Space launch system

[gwiz]

Sept 17, 2011 0:54:47 GMT -4 Data Cable said:

Sept 15, 2011 15:30:57 GMT -4 randombloke said:

Personally I'd like to see the Skylon fly.

Is it irrationally paranoid to be nervous about any project which sounds like a portmanteau of "Skynet" and "Cylon?"

Skylon predates both Skynet and Cylon.

[drewid]

I still think Skylon sounds like something Gerry Anderson dreamed up.

It really ought to look like this:

[randombloke]

Sept 17, 2011 15:43:26 GMT -4 drewid said:

I still think Skylon sounds like something Gerry Anderson dreamed up.

It really ought to look like this:

Nono, that's the A2, or maybe her successor (we have 'till 2060 after all).


As for the whole skynet/cylon thing, Skynet has been flying for years and has hardly taken over any worlds at all. Not for want of trying, mind.

[JayUtah]

Sept 16, 2011 19:53:21 GMT -4 supermeerkat said:

SpaceX are viewed by many as the saviour of the US space industry and can do no wrong, so I'd be very interested if you'd expand upon this please?

Sure. I should probably visit this section more often.

First, I'll back away from the unfair hyperbole. SpaceX is indeed a credible contender. I think what I meant to write is that they're not a credible leader, which is what they aspire to be. And that's the source of my mixed feelings. Their performance simply doesn't match the hype, and a lot of the "do no wrong" attitude is based on hype, not on actual performance.

First a disclosure: I was a contractor for Orbital Sciences, which is a SpaceX competitor. I am not actively contracted to either, but am pursuing future contracts with both. I hope SpaceX succeeds in the launch buiness, and I'm willing to help them if they want me to.

The reason I mention that former contract is that there is a lot of frankly odd "fanboy" rhetoric flying around on both sides of SpaceX. To be honest, it's a little weird to me. But as soon as I say something either for or against SpaceX, someone from either the "Old Space" camp or the "New Space" camp accuses me of bias. So there's everything I can think of that might affect my judgment.

And the fanboy mentality, fueled (in my opinion) largely by Elon Musk's bravado, seems to be the basis of the notion that SpaceX can do no wrong. Among experienced rocketeers the attitude is a lot more sober.

First, SpaceX's designs, while being putatively clean-sheet designs, are not innovative. They are the same kinds of rockets everyone else is building. The question is therefore why they think they can sustainably and reliably produce and fly them so much cheaper than any other company in the world. If they had come up with some sort of innovation in design or manufacture, then their claims of better and cheaper launch services would seem more credible.

Second, they can't just pretend the Falcon 1 never happened. Falcon 9 looks promising, but Falcon 1 was a pretty dismal debut. It's not necessarily the fact that things went wrong. It's the kind of things that went wrong. They're elementary mistakes, the kind that would ordinarily have been found in ground testing.

This is what makes us look at the Falcon 9 test flights with a little less enthusiasm. It doesn't put them out of business by any means. But it's hard to accept them as the next industry leader when they are stumbling through the same elementary start-up difficulties that their competitors went through decades ago, and relying on technology transfer from them through NASA.

The Delta IV, by comparison, has had a string of a dozen or so successful launches. It's simply going to be a while before SpaceX will be able to prove it can meet the long-term sustainability of the features it proposes on the pricing it has laid out. The SpaceX business model still has a lot of "magic" associated with it.

To me it looks like they're skimping on testing. Since the COTS milestones are somewhat front-loaded, my guess is that they're gambling on just enough initial successes to land the COTS continuation money, when they can finally flesh out their development program. Where do I fit in? I happen to know how to use computational simulation to achieve more test coverage with less dollars.

[Apollo Gnomon]

Your informed comments are very interesting, Jay. Thanks.

I would really like to see SpaceX succeed. The non-innovative designs are actually part of what I like -- the "proven technology" approach of the Soyuz designs suggests that you don't need to reinvent the wheel every business cycle. Rockets are NOT software.

Their Dragon vehicle looks like the love-child of a C/SM and a Soyuz, sent to a series of expensive but conservative private schools. Reading the specs it looks like it could be configured to do the job of either the C/SM or the Soyuz.

Since the COTS milestones are somewhat front-loaded, my guess is that they're gambling on just enough initial successes to land the COTS continuation money, when they can finally flesh out their development program.

As a contract carpenter I've worked for companies/individuals who were following what I call the "get poor slowly" plan, or the "screw yourself Ponzi scheme" financing plan of hoping the next job will pay for the unplanned costs of the previous job. I've learned that if a project will cost, say, $100, don't go into it with $98 bucks and $2 worth of hope. You have to have $125, and someone who HATES your ideas, plans and theories needs to look 'em over. Love (the "fanboy" thing you mention above) can blind investors/partners/clients/crew to the inherent flaws.

[JayUtah]

There's one thing SpaceX has already done to improve the industry. Even if SpaceX settles into a steady state that's only marginally more attractive than the larger companies, it will drive launch costs down. Boeing, Lockheed Martin etc. will take a smaller profit margin to keep their services competitive. The market will restructure to accommodate new players, regardless of their skill level.

