Low-Cost Space Shuttle Replacement Proposed

FleaPlus writes "The Washington Times and Space.com has an article on a plan for a low-cost shuttle replacement by t/Space, an organization whose team includes AirLaunch LLC and Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites. Instead of a one-size-fits-all craft, t/Space's plan is to build an air-launched four-person capsule termed the Crew Transfer Vehicle (CXV), specialized for carrying people to and from low-Earth orbit. Once in orbit the CXV would dock with a separately-launched Crew Exploration Vehicle (likely built by Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman), which could be optimized for traveling between Earth orbit and the Moon. The CXV would also be able to dock with a space station or serve as a crew lifeboat. The group, which has already received some NASA funding, calculates that it can have the system ready by 2008 for $400 million, with a per-launch cost of $20 million (compared to ~$500 million per shuttle launch). Development would be done under a competitive fixed-price (instead of cost-plus) contract."

Shuttle Mod Editor

[Anonymous Coward]

I propose that Mr. Carmack Open Sources the plans to his giant bottle rocket and lets the end user create a deep space mod for it.

Re:Shuttle Mod Editor

[wootest]

Me, I just want an iPod shuttle.

Re:Shuttle Mod Editor

[LiquidCoooled]

Carmack's space ship designs suffer from a slight problem.

He keeps building the Nav controls and the window too far apart, you can either fly the ship, or see where your going, but not at the same time ;)

Re:Shuttle Mod Editor

[Rei]

Carmack's space ship designs suffer from much bigger problems - namely, that he can't even seem to decide on what propellants to use after all this time ;) In general, he keeps repeating the mistakes of the past (vaned thrust deflection, many of his propellant choices,etc).

He seems to be taking a more mature design approach of late, however - regeneratively cooled, LOX as an oxidizer, gimballing instead of vanes, etc. It still won't be easy, and his design still isn't orbital-scalable, but he should be a

Re:Shuttle Mod Editor

[Rei]

But using peroxide itself has been done time and time again. You don't see many peroxide rockets out there these days, do you? There's a reason for that, and it's not just because peroxide monoprops and even biprops have god-awful ISP. :)

As to deep throttlable engines, most of Carmack's engines seem to have had serious problems with chugging when run at any measurable amount of thrust. I.e., he still hasn't had throttlable range. When he can make an engine that has even a mere 300 ISP that can reach its max power, have a significant amount of power for its mass, and *then* be throttled down, then he'll have something at least somewhat relevant.

Getting There, and Costs

[Roland Piguepaille]

STS (the Space [Shuttle] Transportation System) is a flawed system design, with little compromise or tolerance for failures, systemic or political. On that issue alone, STS must be replaced.

A much smaller Shuttle-like orbiter, which can be mated atop a Delta, Titan III or other medium-lift vehicle, is needed. It may look like the Crew Return Vehicle concept that's being rehashed into a shuttle replacement. I think it would have more merit to the old military DynaSoar [astronautix.com] project. Such a vehicle, unlike the Shuttle Orbiters we have, is not a truck...it would be a human taxi, with a small bay for some replacement consumables. For larger payloads and refurbs, use the old Orbiters--unmanned, remote controlled. If we can run robots from millions of miles away, we can surely do the same from low Earth orbit. In fact, the Russians showed it can be done with their own mortibund Shuttle--it's first and only flight was completely unmanned, from launch to landing. [astronautix.com] The old Orbiters would also double as rescue vehicles, along with having additional new Shuttle Taxis ready to go on other pads when a flight is in progress. We can't use single-use rockets for ISS refurbs since the pressurized cargo modules (like the special ones used by Orbiters during an ISS crew and experiment transition) has equipment that must come back. Only our Orbiters have the ability to return large equipment modules safely to Earth.

We should be able to adapt single-use rockets to send new ISS components for assembly. The ISS will need more arms, and a new Orbiter replacement might need something like the current Canadian remote arm.

