Space On The Cheap, By Babelfish

In this year that saw the failure of an Orbital Science cargo launch and the disintegration of the Scaled Composites space plane and with the recent triumph/glitch of the Rosetta lander (did touch down - mind boggling but the harpoons designed to anchor is failed to failure and it landed in shade and could not use it’s solar arrays), I recalled the phrase used by the old engineers (Apollo/Gemini/Mercury/Viking Lander) who I worked with. Space is a hard road.

With all the wailing and mourning over the shutdown of the Space Shuttle program, one would have thought that we have entered into the a new and risky world of private companies being given the responsibility for space launches. And, this was a shocking abandonment of responsibility by our government. In fact, a constant of much early science fiction had been privatized space commerce. There was little in the way of assumption that access to space would be controlled by governments, with the exception of military expediency. And space access was, by inference, pretty cheap.

 

That is in stark contrast to the reality of national space programs that developed from the 1950's and beyond. Opportunities to privatize space access were viewed as non-contributory to strategic national interests. NASA, Europe (Arianespace), the Russians, the Chinese, these were all governmental programs or still are.

In America, after Apollo, NASA had the hubris to believe it could turn manned space operations into a commuter airline based operation. This obviously did not work out. In its desperation to justify the astronomical cost of each Shuttle launch, they managed to get Congress to mandate that all US space launches, including classified military payloads, would be lofted by the Shuttle. And then came Challenger. And then came two successive failed satellite launches. And then came the budget reality that each Shuttle launch was a billion dollars plus (and growing)  and that the cost was unsustainable. We were in a bad place and we had painted ourselves into that corner. And we took our first serious steps towards commercializing space launches and the Air Force started their assured access to space program.

Materials Science and Design

While the members of this committee of correspondence are very informed, most folks I talk to do not seem to understand the limitations of material science in this kind of endeavor. Despite decades of evolution and progress in design/manufacturing techniques and in remixing materials to our advantage, getting to space is still is at the ragged edge of our capabilities. It stresses the materials we have available to their limit, forcing compromises in an eternal circle of weight versus margins in safety versus affordability of payload capacity. I had one of the Shuttle’s program managers tell me that the Orbiter was as fragile as a butterfly, compared to the X-15 program he cut his teeth on. (and that’s how many compromises the Orbiter had as a design)

I believe DARPA actually let out a RFP for a material that could be used in a space cable/elevator. I do not think anyone took them up on it, at least yet. Think carbon nanotubes.

Propulsion designs have stagnated, with the Orbital Science failure coming at the hands of a Russian designed engine that appears to have been manufactured in the 60's, then refurbished. They had an identical engine fail in May 2014 at the Stennis Center.

The current version of the venerable Atlas also uses an older Russian designed engine, albeit with newly manufactured copies. To repeat my point, despite the first successful orbital launch in the 1950s, we are still at the ragged edge of success when it comes to getting vehicles and their payloads into space. Think about how far airliner designs and reliability have evolved in the same period of time. That is how much harder getting into orbit is.

Near Term Cheap

I was really pleased to see that Elon Musk was going to start up Space X and that Orbital Science was also going into the launcher business. I was thrilled when Scaled Composites took on the Ansari Prize and won. I was not so pleased that Richard Branson attempted to turn space tourism into a glitzy, risk free business. That hasn't turned out so well, at least yet. Space is ineed a hard road.

Space X, by all accounts, has done some remarkable things in design and manufacturing. They designed their own engines and vehicles. Their costs per launch may be as little as one half of the legacy companies, LockMart and Boeing. And yet they have had engine failures during launches and had a test vehicle fail just this year. To their credit, their design allowed for a catastrophic engine failure on one launch and still left the other engines functioning and got their bird into orbit. Despite all that, there is still no remarkable new material being used in their product. The same is true of Arianespace and their family of vehicles and engines.

Space X is scaring the hell out of it’s competitors. Even Arianspace is has taken notice of their cost structure and is searching for ways to compete on the basis of cost. One wonders how much the Euro community will pay for that effort.