Don't get me wrong about the innovation. Sticking with proven concepts is good in aerospace. The problem is that it makes the industry wonder where SpaceX hopes to perform so much better and cheaper than people who are already doing that.

If a new carpenter shows up in town and promises to build houses three times as fast at half the cost of his competitors, you have to wonder how he's going to do it and remain up to code. The mystery thickens when you watch him work and realize he's just doing the same standard platform framing as every other residential carpenter. If you figure you're already working pretty effectively and efficiently, you're not really poised to believe that he's going to take over the industry by storm. And if three of the first five houses he builds fall down, it takes a lot of optimism to keep saying, "Well, let's just wait and see."

If SpaceX had come to the party with some radical new design, or radical new ways of building and flying rockets, there would be a lot more eagerness to believe they could radically improve over what several companies in several countries have been doing successfully for decades.

SpaceX fans make a big deal about the supposed private funding of the company. But in fact the Falcon 1 received significant promised funding from the Air Force and the Falcon 9 received significant funding from NASA -- to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. To be sure, SpaceX is also substantially funded by private investment, and substantially funded by Elon Musk himself. But the fact remains that SpaceX is aggressively pursuing government contracts as the major component of its revenue, and is being courted by government agencies as a launch-services supplier. Something like half of SpaceX's proposed business is government contracts.

Does this make them evil? No, of course not. I'd expect anyone who wanted to be taken seriously in the space launch business to aggressively seek government funding, government contracts, and technology transfers from government sources such as NASA's Fastrac engine program. In fact, as a private investor, the first thing I would ask the company is what they're doing to leverage available public resources and to court the major customers of launch services.

But it means you can't thumb your nose at existing companies who have competed for, won, held, and fulfilled government contracts for decades. It means you can't credibly claim to be so radically different (either in technology or business) that you're guaranteed to succeed. You can't credibly play the political game and accuse your competitors of getting fat and bloated off the taxpayer dollar while seeking the same dollars yourself (and arguably betting the future of your company on your ability to secure them).

It also raises eyebrows when they want to reduce the number of launches they have to demonstrate in order to receive the big NASA check. It's doubtful Boeing or Lockheed would have been allowed to march out to the launch pad with a hacksaw to cut off the broken part of their rocket before a qualification launch too. These are things that make the launch community think SpaceX is playing the Ponzi game, especially since Elon Musk is out of money.

SpaceX proposes to eliminate what Musk feels is ponderous bureaucracy that increases costs for his competitors. Most of the bureaucracy in the space-launch business is generated by customer requirements. Doing business with NASA is a minefield of regulation and paperwork. The number of federal agencies that regulate publicly-funded space flight is staggering. Elon Musk aspires to provide manned launch vehicles and spacecraft for NASA missions. If he thinks he can ignore NASA bureaucracy forever, he's sadly mistaken. It's the aerospace equivalent of a carpenter ignoring the building code. And given the nature of SpaceX's launch failures, it makes me wonder if rigorous testing is one of the things Elon Musk proposes to eliminate as "bureaucracy."

Musk is a billionaire going broke doing what he loves. I can't argue with that. And we'll get some rockets out of it -- probably good ones, eventually. But for now Musk only has three shaky demo launches under his belt and three conspicuous failures that can only be attributed to inexperience. When he can boast a dozen or so on-time, defect-free commercial launches, then he can say he's equivalent to a Lockheed or a Boeing or an Arianespace. And only then will the industry take him seriously about surpassing the state of the art.

[echnaton]

There are two typical route into a mature industry. Come in with a narrow margin and very low cost and work your way up or come in with a quality innovation that justifies a premium margin then broaden your market. It sounds like he is claiming the latter strategy while following the first.

Aerospace is a industry with high barriers of entry and suppliers & customers that feel quite comfortable with the current arrangement. If rocket science is not quite "rocket science" any more the costs should be falling. I hope SpaceX can shake things up a bit and maybe force some rethinking of the value and cost structure within the industry. More power to them if they can succeed as a low cost supplier of proven technology.

[Glom]

Always good to hear the nuanced opinion of something who knows the coal face.

How can one get a piece of this action?

[aarontg]

One further comment about the sls system:Doesn't it remind you an awful lot of Apollo???I saw an artist's conception of it today.It looks almost identical to the Saturn V.Like Apollo meets shuttle because of the booster rockets.

[echnaton]

Jan 28, 2012 21:05:49 GMT -4 aarontg said:

One further comment about the sls system:Doesn't it remind you an awful lot of Apollo???I saw an artist's conception of it today.It looks almost identical to the Saturn V.Like Apollo meets shuttle because of the booster rockets.

Well the capsule has to slice through the up and resist the air on the way down. There are a limited number of ways to do that efficiently. Think of it as akin to why most sedans made today looks like every other one. Once you get the aerodynamics right, its just tweaking lines and curves.

[aarontg]

Interesting way of explaining yourself

[gtvc]

Lets hope the SLS its not cancelled but is sad that new army weapons are developed every year, looks like war its better business than space exploration and I see in Tv too that we have more shows about cops every year and less science fiction and adventure shows, robotic exploration maybe cheap but its boring.

[aarontg]

Actually it looks alot like the Apollo/Saturn system even in the paint scheme.