Monday
(0)
(48)Glenn Reynolds, over at Instapundit, has pointed out this Aviation Week story on the deep black space plane that has been under test at Groom Lake through the last decade.
I have long suspected such a vehicle was flying, partly because of logic. I could not imagine there has been nothing new since the design of the 40 year old SR-71 and the US would retire that fleet of spy planes without someting newer and better. No matter what was said about satellites, they are just not as generally useful and do not have the immediacy of a launch on demand and maneuver on the way aircraft.
I know for a fact that the USAF was studying space planes in the late eighties and early nineties because I knew the guy running the study. It was called Black Horse, an H2O2 fueled aircraft which topped up from a tanker after take off. That officer moved on in to private space but the idea of being able to, as he put it, "put precision holes in the ground anywhere in the world within 90 minutes" was one I assumed had just gone totally black.
Another small piece of information came from a friend with a classified job title back in the early 90's. A spacer like myself, he told me that his real job would not be public for decades but people would be quite surprised and it was important... and he added that it took him three airplanes, the last of which was a light plane to get to where he worked. I immediately thought of Groom Lake but kept it to myself then and ever since. I have always assumed the Groom Lake sightings were of an at least suborbital SR-71 replacement.
The other item which clued me that something was going on happened last summer. A number of persons I spoke to were pushing a technology called 'hot structures' which was about to come out of the black and they were afraid that the technology and all of the money expended on it was about to be lost simply because no one knew it existed. While interesting, it turned out to be far too pricey for anyone I know to employ at this time.
Hot structures have to do with hypersonic airframes of the blended bodies sort. This is stuff you build if you are working on spaceplanes as there is little other use for it. I did not however put the final piece together as AWST did with its far greater resources and contacts. My guess is this technology is about to be lost because the SR-3/XOV is being cancelled.
Does anyone else have any interesting scuttlebutt?
Tuesday
Those of you who follow space will be aware the cornerstone of the 'Moon, Mars and Beyond' program which NASA has been tasked to impliment is a new vehicle. The Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) is in many ways a return to the Apollo era but does have many useful features, not the least of which is putting the travellers on top. This avoids foam strike problems and at the same time allows the use of proven-in-anger escape tower technology.
It is still a rather old design. Nonetheless it had some features which those of us in the space community apploauded. The biggest win of all was the use of Methane-LOX propulsion. When I read a late draft of the new system plan, this was the single item I found exciting. M-LOX meant someone was serious about going off Earth to stay. It meant someone had read and understood what Bob Zubrin has being saying (perhaps yelling from the prayer town would be a better description) for nearly two decades. You see, M-LOX can be manufactured while sitting on the surface of Mars. The gases of the Martian atmosphere are all you need to manufacture it using a more than century old indstrial process. If you are going to Mars and going to stay, this is the fuel you will use.
That must be why NASA is dropping it although the external excuse is:
Any costs associated with accelerating the five-segmented booster and modified J-2 development programs will be offset in part by dropping plans to develop a liquid-methane fueled engine for the CEV, Hecker said. "From a budget standpoint, it came up as a wash," he said. "We're not asking for more dollars."
NASA is dropping the most important thing they are doing in order to speed up a return to the Moon which will probably be done privately by 2025 anyway.
You may disagree with NASA doing anything at all, but whatever you may desire, they are there. They are a fact of life in the space game. It is much preferable for us to see them waste taxpayer money on something that is at least marginally useful to private sector space ventures.
You can read more discussion on this issue at On-Line Ad Astra, a publication of the National Space Society.
Please excuse any errors as my glasses disapeared whilst transiting Toronto Airport last Thursday and I am writing this by squinting at the screen...
Friday
The last of the Lockheed-Martin Titan rockets, after months of slow preparation, is finally up and away from Vandenberg. The blacksat on board was considered quite important and Lockheed used their clout as the launch contractor to kick fledgling rocket company SpaceX out of Vandenberg and away from the pad in which owner Elon Musk had invested millions of his own dollars.
Now that LockMart's big launch is away they will not have the power to continue their underhanded operations against potentially cheaper competition. A number of folk have told me that Elon's burn rate has been such that he is no longer quite a billionaire. As the adage goes, the way to make a small fortune in aerospace is to start out with a large one. Nonetheless, Elon is not letting the bastards (at Lockmart) get him down. I believe he has his next test coming up in November on Kwajalein, and the USAF is reportedly quite positive about working with him.
Except when LockMart throws a hissy fit...
Elon Musk speaking at the National Space Society's 2005
International Space Development Conference in Washington, DC.
Photo: Dale Amon, all rights reserved
Wednesday
If there is a heaven, then I died and went to Las Cruces this weekend. Or perhaps I stumbled into a jackrabbit hole after one of the long sessions in the hotel bar and found myself inside a space art painting I saw some years back. Whatever the case... I was there.
It was obvious from a great distance the event was bigger than I had imagined possible.
Photo: Copyright Dale Amon, all rights reserved.
When I noticed the Canadian rebuild of a V-2 missile I decided some Canadians have two. Big ones. Really big ones. Made of solid stainless steel.
And yes, those round things really are view ports for the 'pilot'.
Photo: Copyright Dale Amon, all rights reserved.
I got up close and personal with Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne.
Photo: Copyright Dale Amon, all rights reserved.