The main thing I would recommend is (1) just make a reusable human taxi that (1) has an abort mode like the old Apollo spacecraft, where the new Orbiter can rocket away from the booster, as well as (2) a durable crew compartment that, in the case of normal reentry failure, could be separated from the larger body and land by parachute.

Baby steps, please. A Shuttle replacement need not be all things as our current ones tried to be. For LEO, a simple crew vehicle will work. Later, the ISS or a moonbase should be used to create new, true spacecraft that ferry and from the Moon, and can use lunar material to build a Mars vehicle.

When someone says that the cost to go to space is too expensive, I have to emphasize where the money goes to build the spacecraft. It's not like we take millions of dollar bills, smelt them into vehicles or stuff bills in the fuel tanks and set them afire. That money goes to WORKERS who build the space vehicles and COMPANIES that make jobs. That's economically a Good Thing.

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[shmlco]

Baby steps, please. A Shuttle replacement need not be all things as our current ones tried to be...

Here, here! Build the pieces needed to do each part of the job right, and stop trying for a one-size-fits-none solution.

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[promantek]

It only costs $12.74 to launch a ship into space. [launchpad2000.com]

I'm so sick of people who think that space travel isn't affordable to the average person.

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[nietsch]

This is a repost from a previous comment (bonus points for the link to it), if you go karma whoring, please be so kind to provide the correct link

The X-20A Dyna-Soar (Dynamic Soarer) was a single-pilot manned reusable spaceplane, really the earliest American manned space project to result in development contracts. It evolved from the German Saenger-Bredt Silverbird intercontinental skip-glide rocket bomber[...]

see more here [astronautix.com]

here is more on the dynasoar:

The X-20A Dyna-Soar (Dynamic Soarer) was a single-pilot manned reusable spaceplane, really the earliest American manned space project to result in development contracts. It evolved from the German Saenger-Bredt Silverbird intercontinental skip-glide rocket bomber
see here [deepcold.com]

and something about that Buran shuttle your rip mentions is here:

The Russian Shuttle Buran ("Snowstorm" in Russian) was authorized in 1976 in response to the United States Space Shuttle program. Building of the shuttles began in 1980, with the first full-scale Aero-Buran rolling out in 1984. It was launched by Energia LV. read more here [lycos.co.uk].

As for the cost argument: yes it is true that if you contract all out in your own country, the nett cost for the state is lower than the expended amount. But those are still unproductive workers. If you have your doubts about a third world country doing space research, why use a different standard for first world countries. All those people (working on hyperexpensive spaceprojects) could also develop more and cleaner technologies that might avert the greenhouse runaway that the US seems to want so bad. (In that perspective it is completely logical that the US develops a new space shuttle at twice the cost).

nuff said...

WRONG!!!

[alizard]

Unless you know of an environmentally cleaner way to get enough power to put "clean coal" out of business than a solar power satellite network [nasa.gov].

Re:WRONG!!!

[shimmin]

Yes. Putting things in orbit is expensive. But you can get most of the advantages of LEO by merely going to the stratosphere.

A large solar collector stationed at 30 km up would be above the weather, and while it would still have day and night, and least day would be a few percent longer, and by allowing the collector to follow the sun, you could have noon-like light for most of the day.

You would want the lift gas to be hydrogen rather than helium. Reason 1 is that it's cheaper, but reason 2 is that the

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[PlacidPundit]

When someone says that the cost to go to space is too expensive, I have to emphasize where the money goes to build the spacecraft. It's not like we take millions of dollar bills, smelt them into vehicles or stuff bills in the fuel tanks and set them afire.

Most likely, people who say this are arguing that the benefit is not worth the price.

That money goes to WORKERS who build the space vehicles and COMPANIES that make jobs. That's economically a Good Thing.

Er, yes. But the real argument is not ab

Re:Getting There, and Costs

[mshiltonj]

When someone says that the cost to go to space is too expensive, I have to emphasize where the money goes to build the spacecraft. It's not like we take millions of dollar bills, smelt them into vehicles or stuff bills in the fuel tanks and set them afire. That money goes to WORKERS who build the space vehicles and COMPANIES that make jobs. That's economically a Good Thing.