A quick historical note at this point. I worked with former Chrysler engineers (yes, the car company) who had submitted a design for the Saturn 5 that had redundant main engines, in this case in a configuration shaped like a ring. It was unique in that it was forgiving of one or more engine sections being incapacitated during launch. Their design lost out but Space X has taken that thought and has built it into their Falcon launch vehicles. They have had single Merlin engines fail during launch but still got the vehicle to deliver to LEO.

During the last ISS resupply mission Space X attempted to land the primary booster on a floating platform and they got to the platform but crashed. That they got to the platform at all was remarkable and gets them that much closer to a reusable first stage, further driving down the cost. Given their lead in technology, it will be interesting to see if any legacy company can catch up (without massive government funding).

Ultra Cheap

In 1979, Arthur C. Clarke authored a novel about the construction and use of a space elevator (The Fountains of Paradise). He acknowledged the original idea came from one of the all time great futurists, Konstantin Tsilokovsky. In fact, it is hard to find any futurist idea that Tsilokovsy did not think of first.

As fanciful as a space elevator might appear (the ultimate unicorn?), the physics are sound. Apparently some dreamer at DARPA thinks we might not be that far off from the threshold materials. Yes, the whole program is now beyond daunting but the reward is unlimited access to space. The elevator can be made to generate its own electricity and use magnetics to winch up cargo to LEO or geosynch orbit. At that point, just letting it go gets it into orbit. There is some thought that we could start on a serious effort to get the first cable up by 2035.

Ultimately, it would, of course, take the cooperation of most of the nations of Earth to construct something like this and make it a going enterprise. And, that is probably the most single difficult barrier to getting it done. But what a glorious accomplishment it would be!

http://aviationweek.com/space/orbital-drops-aj-26-after-failure-looking-alternate-launcher-iss 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fountains_of_Paradise

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/176625-60000-miles-up-geostationary-space-elevator-could-be-built-by-2035-says-new-study

 

 

Comments

[William R. Cumming]

The strategic vision of NASA failed at the beginning by its focus on manned spaceflight.

[Rocketrepreneur]

Babelfish,

Great writeup, though I don't think orbital launch is quite on the bleeding edge of materials technology anymore. I think there's still a ton we can do to improve reusability even with existing technology. The challenge isn't just technical but also one of markets. Most existing launch customers can afford the ridiculously high costs of launch, and so are relatively inelastic (demand-wise) to lower prices. So it hasn't made much sense for incumbents to invest too much in cost reductions. Hopefully SpaceX will help shake that up. I have a lot of friends at SpaceX and most of their competitors, and the good news is that most of my friends at ULA for instance (the main incumbent launch company) actually want SpaceX to succeed--so they can convince their management that reuse is something they need to invest in as well. They have different ideas, and I think there are lots of ways to crack this nut. Hopefully SpaceX will help shift the industry in better directions.

As for space elevators on Earth, I think we've still got a long way to go in making and using long carbon nanotubes. Progress has been a lot slower there than people had hoped. There are other variants (rotovators or hypersonic skyhooks) that might be feasible sooner. And lunar or Martian space elevators could be done with existing materials.

Great article though!

~Jon

[mike]

Babelfish - what ever happened to the RS-68? How come that program died, was it unworkable, or too expensive, or.....?

[BabelFish]

WRC, the changeover was made in 1958, during the hysteria of the Sputnik launch. And, regarding manned space flight, give a government agency and associated contractors a blank check and a very macho task to accomplish 'before this decade is over', and for sure everything else falls by the wayside.

NACA had it going! Not only the X-series of rocket planes but things like Richard Whitcomb coming up with the area rule and the super-critical wing were part of its portfolio!

[BabelFish]

Jon, thank you for the kind words. I am curious (means do research) on the 'birthday' of some of the materials that are in current use (Inconel?)

I remember when we were trying to qualify carbon filament wound SRB sections. Promising but way too much work, I think, was the decision. But, as was drilled into our heads, save a pound and put almost that much in orbit. And, bingo, we had lithium aluminum for the barrel sections of the ET.