John Carmack pats his Armadillo after it tipped over on landing from a tethered 20 foot controlled flight.
Photo: Copyright Dale Amon, all rights reserved.
Your fellow Samizdata readers at XCOR Aerospace brought their EZ-Rocket engine testbed out of retirement just for the event. Astronaut Searfoss jumped at the chance to display this lovely hot-arsed bird twice within the afternoon.
Photo: Copyright Dale Amon, all rights reserved.
Even the bicycles had rocket motors on them.
Photo: Copyright Dale Amon, all rights reserved.
The British engine gave a rather spectacular pyrotechnic sound and light show as it blew up at t=0. To be fair, the Starchaser group apparently had several succesful firings of this quite large engine over the weekend. I simply had the good or bad fortune to be there for the one that did not.
Photo: Copyright Dale Amon, all rights reserved.
I also have video of such things as two low level passes by an F117; the full first flight of EZ-Rocket and much else, but I am afraid I would bring our server to its little knees if I were to try to upload so much to it.
Thursday
We will just have to get used to bigger storms as we head deeper into the upside of the decades long Atlantic storm cycle. Over the next decade nature will be reclaiming land which became saleable during the downside of the cycle. Unfortunately there are some pretty useful things in threatened areas. One of which is the marvellous Lone Star Flight Museum.
I hope they are getting their airframes out of Dodge and their exhibits to safety. I would hate to see a repeat of what happened to Kermit Week's collection in Florida about ten years ago.
Wednesday
Tonight I watched the excellent second episode of a BBC series on the US/USSR space race of the 1950's and 1960's. I found it highly entertaining and well worth the watching.
As some of you are aware, I have some slight knowledge in this area. It was for the most part well researched and an accurate portrayal both of historical facts and the atmosphere of the time. I found the use of bits of old black and white TV from the period fascinating. I must also admit to recognizing the Life Magazine covers as those and Werner's Disney appearances had at least something to do with my own passion for space.
This would not be a proper review if I did not also point out what was wrong. The history they presented was what anyone would find by researching the times and accepting the received wisdom about 'what happened'. There was more to the events of the era than most are aware of even though a great deal of it is no longer classified.
There was more at stake than whether ex-German Werner Von Braun launched the first satellite or not. There was an intelligence sting in progress; perhaps one of the most successful in US intelligence history.
The story began some years earlier with a top secret report on the use of space for military purposes, and in particular for spy satellites. The problem was whether flying an object repeatedly and undeniably over an enemy nation would be taken as an aggressive act. Would satellites be treated the same as Francis Gary Powers and his U2 were treated many years later? That was the sticky point, and the way around it was to make sure the Russians were suckered into doing it first. Once they had established the 'open skies' precedent, the US was free to roll out the spy satellites. It was no accident that the technology was ready to go and that many of the early Explorer's were less than scientific in purpose.
The public response, or 'blowback' caught Eisenhower by surprise. He'd accomplished precisely what he had wanted to accomplish but was now publicly on the hook for a missile gap which did not actually exist. Even at the time of the Nixon-Kennedy debates, the Russians did not have a significant number of ICBM's reliable enough to generate a serious strategic threat to America. LBJ, as a member of a key Senate committee was well aware of the real facts and almost certainly used the fact of their secrecy to his and Kennedy's political advantage.
Meanwhile, Nixon had to hold his tongue on the issue. Some pundits have suggested this may have caused him to strike back in inappropriate ways a decade later, leading to the Watergate fiasco. Personally I cannot forget that he was a key player in the McCarthy hearings of the early fifties, hearings which ruined many lives and did not uncover any of the real Stalinist moles in the heart of the US government.
I will not hold this against the BBC however. Few are aware of this bit of history and there are many who consider it controversial.
I give the BBC an 8.5 for history and a solid 10 for presentation and entertainment.
Sunday
I fly a lot and have spent more hours in aircraft and the associated departure lounges than I care to think (don't get me wrong, I am a regular propellerhead). One thing that really cheeses me off is that creature: The Flight Attendant/Pilot Who Thinks He Is The Next Great Wit. On a recent flight our pilot insisted on mixing up his usual spiel (read the safety instructions, we arrive at X GMT, please fasten your seatbelts) with a sort of annoying, endless attempt at making the whole process funny. You could tell that the passengers were getting restless. One chap sitting behind me shouted out "Don't give up your dayjob" but it was no good. The jerk went on and on for about 10 minutes before, mercifully, takeoff commenced.
A small plea to any wannabee Bob Newharts out there in the airline business: just fly the goddam plane and shut up.
Okay, I feel better now.
Thursday
It is hard for someone like me to tell how serious this plan for a completely silent aircraft is. This in particular made me dubious:
Environmental campaigners and people living on flight paths have already welcomed the campaign to build the jet.
"Campaign"? That makes me think that this design is as much politics as technology, a suspicion that is confirmed when I look at the website of the Silent Aircraft Initiative, which is the organisation that is promoting this scheme.
The initiative aims to improve competitiveness in the UK aerospace sector by changing the way research is undertaken, through extensive collaboration with a much wider franchise of stakeholders than ever before. By embracing this larger community, the Silent Aircraft Initiative seeks to produce a truly optimised concept design that contributes to the prosperity of the UK in an environmentally sustainable way.