This is the Broken Window Fallacy [wikipedia.org]. Sloppy thinking.

No, it isn't.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Broken Window Fallacy is used to justify some destructive, entropic event. That's what makes it a fallacy. Because in the end, even though fixing the window keeps people employed, the owner of the window is only as well off as he was before the window was broken, whereas he could've spent the same amount of money and been better off had the window not been broken in the first place.

But investing in spacecraft isn't like investing in a broken window. (Or at least, it isn't any more *necessarily* that wa

home vs travel

[mrselfdestrukt]

Why not just build an international space station or something... ?

Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

"The group calculates that it can have the system ready by 2008 for $400 million".

Alright guys, this means we will have it around 2015 for about $750 million.

Re:Hmm

[pe1rxq]

They are offering a fixed-price deal to NASA....

Re:Hmm

[Rei]

The problem is, this bid isn't cheap. 20 million dollars per launch, 4-6 people, no cargo (their proposal is to have all cargo launched on unmanned systems) seems to imply a cargo capacity of around 1200 kg at 16,700$/kg. These are Space Shuttle prices. And for such a small craft, 400 million dollars development cost is quite extreme.

They're using an outmodded reentry design (the bell-shaped reentry design wasn't chosen by the US, Russia, and China for no particular reason - they did extensive testing, and it proved to be the most efficient, most reliable shape), and they plan to make reusable capsules out of it when capsules have seldom proven realistic to refurbish for a second flight in the past. Furthermore, they plan to do this on their very first space attempt. Quite doubtful, to be honest.

High recurrant prices, companies with no background in orbital launch and only a background in unscalable suborbital (i.e., "high risk", and an implication of higher costs than predicted), questionable reusability (which generally implies higher costs than predicted), and high capital costs. I would be quite surprised if NASA ends up accepting this.

And before people start up the Rutan hero-worship ("he can do anything!"), Rutan did almost nothing compared to real spaceflight. He built an aircraft around an unscalable purchased rocket engine and a nitrous tank. He made it out of the same sort of materials that he builds all of his aircraft out of (which aren't even close to what you need for reentry, the biggest spaceflight difficulty, and where most of the actual engineering problems lie), and his purchased low-ISP high-tank mass engine isn't going anywhere close to orbit, no matter how it gets tweaked.

The only really major accomplishment that he did was to create the world's first fully-private supersonic aircraft, without supersonic windtunnel testing - an impressive feat, mind you, and one that is quite a testament to the power of modern CFD software. Also, stably dropping a powered craft from another isn't a typical engineering problem for a private builder to address, and while they had stability problems on engine start, they did pull it off successfully.

Re:Hmm

[Jarnis]

Actually, considering what Scaled Composites has done so far, and the budget they've used, I have some belief that this might be doable. Of course it would not include funds for running a huge NASA paperpusher army, so it probably won't include costs of extensive certifications and testings to get the failure rate down to minimal. Space is risky business, and spending megabucks for additional 1-2% success rate is just a bad idea. Every astronaut can themselves consider the risks and decide if they are happy with the launch vehicle.

Nobody was out there demanding stacks of paper and testing from the Wright brothers when they experimented. In retrospect their contraption was highly unstable and unsafe. Same should apply for launch system developments. Sure, stuff will blow up, and people will die. People who understood the risks and knew exactly what they were doing. If they run out of people who are willing to hop onboard, they know they must spend time and money on the safety. Today, I doubt they'll have many issues as long as the (test)pilots are involved in the process and know how the tincan they are hopping into ticks.

No need to bog it all down with 100M$s of paperwork and extra safety tests and checks that really won't improve safety. The law of diminishing returns applies - sure, you want to test and make sure the damn thing works, but beyond certain point extra testing and checking is not going to change the safety much - only the pricetag will go up, see NASA :)

Re:Hmm

[acidrain]

Sure, stuff will blow up, and people will die.

