Space Access Update #70 10/18/96
Copyright 1996 by Space Access Society
_______________________________________________________________________
Rumors of our demise have been greatly exaggerated.
Yes, it's been eleven weeks since the last Update, and yes, the SAS web
page is still a sporadically maintained construction site, and yes,
we're way behind on answering our mail. And no, there's been no dearth
of news these last couple of months - quite the opposite in fact.
But we've been trying a radical experiment in new operational styles
here at SAS world HQ.
We've been thinking.
Which for us is a rather drawn-out process, because your humble servant
the Update editor does not in fact make all this stuff up himself.
Major SAS policies are generally a matter of consensus among members of
our widely-scattered semi-formal mostly-anonymous SAS Advisory Board.
(You would not believe the long-distance bills.) And reaching consensus
among a bunch of prima donnas like us can take a lot of thrashing even
when we _haven't_ just seen our old main rocket fall over and catch
fire, and our new main rocket get downselected in a manner that left a
lot of us muttering to ourselves "that's not what we meant, dammit!"
And now we once again think we know what's going on, and we're once
again ready to opine on what should be done about it. Though given the
backlog that's built up, we're going to have to be a bit more terse than
usual this issue. Read on...
_______________________________________________________________________
X-33
If you haven't guessed, we're not wildly happy with the way the X-33
competition came out. In brief, no, it's not a matter of religious
fervor for one vehicle configuration over another. We at SAS have
consistantly favored whatever configuration lends itself to reliable
fast turnaround ops with minimum ground crew out of austere sites - IE
max potential for radical cost reduction at high flight rates. We don't
care if what does this job is a vertical-lander, a horizontal-lander, or
a Cavourite-fuelled Winnebago, as long as it works.
Our problem with this spring's X-33 downselect is twofold: NASA is
showing a distressing tendency to address NASA internal agendas rather
than the national interest, and Lockheed-Martin is showing a distressing
tendency to try to turn this into a monopoly on the current (rather
limited) US space launch market, rather than treating it as a chance to
be the Boeing of a vastly expanded 21st century spaceliner market.
Shortsighted in both cases, to say the least.
The details could fill a book (they have, see the next item) and we're
in a hurry, so for now we'll just say that X-33 can still be a very good
thing for the country, given two things: Continuing competition, and
rigorous budget/schedule oversight. We have already begun working for
both. SAS's X-33 policy is one of "constructive engagement".
(A correction to a previous Update: We wrote that Lockheed-Martin's X-33
bid called for spending $2 billion in corporate cash on the hypothetical
"commercial RLV" (Reusable Launch Vehicle) followon to X-33. We heard a
rumor, we thought we'd found backup for it, we were wrong. L-M plans to
put about $220 million into X-33 (about a sixth of the total cost) and
about the same again into developing a "commercial" followon (about 5%
of the estimated cost of developing and building three ships.))
_______________________________________________________________________
"Halfway To Anywhere" Hits The Bookstores.
G.Harry Stine has written the best single account of the cheap space
access movement we've seen so far. It's called "Halfway To Anywhere -
The Age Of Commercial Space", it's from M.Evans & Company, ISBN 0 87131
805 9, hardback, $21.95, and it should be in bookstores now - if yours
doesn't have it, ask them to order it for you. Harry's added a chapter
on the X-33 downselect since we saw the galley proofs last spring, and
we understand it's incendiary. Highly recommended.
_______________________________________________________________________
DC-X Hits the Dirt
Y'all likely know by now that DC-XA had a landing gear problem on its
fourth flight (at the end of July, 12th flight for the DC-X overall),
fell over post-landing, caught fire when the liquid oxygen tank split
open, and was essentially destroyed.
Another correction of a previous Update: DC-X's landing gear was
pneumatically operated, not as we reported hydraulic. And the "repeated
partial gear extensions" we thought we'd spotted on the tapes of the
last flight were in fact a spring-hinged pad-umbilical hatch cover
flapping in the breeze. Oh well. (You can check the tapes yourself
now, see the next item.)