Well, I suppose it could work. But it all smells to me a bit like a rerun of Concorde, in its very early stage, the stage when they were hustling up public money and political support. There is the same obsessive pursuit of one popular variable, in this case silence, to replace Concorde's equally narrow focus – with insufficient subsequent regard for either economy or cacophony – on speed. The thing even looks rather like Concorde.
I can find no mention of how extremely inconvenient maintaining this new contraption would surely be, what with the engines being on the top.
Comments anyone? Is this a serious scheme, or just kite flying? Or is it serious, but only at a very early stage? And is that BBC report wrong only in implying that the thing is nearly ready to be built?
Do all generic aircraft designs in their early stages have to be political, one way or another – either paid for wholly by a government or by governments in secret, or else "campaigned" for, out there in the public realm?
Tuesday
It has not been a good last few days in the airline industry. Today, a passenger jet crashed in Venezuela, killing its entire passenger muster of more than 160 people. A Cypriot airliner crashed in Greece at the weekend, killing its entire passenger list and crew. And a few days previously, an Air France plane had a crash near Toronto, but fortunately all the passengers survived.
There is probably no direct connection to all this but it is a harsh reminder that, even in an age of ever-improving safety standards, air travel carries its hazards (and of course that is even before we get to the terror issue). It is also makes me aware that the skies over southern Britain, for example, are crammed with aircraft and it is still amazing that not more accidents occur than is the case. The volume of aircraft now flying to and from Heathrow's mega-airport is extraordinary and continues to grow. The margins for error when it comes to potential collisions must be razor-thin.
Wednesday
I am on the road once again and sit in an upper Manhattan Starbucks as I write. I face another string of busy days; Saturday morning I fly to San Francisco where I will be doing my usual Wizard of Oz impression as a backstage magician for a JP Morgan technology business conference. Then, after a week of 6am crew calls and 12+ hour workdays, I will be off on a red-eye flight to Washington DC.
In DC I put on my National Space Society hat. Within that organization I am the overseer of conferences, The One Whom All ISDC Chairs Must Fear... which brings me around to why I am writing this article in the first place.
The National Space Society's 24th International Space Development Conference starts on Thursday May 19th and runs through Sunday afternoon at the Sheraton National Hotel. It looks like it will be quite a show this year.
NASA is running some programming tracks of their own in conjunction with the Society this time around and we also have our usual strong private space showing. Our speakers include such luminaries of the private road to space as Burt Rutan, President of Scaled Composites and SpaceShipOne designer; Dr. Peter Diamandis, Founder and Chairman, X Prize Foundation as well as Chairman and CEO of Zero Gravity Corporation; Will Whitehorn, President of Virgin Galactic; Elon Musk, President of Space Exploration Technologies Corporation; Jim Maser President and General Manager, Sea Launch Company LLC; Jim Benson, Chairman and CEO of SpaceDev; David Gump, CEO of Transformational Space LLC; Eric Anderson, CEO of Space Adventures; Brian Feeney, Team Leader of The da Vinci Project (a Canadian based suborbital space venture); and many more.
But, as the late night TV commercials say, "Wait! There's more!" This year we have an absolutely unforgettable and unmissable event: a Gala banquet in an exciting location whose management will not allow me to disclose to you. Go through the conference agenda and see where Hugh Downs is speaking. It is a great event and who knows? Maybe you will run into me there.
Wednesday
It is time to Loose The Blogs of War and make some bureaucrat lives absolute hell. It seems the State is being even more annoying than I had imagined possible. I should have known better.
US Government idiocy is delaying Virgin Galactic; it is bureaucratically effing Richard Branson around and it is delaying the time at which you and I will be able to fly into space.
"At this point we are not able to even view Scaled Composites' designs for the commercial space vehicle," Mr Whitehorn (Virgin Galactic President) testified before the House committee."After US government technology-transfer issues are clarified, and addressed if deemed necessary, we hope to place a firm order for the spacecraft," he said.
Mr Rutan added that the regulations have already affected financing for the project, which originally was to come from Mr Branson's London-based Virgin Group.
"We have had to move away from the basic concept of this being a foreign-funded development," he said.
I myself had believed that a UK company would not be treated so shabbily. As Burt Rutan quipped in a recent US Congressional hearing about commercial space flight:
"I thought Britain was a relatively friendly nation,"
So did I. Brothers-in-arms and all that? Remember who else is in Iraq? Anglosphere and all that rot? Hmmm?
PS: If you can be in the DC area May 19-22, drop by the International Space Development Conference. Burt Rutan and the Virgin Galactic President are both on the program. See you there!
Wednesday
Whatever you reckon on the politics of it all, it is still a big (and I do mean big) step (jump?) forward for aviation. I refer to the maiden flight of the gigantic Airbus A380, which has just been successfully completed.
The A380 - designed to carry as many as 840 people between major airports - took off from its production site in southern France at just after 0830 GMT."The speed on take-off was exactly as we had expected," said test pilot Jacques Rosay.
"The weather is wonderful. Everything is absolutely perfect and we are very happy."
The crew took the plane out over the Bay of Biscay, before returning to base.
This, though, the Antonov An-225, featured last Monday evening on C5 TV's Massive Machines show, is even bigger.
Airbus will not mind about that, but they may be more worried about this:
WASHINGTON – Buoyed by an influx of new orders, Boeing Co. appears to be turning the corner in its battle with archrival Airbus.