Mike

[BabelFish]

Mike,

I think it died when Constellation stalled out and Wiki agrees. A big brute of a cryogenic motor but it was not man-rated. However, old rocket engines seem to never truly die. We could see it back in another application.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-68

[VietnamVet]

BabelFish

This is an excellent article. I rode on steam powered trains as a boy and saw Sputnik move across the stars. There were astonishing changes in my youth. The future in the movie “2001 A Space Odyssey” seemed possible at the time. Then progress came to a screeching halt. All we have of that future today is Skype. I blame financiers’ greed and perpetual war. Material roadblocks can be overcome if mankind has the will and direction

[BabelFish]

Thank you for the kind words.

One more thing that Arthur C. Clarke got right in 2001 was the use of 'Pads'. We've got IPads,etc.

I have to tell you that the first time I got to go to KSC for work, I just stared at all these places I had seen on TV. I felt I was at Disney for adults.

[MK Logan]

Babble,

Great read, thanks.

Material specs are where a lot of great ideas go pear shaped. Here we are living on a thin-skinned ball of fire..worried about energy.

I've seen some very daunting numbers on the tensile strength needed for a space elevator. Last I looked the most exotic stuff we have ever actually made is very, very far from the strength to weight ratio required.

[BabelFish]

MK, yea verily on the material specs! A few unicorns out there. Fusion power, anyone?

I agree with the specs being daunting. Even the old engineering mantra "when in doubt, make it stout" doesn't work when you have to haul something up to past 15,000 miles straight up. So, we need a space elevator to build a space elevator.

[sglover]

"Then progress came to a screeching halt. All we have of that future today is Skype."

Well... People living now have had the privilege of seeing the surfaces of:

Mars, Venus, Mercury, Europa, Ganymede, Titan, Enceladus, Callisto, Io, Triton, Iapetus, Vesta, Ceres -- and several dozen lesser bodies.

If it isn't already, Mars will soon be observed with more regularity and accuracy than the surface of the earth was 50-60 years ago.

In just a few months we'll be getting good images of the surface of Pluto. Those will include images of that planet's small moons, which were never even guessed at, when I was a wee lad.

Worlds around other stars are being catalogued all the time, now. In many cases the cataloguing includes plausible guesses about the temperatures and even atmospheres of these planets.

So progress in space exploration hasn't ended by a long shot. But it's sadly true that boatloads more money and effort have been squandered on follies like Iraq and the F-35 and bailing out the finance "industry".

BTW, anybody reading this comment thread might enjoy the "Centauri Dreams" site. It's a good source for both space science news, and imaginative speculation about methods for Getting Out There. Lousy and archaic as our political and social systems might be, we're really living in a Golden Age of Talent.

[different clue]

With all the thinking about living in space, nobody seems to think about living on the deep sea floor. Its so unthinkable it never gets thought of. And that's unthinkable.

Men will be living on Mars before men are living at the bottom of the Challenger Deep. Or the Marianas Trench.

[MK Logan]

Babelfish,

If a method of splicing unobtainium in space can be developed found it may be possible to lower cables from orbit. I can't picture a vehicle that could lift it in one shot.

[João Carlos]

Well, don't worry. The chinese will build the orbital elevator sooner or later. They are the number one economy now and for the next 5 decades...

[Rocketrepreneur]

Babelfish,
New materials can take a long time to implement in any demanding industry--some of the next-gen semiconductor materials are estimated to be >10yrs out.

But yeah, very few of the alloys or composites they're using are that new. Widespread use of friction stir-welded Li-Al has really only hit the launch vehicle world in the past 10-15 years. Composites have only really taken off over the same timeframe.

But if you compare the thrust to weight and Isp of Merlin-1D with the F-1 engines on the Saturn V, you'll see a huge improvement (double the thrust-to-weight, and over 20s higher sea level Isp, and 30s higher vacuum Isp), and that's for a gas-generator cycle engine using the same propellants.