It turns out the reason one gear leg didn't extend was that a pneumatic
hose was disconnected during servicing then not reconnected. Nothing
fancy, just a mechanic's error in a single-string no-backup system.
Given how long the ground crew had been working ridiculous hours in
desert heat on God's own reflector-oven of a lakebed, eight hundred
miles from their homes and families, on a project with the axe poised
over it, and we hear with major hiatuses in paychecks, we hereby offer
to punch the lights out of anyone who faults them for this.
X-vehicles inherently have a lot of single-string, no-backup subsystems.
It's a tradeoff; build it cheap, dirty, and quick and try to collect the
data you need before it breaks. Then you put multiple-backup landing
gear actuator systems into the operational vehicle that comes after.
The main lesson to be learned here is already known: Build two copies of
your X-vehicle, since you almost certainly will break at least one -
probably in a manner that in 20-20 hindsight seems pretty dumb. EG, the
X-31 lost to air-data-sensor icing. Beyond that, we'd guess that not
jerking your field test crew around for months on end with funding
interruptions and threatened program terminations is also a good idea.
NASA's Brand Commission is due to come out with its formal accident
report sometime before the end of this month. If they say "build two
copies, don't burn out the ground crew, don't use marginally-welded
testing-damaged aluminum-lithium propellant tanks", we agree. If they
recommend microscopically comprehensive written procedures and lab-
coated clipboard-bearing hordes of overseers to enforce compliance, we
will likely have one or two negative things to say about that opinion.
_______________________________________________________________________
Revised Video Has All Twelve DC-X Flights
Late but better than never department: We now have a revised 3.1 version
of our DC-X/SSTO 3.0 tape, with about twenty minutes of footage of all
four DC-XA flights copied onto the end, including two views of DC-XA's
final flight and post-landing fire. Two hours total, includes
animations of all three X-33 bids and considerable SSTO background
material including aerospike engine test-stand footage. US standard VHS
NTSC only. Same price as the 3.0 tape, $25 US, $20 for SAS members.
$5 off if you've already bought the 3.0 tape - there's a lot of overlap.
Add $8 for postage outside North America. Mail a check to SAS, 4855 E
Warner Rd #24-150, Phoenix AZ 85044.
_______________________________________________________________________
Space Access '97 Conference
And earlier than ever before, we have a hotel signed up for next year's
"Space Access '97" conference. It'll be the last weekend in April,
evening of Friday the 25th through evening of Sunday the 27th, at the
same hotel as last year, the Safari Resort in downtown Scottsdale,
Arizona, fifteen minutes from the Phoenix airport. Room rates are $63 a
night, up a whole dollar from last year, call 1-800-845-4356 for
reservations and mention "Space Access" for the rate.
This will be the fifth time we've done our annual conference on the
technology, economics, and politics of radically cheaper space access.
Ask anyone who's been to one already: everybody who's anybody is there,
talking informally about the absolute latest developments in cheap
access. Hear more new ideas in an hour than you'll catch all weekend
anywhere else.
SA'97 registration is $80 through December 31st, $100 through mid-April,
$120 at the door, $10 off for SAS members. $50 student rate. We're
holding the line at last year's prices; these things are not cheap to
put on - but they're worth it! Mail us a check now and save.
_______________________________________________________________________
Miscellaneous News
$25m in FY'96 DOD reusable rocket finally cleared OSD (Office of the
Secretary of Defence, where the financial comptroller seems to think he
has a policy-making role) and got to where it's needed. Just as well,
as FY'97 money was reduced to $10m in the last-second scramble to make
an election year budget. Largely, we gather, due to the lack of a high-
profile reusable rocket program in DOD, post DC-X. Stay tuned for more
on this subject - FY'97 has barely begun.
NASA's FY'97 RLV budget, meanwhile, passed essentially unchanged. Good
news, in that theoretically this allows the X-33 project to get off to a
running start. Now if only the Lockheed-Martin public affairs types
would figure out that this is NOT a black project, that times have
changed and they're supposed to spread info, not hide it. We might then
have some idea what we're getting for this year's couple of hundred
million of our money.