So, will all this airplane competition make global warming worse, to the point of eventual global disaster? My sister goes on about the globally warming badness of jet airplanes is every time I meet her.
I must remember to ask my nephew, her son, what he thinks about this issue, next time I meet him. He is an airline pilot.
Saturday
According to The Australian, Richard Branson wants an Australian site for his new suborbital space planes. That in itself would not be particularly unusual: others before him have seen and considered the Australian launch advantage.
A final design for Virgin's flagship spacecraft, the VSS Enterprise, is expected to be signed off on this year. A US base is expected to be training 3000 astronauts for the $US190,000 sub-orbital flights in as little as three years.Sir Richard said in Sydney that the plan was to build sufficient spaceships to allow the establishment of separate bases around the world.
It may not have done so for many of you, but this sets off tinkling bells and flashing lights for me. If you are at all close to the space industry you will know there is an excellent near equator site in Australia where there has long been interest for a Spaceport. I have not been following it much lately, but I do remember there was an intent to launch Russian rockets from there. The current status is neither here nor there: Australia is the only Anglospherian country with existing space infrastructure and near equatorial lands.
When a spaceship takes off it gets an extra boost from the Earth's rotational velocity. The further from the equator you are, the less advantage you get. Imagine you were at the North Pole. The Earth is rotating your spaceship on the pad once every 24 hours and when you launch, your engines have to supply 100% of the velocity required for orbit.
If you are at an intermediate geographical location, like KSC at Cape Canaveral, the rotating planet is moving your spaceship at a significant eastward velocity before it even leaves the ground.
If you are at the equator, you are already traveling at a rate of 1/24 the Earth's circumference per hour. An equatorial or near-equatorial site is ideal for a first generation orbital spaceship . It gives a starting velocity of a little under a half km/sec eastwards on your fully loaded spaceship before it even leaves the ground. This is a big win. You need roughly 7.5 km/sec to make orbit: you may think of the Earth's equator as a free, reuseable first stage.
So. Inference one: Branson is already looking ahead to orbital flights.
Now notice he is considering more than one spaceport location. He is not talking of abandoning the US launch site in the Mojave. He wants to add another site for suborbital fares. He would have two sites at which he could operate suborbital space ship take offs and landings.
Branson is in the airline business and knows better than I what the size of the market is for people who want to take a short suborbital tourist hop... versus the number of high value business people who would pay extraordinary fares to reach the antipodes in 45 minutes. British Air refused to sell him the Concordes, but Richard might just laugh last and best.
Inference two: I expect we will at some point see a proof of concept flight of a Rutan vehicle which leaves the Mojave on a suborbital intercontinental ballistic trajectory and lands in Australia. If he has a vehicle capable of carrying 6 paying passengers for tourism, that same vehicle with a lone pilot can probably boost onto a trans-Pacific trajectory.
Branson, Rutan and Allen are smart cookies. They are not going to advertise their plans ahead of time. But if you are going to go into space and make it pay, this is the way to do it:
Step 1) Fund a suborbital test vehicle and get it partly paid for by winning the X-Prize. [DONE]
Step 2) Build a suborbital joy ride vehicle that mostly pays for itself going up and down. [IN PROGRESS]
Step 3) Fly the first intercontinental suborbital flight with that vehicle in a stripped down single pilot mode.
Step 4) Build a slightly larger vehicle that mostly pays for itself via trans-Pacific flights.
Step 5) Use that American built vehicle in a stripped down, single pilot mode to fly from an equatorial base into orbit. Perhaps it will be necessary to build a special vehicle to deal with higher re-entry heat loading, but there are now two revenue streams on line, not to mention Bob Bigelow's $50M America's Space Prize.
Step 6) Add another revenue stream. Sell astronaut transport services to NASA about the time the Shuttles are sent off to museums. Perhaps also sell delivery services to Bob Bigelow's inflatable orbital facility for yet another stream.
Step 7) Earth orbit is "half way to anywhere". The solar system is now your oyster.
As they say in the tech business, "It's a plan!"
Thursday
This NASA PSA works on so many levels I hardly know where to begin.
It does not at any point say "only socialist space programs can get us there". You could infer that if you saw it in certain contexts, but then again, if you saw it at a space entrepreneurs get together you would not. The underlying message is a good one and I thoroughly applaud it. We will reach for the stars. We will colonize the solar system. We will leave the cradle.
The infant is a young Paul Allen or Bob Bigelow or Burt Rutan... not a future employee of the State.
Ed: You may need to down load the mpg and play it locally.
Thursday
Rick Tumlinson of the Space Frontier Foundation is an old friend of mine who has been directly involved in much behind the scenes in commercial space, including the private attempt to save MIR. Here, with his permission, is an article like the one I have been intending to write. I am still traveling and just have had no time do so. Rick probably did a better job of it anyway
There are three initiatives from 2004 that if built upon the right way will rapidly accelerate the human breakout into space.
The first was U.S. President George W. Bush???s vision of permanent human presence beyond Earth orbit, which was endorsed by congressional funding and clarified by the Aldridge Commission.
The second was the flight of SpaceShipOne, the first major triumph of the new space movement and its goal of opening space to the people. This was solidified by a multi-million-dollar contract from Virgin Galactic to build a fleet of commercial spaceships.