Cute. It isn't that we can't find people who will take the risks, it's our safety obsessive culture that cannot tolerate your suggestion. Sure the money would be far better spent on foreign aid, in terms of lives per dollar, but public sentiment isn't rational. And NASA depends on public sentiment for it's cash, not the delivery of a product.

Re:Hmm

[Jarnis]

Which is why we need private enterprises taking the initiative.

Business, hiring qualified test pilots to do stuff they are supposed to be doing. Everyone doing it can compare their paycheck to their job description and choose if the want to ride the experimental thingy.

Yes, I can imagine congressional hearings and 'oversight' destroying the whole thing after a crew exits stage left in a fireball. That means US has a problem, and such business should relocate elsewhere...

Odd that nobody seems to raise holy hell over dead military test pilots who have over the years died while testing military hardware. Nobody ever hears of them. People also seem to shrug off accidents during pilot training and military exercises. How is this any different from space exploration? It isn't. Space = risky business, where people can die. Live with it.

I know I'd love to go up there like just about everyone else. I also know that today's hardware for doing so is somewhat unreliable and 'prototype' in many ways, so I'd currently choose not to take the ride. I could take a zero-g ride on a vomit comet (airplanes are petty mature), but betatesting a rocket is not my idea of a fun occupation. At the same time I'm quite sure you'd find immensely qualified takers for the job...

Re:Hmm

[dajak]

Sure, stuff will blow up, and people will die. People who understood the risks and knew exactly what they were doing. If they run out of people who are willing to hop onboard, they know they must spend time and money on the safety.

Surely there is no way the present 'pro life' US government is going to fund a thinly veiled assisted suicide scheme, unless it can be argued that it is going to bring 'freedom and democracy' to space.

The law of diminishing returns applies - sure, you want to test and make sur

Re:Hmm

[Rei]

There are a lot of fallacies in this post. Lets go down the list:

Actually, considering what Scaled Composites has done so far

Scaled has done almost nothing [64.233.167.104] in terms of sending a craft to orbit.

Of course it would not include funds for running a huge NASA paperpusher army

NASA's "paperpushing" regulations are largely due to the private companies trying to take advantage of them. Trust me, I used to work for one company that did - Rockwell-Collins. They had a Space Shuttle contract, and started charging all of their other projects that were low on budget to the shuttle contract, then simply claimed that the project was running overbudget. Eventually they were caught and smacked down with fines and regulatory penalties, but far down the line.

The regulations are designed to make sure that the net result is A) what they asked for, B) safety corners haven't been cut, and C) . Can they be improved? You bet. Have they been improved already? You bet (as much as O'Keefe has done wrong, most will agree that he made NASA regulations a lot easier to deal with).

Every astronaut can themselves consider the risks and decide if they are happy with the launch vehicle.

I'll agree with that one.

Nobody was out there demanding stacks of paper and testing from the Wright brothers when they experimented.

Experimented on themselves. When they wanted to sell their airplane to the military, the military put it through the works.

In retrospect their contraption was highly unstable and unsafe.

Unstable? Yes. Unsafe? Hardly. Early airplanes flew so low and so slow that even when you crashed, it was rarely a fatal event. The first fatality wasn't until 1908, despite several hundred (yes, hundred) teams around the world building their own airplanes in that time, many with dubious methods. If I recall the number correctly, the first cross-country flight attempt in order to win a cup involved about three dozen crashes *by the same contender*, who each time patched his airplane up and took off again. Even with all of the advances in speed (and increases in flying altitude), and with far more rugged terrain, of the dozen crashes in the first attempt to fly around the world in 1924, none were fatal. The first fatal commercial flight wasn't until two planes in (late 1920s, early 1930s? Don't recall the exact date) collided over the English Channel. I could keep going, but I think you get the picture. Early amateur airplanes were nothing like amateur rockets - their failure modes were far, far more gentle.

No need to bog it all down with 100M$s of paperwork and extra safety tests and checks that really won't improve safety.

