far as I know, only the government needs or wants. Perhaps to make it more clear you could identify:
What exactly is the product/service being provided?
Who are the customers?
Who are the providers?
Where's the competition?
How is a privatized system cheaper overall than the current system?
Does even more money end up coming out of my (or any taxpayer's) pocketbook to pay for the same things that I'm already paying for?

Posted by: DonPMitchell Aug 3 2006, 12:59 AM

Flying supplies to ISS from Kourou is subsidized, so there is no market opportunity for anyone to develop a cheaper scheme.

Posted by: DonPMitchell Aug 3 2006, 03:19 AM

Hmm, I think you are right about ISS, now that I think about it some more. It is very tricky to get into an orbital plane that is less inclined than the latitude of the launch site. That takes something like a centaur stage doing several powered maneuvers, and it's why a Proton can send more payload to Mars than it can to GSO!

For going into more-inclined orbits, there seems to be some practical issues that place an upper bound. I'll ask some people I know who are experts on this for more details.

Posted by: Jim from NSF.com Aug 3 2006, 04:26 AM

Because it first was an ICBM base and close to the US, and it has a clear impact area for stages

Posted by: Jim from NSF.com Aug 3 2006, 04:34 AM

Not true. It takes more energy to fly at 90 degrees inclination at the equator than at a pole. A launch from the equator due south (180 degree azimuth) would not be become 90 degrees inclination due to the earth rotatation. The azimuth has to be slightly retrograde to cancel out this velocity. The further north, the less velocity to cancel out.

Posted by: Analyst Aug 3 2006, 06:30 AM

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

Posted by: The Messenger Aug 3 2006, 08:51 PM

There are many logistics: High altitudes are great for launching, but windy and very cold. How many people want to become rocket scientist and live in a miserable climate? What about the effects of rust and corrosion? The probability of tropical storms tearing up the place? Bugs and storms making flights in and out of the launch area risky? Where do you want your workforce located? how secure is a jungle location, where do you plug in the airconditioner...

Posted by: Jim from NSF.com Aug 4 2006, 12:50 AM

It works out that you want to launch at the same latitude as the desired inclination

Posted by: Analyst Aug 4 2006, 07:35 AM

I am well aware of logistics. But this has not been the point in my (theoretical) question if there is an ideal launch site latitude for a given inclination if all you worry about is the most efficient trajectory.

Jim, after your answer I have to rethink this completely. Are you sure you are correct? DonPMitchell, if Jim is right I stand corrected.

Analyst

Posted by: Jim from NSF.com Aug 4 2006, 01:00 PM

By default, a launch going due east (90 degrees azimuth) will be at the inclination equal to the latitude

Posted by: DonPMitchell Aug 4 2006, 07:27 PM

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.

Posted by: tty Aug 4 2006, 07:51 PM

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

Posted by: DonPMitchell Aug 5 2006, 09:06 AM

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.

Posted by: djellison Aug 5 2006, 01:56 PM

So why didn't the fire Space Ship One from the ground then

Doug

Posted by: tty Aug 5 2006, 06:57 PM

I was not considering the extra rotation speed which is indeed minimal. However the take-off altitude is
not at all irrelevant, for a number of reasons:

1. You save the energy needed to lift the vehicle those x kilometers

2. Air resistance is much less

3. Rocket engine efficiency is better in thinner air

4. Max Q will be appreciably lower, permitting a lighter structure

As a matter of fact I'm a bit surprised that nobody has ever built a high altitude launch site. The reason is probably mostly logistic, and also due to the problem with discarded stages impacting potentially inhabited areas. Still, the Cinese don't seem to worry about this.

tty

Posted by: RNeuhaus Aug 5 2006, 07:56 PM

What about does with less gravity per kilometer of altitude as Doug has said previously influence the velocity escape? The gravity is around 9.8 m/sec² at the sea level but I don't know about what would be the acceleration if the launch platform is on the highland of equadoran Andean territory (above than 3,000 msnm). The Earth gravity variation effect up to 13,000 msnm (airplane intercontinental flights) would be very subttle or not?

Rodolfo

Posted by: DonPMitchell Aug 5 2006, 08:41 PM

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.

Posted by: dilo Aug 5 2006, 08:57 PM

Rodolfo, 13000m is a 0.2% distance variation from Earth center; due to inverse square dependency of gravity force from distance, the acceleration reduction at this height is 0.4% or 4cm/s2.
The reduction on top of a (virtual) mountain with the same heght is lower, due to gravity ot the mountain itself...

Posted by: dvandorn Aug 6 2006, 12:02 PM

Well, Don, the U.S. of A. used those horribly toxic fuels to launch 10 manned Gemini capsules on the Titan II booster. And, of course, every lunar orbit insertion, every lunar descent and ascent, and every trans-Earth injection performed during Apollo used these fuels.

And, IIRC, the Shuttle uses these fuels for its reaction control system and its orbital maneuvering system.

And, oh yes, the CEV and LSAM are now planned to use these fuels.

I agree, they're horribly toxic, hard to handle, and even small leaks can have catastrophic effects. But the specific impulse of these fuels, along with their (relatively) easy storage over the course of a long mission, make them still the best choice for many applications...

-the other Doug

Posted by: The Messenger Aug 6 2006, 04:21 PM

"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.

Posted by: DonPMitchell Aug 7 2006, 03:53 AM

[attachment=6929:attachment]

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.

[attachment=6930:attachment] [attachment=6931:attachment]

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.

Posted by: DonPMitchell Aug 19 2006, 08:30 PM

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.

Posted by: Littlebit Feb 5 2007, 07:22 PM

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

Two comments:

1) It is surprising that this project-level planning is not in place.

2) This assessment is buzzword loaded, and could have been written by any audit of any type of enterprise anywhere. Perhaps technical expertise is not required in the OIG; or they may be taking a first-things-first approach.

Posted by: peter59 Sep 27 2007, 05:09 PM

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 ?

Posted by: djellison Sep 27 2007, 05:21 PM

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=4626 is a discussion on that issue