Meanwhile, in the commercial world...
Kistler Aerospace's engine contractor has taken delivery of the first
three shipsets of Russian NK-33 engines for Kistler's planned commercial
reusable medium-lift two-stage-to-orbit cargo ship.
Kelly Space & Technology has taken delivery of two surplus F-106's (a
fifties-vintage delta winged long range interceptor with a 15' by 3'
internal missile bay) they plan to use for proof-of-concept demos of
their proposed "Eclipse" winged air-launched (towed by a 747) reusable
medium-lift cargo ship. Motorola announced they're buying options on
ten Eclipse satellite launches for 1999-2000, valued at $8.9 million.
This can't hurt in Kelly obtaining development financing. No word on
how much Motorola has paid for the options.
The Boeing-Zenit Sea Launch project (Boeing will fly Ukranian SL-16
Zenit boosters off a mobile ocean platform) is moving forward briskly,
as are McDonnell-Douglas's Delta 3 and Lockheed-Martin's Atlas 2AR. All
of these are essentially commercially financed expendable booster
projects, intended to compete for commercial launches. Not yet cheap
access, but the fact that commercial funding is available for well over
a billion dollars of new launch projects is extremely encouraging.
Between these (and several new/surplus-military small boosters coming
soon) and the various medium-launch reusable companies starting to get
financing, we see the beginnings of a major commercial space expansion
that will be financing, building, and flying low-cost commercial
reusable ships a whole lot sooner than most people expect.
We like it.
-----------------------(SAS Policy Boilerplate)------------------------
Space Access Update is Space Access Society's when-there's-news
publication. Space Access Society's goal is to promote affordable access
to space for all, period. We believe in concentrating our resources at
whatever point looks like yielding maximum progress toward this goal.
Right now, we think this means working our tails off trying to get the
government to build and fly high-speed reusable rocket demonstrators,
"X-rockets", in the next three years, in order to quickly build up both
experience with and confidence in reusable Single-Stage To Orbit (SSTO)
technology. The idea is to reduce SSTO technical uncertainty (and thus
development risk and cost) while at the same time increasing investor
confidence, to the point where SSTO will make sense as a private
commercial investment. We have reason to believe we're getting close.
With luck and hard work, we should see fully-reusable rocket testbeds
flying into space well before the end of this decade, with practical
radically cheaper orbital transports following right after.
Space Access Society won't accept donations from government launch
contractors - it would limit our freedom to do what's needed. We
survive on member dues and contributions, plus what we make selling
tapes and running our annual conference.
Join us, and help us make it happen.
Henry Vanderbilt, Executive Director, Space Access Society
To join Space Access Society or buy the SSTO/DC-X V 3.1 video we have
for sale (Two hours, includes all twelve DC-X/XA flights, X-33
animations, X-33, DC-X and SSTO backgrounders, aerospike engine test-
stand footage, plus White Sands Missile Range DC-X ops site footage)
mail a check to: SAS, 4855 E Warner Rd #24-150, Phoenix AZ 85044. SAS
membership with direct email of Space Access Updates is $30 US per year;
the SSTO V 3.0 video is $25, $5 off for SAS members, $5 off for previous
version 3.0 purchasers, $8 extra for shipping outside North America, US
standard VHS NTSC only. SA'97 conference registration (April 25-27
1997, at the Safari Resort in Scottsdale Arizona) is $80 through
December 31st, $10 off for SAS members. $50 SA'97 student rate.
__________________________________________________________________________
Space Access Society "Reach low orbit and you're halfway to anywhere
4855 E Warner Rd #24-150 in the Solar System."
Phoenix AZ 85044 - Robert A. Heinlein
602 431-9283 voice/fax
www.space-access.org "You can't get there from here."
space.access@space-access.org - Anonymous
- Permission granted to redistribute the full and unaltered text of this -
- piece, including the copyright and this notice. All other rights -
- reserved. In other words, crossposting, emailing, or printing this -
- whole and passing it on to interested parties is strongly encouraged. -