For getting rockets off the "bleeding edge" materials-wise, the 30 or so % improvement you get from friction stir-welded Li-Al and composites use, and the doubling of T/W goes a long, long way.

And there are other cool technologies (my favorite is Thrust Augmented Nozzles) which just need flight demonstration.

I think we've got a lot of room for improvement in launch costs that are feasible within the realm of existing or near-term rocket technologies.

~Jon

[Rocketrepreneur]

Mike, Babelfish,

RS-68 flies on every Delta-IV launch vehicle. It was doing that before constellation, and will keep doing it until ULA gets their next-gen LOX/Methane rocket working (the one they're teaming with Blue Origin on). At that point, I wouldn't be surprised if they retired both Atlas V and Delta IV to fly everything on just that one LV.

~Jon

[ISL]

Dear Babelfish,

Thanks for the writeup. I recall some scifi stories about first building space elevators on Mars to retrieve mining and get people to and from the surface; however, they presumed a far more active space launch program.

Your point reminded me that the space shuttle and F-35 share a similar maladaption - trying to do too many things with non-mature technology and succeeding at almost nothing - while the Saturn V in terms of cost and payload size kicked b-tt. I am very proud of the ISS - but its so small compared to what I would have predicted in the 60s for half a century in the future, and a Saturn V could have launched it in two segments. The simplest way to reduce costs is by magnitude of scale (which requires creating a demand) - look at super-tankers, but as has been noted at SST often, govt agencies are cost centers.

Its not clear that the private enterprise will provide the needed kick start as opposed to adopting their client's mentality for me to book a reasonable priced ticket to the space wheel in my lifetime.

[LeaNder]

About the unicorns. ;)

I stumbled across materials science or engineering more than a decade ago. A very special material would have been the ideal solution in a sponsorship concept.

I haven't thought about it meanwhile, but that link is interesting:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/164594-the-wonderful-world-of-wonder-materials

Will we one day revisit the wave-particle-duality of light? Reminds me of Einstein's struggle with uncertainty

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohr%E2%80%93Einstein_debates#Post-revolution:_Fourth_stage

[BabelFish]

Thanks, Jon. I stepped in that one! Been out of the business for too long.

[BabelFish]

Completely agree, MK. Clarke has it being lowered from orbit. Talk about playing pitch and catch!

[BabelFish]

Joao, I hope they do but they will need cooperation from everyone.

One of the unspoken issues here is 'what if the cable breaks'? It is hard to imagine that much kinetic force coming back down to earth but the destruction would be beyond imagining if it came back down rather than going out into deeper space. Everyone is going to have to buy into that risk.

[BabelFish]

I believe that is true and it is also true that, if anything, the deep ocean is as harsh an environment as humans will confront in the foreseeable future.

You can step out into space with a well constructed space suit. No human is ever going to go for a stroll through the Marianas trench. The quid pro quo is that there are untold riches on the seabed, if we can master technologies to access them for an economic cost.

[pbj]

The contraption in the diagram could probably be made simpler and safer by making it just a tiny bit shorter, so it doesn't have to go into the atmosphere.

Rocket to LEO, elevator thingy to GEO / anywhere. And heck, once its above the atmosphere, why not just build a smaller one and spin it up.

Places with no atmosphere let it get that much closer to the ground.

[João Carlos]

They will have cooperation from Russia, Brazil, South Africa and India, you know, the BRICS. They don`t need USA and Europe help if Russia help them. Take note, the only thing maintaining the IS operating is the russian good will, and that thing is ending fast...

[BabelFish]

PBJ, think of a rock on a string. You hold it over your head and spin it. The centripetal force keeps the string taught and the rock out at the end. This works because the string (cable) is anchored to your hand. If you let go, the rock flies off away from you. The space elevator needs to be anchored to the earth and so must come into the atmoshpere.

As Rocketentrepeneur has pointed out, there are actually other options. One is the 'Skyhook'. There are various configurations, including one where a large object has two counterbalancing cables spinning around it. One comes down into the atmosphere and scoops up stuff, bringing it up to orbit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyhook_(structure)