You better believe that all of those "extra safety tests" increase safety. Take a look at the history of any rocket development program's tests. Often, you won't find burnthrough fuel/oxidizer leak, or other potentially fatal complication until you've mounted everything on the launch pad to each other and are doing your 20th or so static firing of the engines.

The law of diminishing returns applies - sure, you want to test and make sure the damn thing works, but beyond certain point extra testing and checking is not going to change the safety much

Quite true. But look at all of the public outcry (and even outcry on Slashdot) when a manned spacecraft fails. They have reasons other than pure logic to take into account: public reaction. If t-space wants to step into the public limelight as such, they better be prepared to take that on as well.

Re:Hmm

[Vo0k]

Actually, if the deal is "fixed price" and there's no nasty backdoors, either they do it for below $400M and get the rest as a profit, or they go above $400M and pay the difference from their pockets. Most probably they would go for it, because before they know they are over budget, they will have spent enought, that it will cost them less to finish the work and get $400M back, losing total minus what they get (say, $500M-$400M=$100M) than all they have invested so far (say, $250M). Not to mention all the "

Re:Hmm

[Shadowlore]

Alright guys, this means we will have it around 2015 for about $750 million.

That is still cheap compared to STS.

Re:Hmm

[BerntB]

this means we will have it around 2015 for about $750 million.

So give it to the usual susp.. space contractors. You will get nice papers for that kind of money. :-(

And not for a fixed price contract.

(-: Many places I could have written the same. Lots of people at Boeing etc posting here? :-)

Re:Hmm

[Bohnanza]

Joke or not, you're probably right. I seem to remember that the Space Shuttle was originally proposed as a "low-cost" system.

Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't all the low-cost shuttle replacements so far, once they started trying to build them, turned into high-cost engineering boondoggles that were never finished?

Come to think of it, wasn't the Space Shuttle itself a low-cost replacement for what came before that, once they started to build them, turned into high-cost engineering boondoggles that were never totally finished?

I mean... just checking.

Re:Hmmm

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

Very true and there isn't much Burt Rutan can do about this. The problem is one congressman will hold back support until there is money added to the project to buy "outer space safe" band-aids with special adhesive (for some reason) which of course only someone in his distract can make for about $10,000 per band-aid. Then another will hold back support until money is added to have all instruction manually "speically" printed by someone is his district which of course will cost $1,000 per page.

This will go on-and-on until everyone has a little piece. By time time its done it'll be a few billion for development and of course all these "special" items will need to be replaced for each launch so it'll be back to hundreds of millions for each launch as well.

Based on Scaled Composites history, I have full confidence they could do the job well. However, I have no doubt "pork politics" will drive up the price drastically. Of course, that assumes the congressmen with Boeing, Northrup Grumman, etc in thier districts would ever allow this to go forward which I wouldn't call a given.

Why not?

[mmc]

Why not just give them US$400M? Northrup and the others will spend that kind of money just thinking about it all - then at least they'll have two options at the end of it!

Re:Why not?

[ceeam]

Uhm, I have this wonderful idea here that needs only $20m(!) to complete. I cannot tell you any more details now (so that others don't steal it, you know), but if you send me this much money now, I promise that in the middle of 2008 we'll rule the world. PS: don't tell anything anyone, just send in the money.

Re:Why not?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Why not just give them US$400M?

$400M buys you a space vehicle. However you'll need another billion or so for all the palm-greasing, bribes, kickbacks, piggyback pet projects, and environmental studies, which are all required for putting that vehicle into space. ;)

Can someone explain to me...

[Vellmont]

Why it costs $500 million dollars just to put a frickin "re-usable" space-bus into orbit? Is it mostly a lot of variable costs that have to be paid every time we put a shuttle up, or are there just mostly fixed costs, then divide by shuttle missions per year?

Re:Can someone explain to me...