Finally, the passage of legislation in Congress that begins to create regulatory certainty in the New Space transportation field clears the way for the long-term development of this nascent industry.
Thus we have both a mandate for our government to explore and open space to permanent habitation, and the birth of a private sector space industry which can power, sustain and capitalize that expansion of our civilization beyond the Earth. But of course, this means they will have to work together, which is a bigger challenge than the physical act of opening space itself. But I believe it can be done with benefits to all.
However, there is one point that needs to be made early in this discussion that clearly is not understood by the traditional space establishment. I believe the new space frontier movement can survive and even begin the opening of space completely on its own, even if NASA vanished tomorrow.
I am not expressing a desire, just a reality that should be part of all future discussions of national space policy. Momentum is building, and the funneling of several independent fortunes into the cause is creating networks of mutual support and interest.
For example, we will soon witness the launch of Bigelow Aerospace hotel test articles on a SpaceX rocket. Projecting this trend further, we arrive at another critical milestone on the way to an open frontier, when the first private space facility is serviced and supported entirely by a private transport firm or firms. This is a real take-off point, for when this happens if we should lose the government space program entirely the frontier will still be at hand.
I am not stretching reality. At some point in the next 10 years the private sector will attain the ability to transport relatively large numbers of people and payloads to and from low Earth orbit on its own, to house them while they are in orbit and to develop the infrastructure needed for industrial development. This part of the frontier formula is simple: Transportation + Destination = Habitation + Exploitation + Industrialization.
As SpaceX and Bigelow begin to develop their infrastructure, Richard Branson, who created Virgin Galactic, will have been flying suborbital commercial space flights for years, as will have Jeff Bezos, the Amazon.com founder who just announced a new commercial spaceport in West Texas. Branson and Burt Rutan, the man behind SpaceshipOne, already have said they want to go to orbit and even beyond, as do Bigelow and Bezos, including trips to and around the Moon.
Again, this is serious stuff. I am not wildly chanting L-5 in '95 as the early followers of the late Gerard O'Neill of the Space Studies Institute in their naivete used to do. I am not betting on some pie-in-the-sky magic product like Iridium and the mythical little Leo constellations to fund start up rocket companies. I am certainly not betting on some magic government X vehicle like the X-33 space goose.
These new O'Neillians have their own money, their own business models and the ability to finance what they are doing all by themselves.
The new imperative that must be faced by our government space leaders is not just to carry out a formal national mandate, and do so on a tight budget, but to maintain their relevance in a field that may well be moving faster than they are. How does NASA justify its intention to spend tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to build what will probably be a far less efficient space transportation system than what the commercial space industry is developing for its own purposes.
Look at the contrasts. Bigelow is assuming that his $50 million dollar America's Prize will result in a safe and reusable passenger capsule for roundtrips between Earth and low Earth orbit. NASA is expecting to spend over $10 billion dollars to develop the same sort of capability. Yes, Bigelow expects the winner to spend far more than the actual prize amount based on hopes of follow-on markets; and yes, the winning capsule will have fewer bells and whistles that anything NASA builds, but the magnitude of difference in the development costs is ridiculous.
NASA, the White House and Congress are being driven more by the power of traditional aerospace lobbying and the need to maintain political constituencies than practical and common sense understanding of the changes at hand. NASA must be made to grasp this now and stop all of its current plans for the Moon/Mars initiative, or it will fail.
Although the current Crew Exploration Vehicle plans incorporate a very small wedge of new space players, the new White House space transportation policy and the bulk of U.S. government funding is still targeted at the old space industry.
How do self- and investor-funded innovators compete against government subsidized systems? How does this help America compete in global markets in the long run?
The government is ignoring the need to grow a wide-ranging and robust space transportation and low Earth orbit industrial base to support all of our activities from here to the Moon in favor of drawing up monster space vehicles such as a new heavy-lift launcher.
They want to be able to toss giant elements of government-designed space facilities and craft into orbit all at once, a la Saturn 5. This may have been necessary when we were in a race to the Moon, but a much wiser, long-term solution now would be to use smaller vehicles over time to get the people and infrastructure to where they are needed.
If the goal is to have a thriving Earth-Moon-Mars economy as an end point, it makes sense to begin creating the low Earth orbit anchorage and industrial port element as early as possible.
Pay for delivery contracts and prizes tied to tax incentives for investment in space transportation would greatly accelerate the growth of New Space transportation systems. On orbit assembly would teach us how to really operate in space, while developing expertise and potentially profitable orbital businesses. Fuel depots in space could be developed now using new space and old space transportation systems to fill them and preparing a technology base for the day when we begin to harvest and refine propellants from space resources. Breaking payloads down into small elements expands the pie greatly. It also mimics how we do things on Earth, which seems to have worked very well so far.
If handled the right way, even the dinosaurs of aerospace could be coaxed into evolving or spinning off innovative space transportation divisions to service this new mixed private- and public-sector market. After all, Boeing, Lockheed and Northrop Grumman are not doing their stockholders any favors by clinging to a dying market, when an expanding frontier-based market would not only be potentially huge, but by definition infinite.
The president has said we should go back to the Moon and on to Mars, this time to stay. Of course from his mouth to the ears of NASA is a journey far greater than the distance to the Moon. Already, the concept of permanence has been redefined by those who are mono-maniacally focused on the end point of Mars. They have jettisoned lunar development, instead opting for touch-and-go missions to the Moon on the way to a grand-flags-and-footprints mission to Mars. They prefer Apollo redux rather than the careful build up of an Earth-Moon infrastructure that can teach us how to go and live anywhere in space forever.
Yet there is hope that some in NASA and the space community are shaking free of old ways of thinking. I have met many, including the oft maligned and yet ignored planetary scientists who really are beginning to get it when it comes to frontier-style thinking. At recent NASA sanctioned meetings, I was stunned to hear many of them rejecting a return to the Moon based on scattershot landings for so-called scientific purposes as some at headquarters had been planning. Apollo on steroids, as it was called, seemed to be roundly trounced in favor of a careful build-up to one community on the south pole of the Moon.
There are those who fear we will get bogged down on the Moon, that NASA will simply be replacing the Albatross of the international space station with a large grey boulder called the Moon, weighing itself down so much with lunar infrastructure it cannot proceed to Mars. This is a completely valid point. We must learn from the mistakes of the space station and not repeat them on the Moon.
NASA must never again tie itself to facilities or buildings, or to trying to manage transportation and other infrastructure. NASA will need not an exit strategy from the Moon, but rather an entrance strategy to open the Moon, and the basics of this new way of doing business must be locked in this year.
The actual construction and operation of the lunar community must be carried out by the private sector. Meanwhile, NASA can develop its own pure Mars analog base a few kilometers around the other side of the Moon, using what it learned from the first buildup and focusing purely on studying the elements needed for Mars. The Mars analog can be placed outside of the view of Earth, where the astronauts there can be isolated, delays can be simulated, and yet supported and backed up by staff at the main community-whose facilities and habitat rentals can feed into the economy.
This will require revolutionary thinking on the part of the U.S. government, especially in its relationship to the private sector. These changes will have to extend far beyond technologies and operational considerations, to the legal, regulatory and contractual aspects of space.
The United States must develop a package of tax and investment incentives to open the spigots of Wall Street and other capital sources. The normal methods of cost-plus contracting -- awarding contracts to develop capabilities rather than paying for provision of services -- must be done away with. But it will not be sufficient for the government to simply pay for the delivery of goods, people and services if we want to kick start the space economy. The nation must go further. We must create a package of incentives that together make it irresistible for private investors to want to get involved on the frontier.
One example is what I call a Catalytic Contingency Contract. Let's say NASA needs a laboratory for long-term research. The government, rather than building or contracting a module as was done on the international space station program, would instead offer to lease a certain number of square feet for an extended period from the first private developer who demonstrates the capability to provide it.
This lease would be part of an overall package designed to make it so sweet a deal that the firm and its investors would be able to see past any potential risks. Such a contract would include: The right of the developer to rent out any volume beyond the government's to anyone it pleases at whatever rate it chooses; the right to own all intellectual property it may develop while building the facility; the right to sell any advertising based on its contract and involvement in the project; and freedom from any taxes it might be assessed on profits realized from any activities generated by the project.
The privately funded new space firms will push into space if the money continues to flow and it does not turn out to be a billionaire's fad. NASA eventually might be able to spend billions and get something or someone to the Moon in a couple of decades -- if politicians and presidents continue their support.
For now NASA has billions of dollars and a mandate to push outward into space, but it needs a partner that thinks outside the box. The new space firms live outside of the box and if given the right support they could accelerate the push into space and make it permanent.
Last year both the government and the people said they want to open space. Working separately the public and private sectors might be able to stagger and
stumble into the future, or they might trip and fall back into the past. Together, using the strengths of each, we can create an amazing future and take the first strong steps now. I do not know about you, but I do not want to wait any longer.
Rick N. Tumlinson is the founder of the Space Frontier Foundation.
Sunday
There are a lot of big shiny 1940s-era aircraft zooming across our cinema screens at the moment. Yeh! We have had Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, we are due to get the remake of The Flight of Phoenix, based on the wonderful old movie starring James Stewart, and I have just returned from watching The Aviator, starring Leonardo Di Caprio as mogul, test pilot and eccentric, Howard Hughes. It is a fine film, and makes a number of important points about the man himself, the nature of doing business in America in the mid-20th Century and the evolution of modern air travel.
The story is quite well known of how a rich young oil family son becomes a major player in the aviation industry, challenges rivals like PanAm, produces smash-hit movies, before descending into madness and solitude. Director Martin Scorcese has long been fascinated with Hughes' tale and gets DiCaprio to convey the mixture of driving ambition, brilliant engineering skills, bravery and craziness. Hughes could be seen, from one vantage point as an almost Randian-style business hero, challenging rivals like PanAm, whose boss was played with appropriate menacing charm by Alec Baldwin.
There are two great scenes which get the pro-enterprise, unpretentious side of Hughes across. He drives with his then girlfriend, Katherine Hepburn, excellently played by Cate Blanchett, to see Hepburn's family. At lunch, Hepburn's mother, instantly declares to Hughes that "we are all socialists here", and "I do hope you are not a Republican", and Hughes, bless him, looking around the vast mansion and its grounds, is too dumbstruck at these comments to make a fast and smart reply. Recovering his composure, later Hughes tells the preening Hepburns that his favourite reading is technical engineering reports on planes, which of course has the welcome effect of shutting the ghastly Hepburns up.