[Vo0k]

The shuttle itself, being reusable, weights so much that putting it in orbit costs a fortune. Normally, in case of rockets like Soyuz, maybe 1% of the original mass is put in the orbit, a tiny, light reentry device, maybe some payload. In case of the shuttle we need to lift a huge, ultra-heavy vehicle into orbit, it requires vastly more fuel. The hydrogen fuel tank is not reusable. Reworking the first-degree rockets is expensive. Because of added mass, extra material properties must be taken into consideration. It's cheaper to send 5 missions, 5-ton each, than one 25-ton one, but you can't take the shuttle apart and launch it in pieces. What originally was thought to be cheaper, seems to be a failed idea.

Re:Can someone explain to me...

[Vellmont]

I did a little checking of my own, and if you can believe the Australians at: http://www.kids.net.au/encyclopedia-wiki/sp/Space_ Shuttle [kids.net.au] The costs are all in the re-inspection and certification of the shuttle. This makes a lot more sense to me since the fuel costs certainly can't be all that much. It's a great boondoggle for Florida though.

When originally conceived the shuttle was to operate similar to an airliner. After landing the Orbiter would be checked out and start "mating" to the rest of the system (the ET and SRBs) and be ready for launch in as little as two weeks. Instead this sort of turnaround in fact takes (typically) months. This is due, in turn, to the continued "upgrading" of the inspection process as a result of the Challenger explosion. Even simple tasks now require unbelievable amounts of paperwork.

The result is a massively inflated manpower bill. There are 25,000 workers in shuttle operations (perhaps an older number), so simply multiply any figure that you choose for an average annual salary, divide by six (...launches per year), and there you have it.

Re:Can someone explain to me...

[FleaPlus]

If I understand correctly, it's mostly fixed costs, particularly the costs of paying the salaries of the standing army of ~20,000 employees. They're needed to maintain, n-tuple check, and fill out the paperwork for shuttle tiles, volatile fuels, and so on.

Separation

[roalt]

Instead of a one-size-fits-all craft, t/Space's plan is to build an air-launched four-person capsule termed the Crew Transfer Vehicle (CXV), specialized for carrying people to and from low-Earth orbit. Once in orbit the CXV would dock with a separately-launched Crew Exploration Vehicle

ALL STATIONS: Prepare for saucer separation sequence!

According to star trek producers, this sequence was so expensive in special-effects, that it was hardly performed during the seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next generation... Funny that in real-life it might be cheaper...

Re:Separation

[CrackedButter]

It was time consuming which made it useless during a space battle, it killed the pacing of the scene. It wasn't because it was expensive.

Cost

[ArbiterOne]

400 million? It costs 2 billion (taxpayer) dollars to build ONE stealth bomber. One.
This is cheap.
If we can get back into space for 400 million, call it a bargain and GO!

Re:Cost

[Vo0k]

If we can get back into space for 400 million, call it a bargain, secretly poison 90% of the military decision makers and GO!
Otherwise, they will say "Going into space? What a waste of money! That's almost 1/5 of a stealth bomber! No way!"

Re:Cost

[WIAKywbfatw]

But ask yourself this: who needs a stealth bomber?

Certainly not the US, with its huge arsenal of cruise missiles at its disposal.

Re:Cost

[EvilTwinSkippy]

There are a good deal of missions that the Stealth Bomber can do that a cruise missile can't. Mainly bombing a moving column of tanks. For all it's expense, it does allow a single two person bomber to do the job of an entire air wing when you factor in escorts, refuelers, escorts for the refuelers, and so forth.

Re:Cost

[sexylicious]

If you read up on Iraq's capabilities, you'll find that they had a LOT of capability for air defense. They just didn't use it properly, and those that were used were easily wiped out because their buddies didn't support them. On top of that, the US has done a very good job of keeping up on how to take down air defense networks.

A lot of what Iraq could have done, their army just didn't do. I think 10 years of blowing the hell out of anything that even thought of irradiating an allied aircraft would hav

Re:Cost

[FleaPlus]

do you have a refrence, or did you pull that out of your mother's peed-in-vagina?

Assuming you're referring to the stealth bomber:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-2_Spirit [wikipedia.org]

The B-2 is the most expensive plane built to date, costing approximately $2.2 billion USD per plane. [1] (http://www.fas.org/man/gao/gao94217.htm [fas.org]) Some writers have suggested that the huge program cost may actually include costs for other black projects that remain classified. The high per-unit cost may also be partially explained by the small number of planes produced coupled with a large research overhead in the B-2 program (see below).