In a later scene, set in 1947 when Hughes is fighting for the future of his airline TWA against the monopolistic ambitions PanAm in cahoots with the U.S. Senate, Hughes makes a number of fine points about competition and business risk-taking that almost got me cheering in the stalls. Hughes wins his battle and PanAm is forced to concede.
Hughes was a troubled man and spent the last two decades of his life in circumstances so lonely and depressed that it of course will colour one's view of his life in the round. But I came away from the film feeling a certain admiration for Hughes in how he was willing to challenge the status quo. Long after people have forgotten corrupt U.S. senators and complacent airline bosses, they will remember the man who built and flew some amazing planes. I also cannot help but wonder whether people will think something similar in future about our contemporary airline boss and daredevil man of action, Britain's own Richard Branson. We shall see.
Tuesday
The picture below has been making the rounds of the net aviation (and other) communities the last few days. The young Aussie lads chanced upon a motor race event whilst on coastal patrol. They went into a temporary hover all the better to communicate with numerous and luvly birds on the ground.
Someone caught them in the act and the photo went up on a professional pilot's site from whence it spread to other places.
The lads seem to be in a bit of hot water over it, no doubt due to complaints from the PC (Pulchritudinously Challenged) sector.
Monday
Lt. Charlie William of the British Army survived a 3500 foot fall with minimal damage to his person after his parachute rigging tangled upon exit from the airplane during training over Kenya.
He broke through a corrugated iron roof and gave some Kenyans a bit of a start. I have heard of dropping in for tea unexpectedly, but Charlie seems to have taken it a bit farther than most.
It does not appear to have been reported whether the home owners supplied their guest with a hot cuppa as he awaited assistance.
Sunday
Since Brian brought the subject up... I too have been following the political posturing that has been going on about regulating the nascent human space flight industry. The regime that currently exists is quite satisfactory to all. Customers have to read a list of all the horrible ways in which they will probably die, but once they have done so the FAA will get out of the way so long as the launch company guarantees the body parts will not cause more damage than the insurance covers when they hit the ground. (It is a little more complex than that, but I am not about to give a tutorial on spaceflight FARS just now.)
I think this open letter from an old friend of mine will explain what is currently going on in DC, or at least give you an intro to it.
Friday, November 19, 2004Dear Space Advocates & Correspondents:
This afternoon the House of Representatives had a 40 minute debate on legislation designed to advance the U.S. commercial human spaceflight industry. It was a good and spirited debate, with bipartisan supporters speaking in favor, and two partisan Democrats speaking against HR5382.
Unfortunately, the opponents' arguments reflected the same misunderstanding of this issue that so many people have. Their presumption is that the federal government needs to set standards to protect the safety of the early adventurers who wish to buy a risky ride into space. Even before the vehicles that would fly them are designed, let alone built and flying. Frankly, Mr. Oberstar and Mr. DeFazio, the Ranking Minority Members of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee and its Aviation Subcommittee, seem to believe that we need to regulate spaceflight as if it were just another approach to Aviation.
But rockets are not airplanes, and the Commercial Space Launch Act and the U.S. commercial space transportation industry are not under the jurisdiction of the Aviation Subcommittee. Space is a new sphere of economic activity, and the House's experts on these issues are members of the House's Committee that is focused on America's future, the Science Committee.
More importantly, the House worked for several months with the Senate to develop a compromise version of the original HR3752, which was passed by a vote of 402 to 1 in March of this year. It is important to note that HR3752 told the Secretary of Transportation to promote and license the carrying of "space flight participants" for compensation, i.e. to make money, under an "informed consent" regime. In other words, the rocket company had to tell the passenger how likely it was they might crash, and then the passenger could choose to take the risk or not. All regulation was focused on making sure the rockets didn't hurt anyone on the ground. The Secretary was not given any authority - and has none under current law - to regulate in order to protect people riding on the vehicle.
And I might just point out, Mr. Oberstar and Mr. DeFazio both voted for HR3752 in March, along with every other Democratic member of the Transportation Committee who showed up to vote. (The only vote against HR3752 in March was by a libertarian Republican who didn't think the government had any right to regulate rockets at all !)
So today's choice on HR5382 is a choice not between one level of safety and another. It's between Congress telling the American people they have a right to go into space and an expectation that, over time, it will become more affordable and more reliable to do so... and saying "we can't be bothered to write legislation to help enable this new industry". Fortunately, the American people *already* have the right to go into space. And the American free market will make it ever-more-affordable and ever-safer, even without the help of federal regulators. But it would be a good thing if this bipartisan legislation were enacted into law to help accelerate the process.
Ironically, the two members speaking in favor of higher safety today will actually leave the industry free to do whatever it wants under current law, with no process by which the Secretary could, let alone would, start to set safety standards. So perhaps they are more committed to stopping legislation - and a new industry - than safety, after all.
James Muncy
Consultant to several Commercial Human Spaceflight companies
I am sure some will complain the government should not regulate space industry at all. I agree. Unfortuneately that option does not exist. We can either ameliorate what government is going to do and have a space industry, or close our eyes and let the worst sort of Nanny Statists have their way. That could kill the industry before it grows big enough to defend itself. That is to say, big enough to get your and my bottoms off this dirtball.
Thursday
XCOR Aerospace, the Mojave spaceship company which provided floor space and food for many of us who attended the first commercial suborbital launch in June, has announced a contest.
The prizes will be given to the persons, groups or companies who provide working steam engines fulfilling the contest specifications at various levels.
Yes, spaceships really can use steam engines. There is a lot of waste heat floating around a rocket engine so it makes sense to use some of it to operate the engine. If you are a home machinest or have a small engineering company and think this might be fun, go pick up the rules and the pump interfaces specification.
Ad astra my friends!
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, all rights reserved
Monday
I just ran across this quote of Burt Rutan from this afternoon on Space Flight Now:
"Quite frankly, I think the big guys, the Boeings, the Lockheeds, the nay-say people at Houston, they probably ... think we're a bunch of home builders who put a rocket in a Long Easy," he said, referring to one of his recreational aircraft designs. "But if they ... got a look at how this flight was run and how we developed the capabilities of this ship and showed its safety, I think they're looking at each other now and saying, 'We're screwed.'"
Yes, I do believe the pigs had their noses so deep in the trough they never saw the hatchet coming. If any of them did look up they just grunted at the idea anyone could possibly ever displace them, not realizing they were not being so much displaced as bypassed and made redundant to requirements.
I love the smell of bacon in the morning. It smells of... liberty.
Monday
I am sure the Scaled Composites team is busy with their last minute checkouts now. I will be following this event as closely as one can from a third of a planetary circumference away. Obviously I will not be as immediate as those on the edge of the runway, but perhaps I can supply knowledgeable commentary on the next few hours.
So, time to get the Anseri X-Prize out of the way and move on to the Bigelow et al Prize!
Time to up-ship! Hot jets, good luck and Godspeed Mike!
UPDATE: The pilot for this flight has been announced and will be Brian Binnie.
UPDATE 1257 UTC: Weather at Mojave is reported looking good. Which is not unusual for Mojave! White Knight/SpaceShipOne takeoff is scheduled for 1400 UTC, so I would imagine they are outside the hanger and doing the the Pre-Flight about now. Burt Rutan has reportedly stated they are shooting for the alitutude record today, 354,200 feet reached by Joe Walker in the X-15 on August 23, 1963.
UPDATE 1317 UTC: As Rand Simberg points out, today is the 47th Anniversary of the first satellite launch.
UPDATE 1339 UTC: WK/SS1 is reported to be on the taxiway. I imagine the crowds are waving flags and going wild about now. Not much longer before the takeoff... then we wait an hour for the drop and burn.
UPDATE 1356 UTC: WK/SSI is in the air. For the next hour everyone gets a sore neck watching them circle ever higher towards the 47.000 foot drop altitude. It gets a bit easier to follow them when they pass about 20,000 feet and contrails begin to show... of course that depends on the conditions at altitude and is not a given. Then they will fly to the East of the airport so they will be nearer Edward AFB for radar tracking. This means everyone gets absolutely blinded looking into the sun to watch the initial climbout after the drop an hour from now.
UPDATE 1425 UTC: If you were watching Black Sky on Discovery last night (obviously I did not, sitting here outside Belfast) and liked the simulations of the SS1 flight, you can buy the software at X-Plane. Tell Austin I sent you.
UPDATE 1431 UTC: I expect WK/SS1 is passing through 40,000 feet about now. I notice that an old friend of mine, Greg Maryniak, is the commentator for the X-Prize Foundation. Not that surprising since Greg and Peter Diamandes, who I've known since he and the late Tod Hawley were MIT college kids, run the place. Greg was the Exec at the Space Studies Institute in Princeton all through the 1980's and into the early 1990's.
UPDATE 1445 UTC: By the time you read this I expect SS1 will have dropped and fired the hybrid rocket motor. Yeehah!!!
UPDATE 1452 UTC: Drop and burn happened on time... burnout and SS1 is coasting upwards, hopefully to break the X15 record as well as cop the $10,000,000 Anseri X-Prize!
UPDATE 1455 UTC: Unofficial apogee at around 368,000 feet. They may have the record. X-15 max was 354,200 feet. Sounds like a safe margin to me!
UPDATE 1515 UTC: Verily as I was on the phone trading notes with Rand, it touched down. The X-Prize has been won! The X-15 altitude record has been bettered! Now, on to commercial Virgin Galactic flights, on to the Bigelow prize for an orbital flight by 2008... and not to mention we can expect the da Vinci project to carry out their balloon drop flight within a few months and Armadillo Aerospace should fly sometime next year too. Oh what a wonderful year this is!
UPDATE 1619 UTC: It seems the altitude is official and Burt is claiming the altitude record. In an article I wrote last year, I suggested Rutan has a shot at 'the Triple Crown' of aviation records. Voyager flew around the world non-stop for the distance record; SS1 has now copped the altitude record. The only gem missing from the Scaled Composites front office is speed. As many have pointed out, SS1 is probably not capable of surviving a low angle speed run. But that does not mean some near future Rutan vehicle will not do it. I think he will go for it at some point.
UPDATE 1654 UTC: I note that Leonard David has been the journalist blogging for space.com from Mojave. Len is another one of our little crowd of space illuminati. He started off with the Project Harvest Moon attempt to buy the last Saturn V's back in 1976 or so; he founded a space organization of his own at university and later became the magazine editor for for Von Braun's NSI, and later for Ad Astra of NSS, the merged L5 and NSI organization. He also plays a mean autoharp. Yep. We all know each other.
Sunday