Re:Cost

[Infinite Entropy]

The B-2 bomber is a relic of the Cold War. We may use them to drop conventional bombs but that is just for show really. They were meant all along to penetrate the Soviet airspace to drob the bomb on moscow and other things. This is why cost was no object. The original order was for 132! Right now we have 21. It really is an incredible airplane. If whe had that kind of innovation the space program it would be completly different.

Re:Cost

[flyingsquid]

Guess they don't have to, but it makes me wonder why the space program is so underfunded compared to the military.

This situation may not get better soon. 80 billion in spending was just approved for Iraq. We're currently spending about 1 billion a week, and there's no telling how much longer we're going to be there: historically, insurgencies have taken 5-10 years to defeat. At some point the Iraqi government will presumably begin to take up more of the burden, but it's still going to require a substantial

Space Exploration

[zoloback]

Space exploration suffers from the lack of investment coming from major industries worldwide.
The times when a whole country like the US started a program to put a man on the moon are long since past, now, it's up to the corporations to take over, but they have nothing to gain from this except for the publicity and the somewhat useless benefits of zero-gravity research (don't get me wrong, i think z-g research is important, but the benefits are seldom).
What would happen if there was a legislation that allowed a company to claim a part of another planet, provided that (1) they can get there first and (2), they actively use it for a purpose (like mining, among many others). Such legislation would surely have to have many different conditions and establish a common ground for all corporations in the world, and i cannot see the entire universe of implications, but i can't stop thinking that this would push space exploration projects and would put us on other planets.
Now, whether we should be destroying other planets aside from "ours", that's an entirely different matter...

Re:Space Exploration

[PlacidPundit]

While I think you're on the right track, I'm not sure that there's a whole lot of profitability out there right now. We have so many cheap mineral resources here on Earth that an expensive extra-terrestrial mining operation makes no economic sense. Tourism is about the best we can do for the moment, I think.

Re:Space Exploration

[EvilTwinSkippy]

You have to process 250 tons of rock to produce 1 carat of diamond. There are asteroids out there that are made of diamond. Huge crystals at that.

You also have to consider the possibility that we will find some radical new material out there that will completely revolutionize technology, or at the very least make something that is prohibitively expensive today cheap tomarrow.

No diamond, but plenty of precious metals...

[Goonie]

I think you might be taking Arthur Clarke's 2061 a wee bit too seriously. Remember, he had to blow up Jupiter to get at the supposed diamonds in the core (I'm not even sure whether that hypothesis has been ruled out or not since the book's publication).

What there *is* known to be in great quantity is platinum group metals, mixed in with a bunch of other metals which are commercially useful but probably not viable to ship back to Earth on their own. Platinum, however, is very expensive stuff because it's

Re:Space Exploration

[Vo0k]

Actually with getting transport costs down enough, and some extra research, the orbit could be a great place for some ultra-precise manufacturing. Want a perfect sphere from your material? Just release it in freefal and let the viscosity forces hold it in that shape. Want cleanroom? Just open the airlock. Want superconductivity? Just shield the wall from the side of the Sun and you're in temperatures of supeconductivity. Stepper motors don't have to lift the weight of the robotic arms, you can concentrate o

Re:Space Exploration

[Mr2cents]

I think we should build a polar moon base like a mix between a HAM field day and a linux beer hike. Yeah!

• A landing site with beacons,
• A solar power station (don't forget power cables :)),
• A dish for communicating to earth,
• A LAN with a linux server ;),
• Some rovers for moving stuff around

and you're in business.

This could be a great international camp site, one could just land machine after machine over there. Gas chromatograph, solar furnace, melting pots, ... With all these instruments and robots

Re:Space Exploration

[cybercuzco]

Now, whether we should be destroying other planets aside from "ours", that's an entirely different matter...

If we lived on them, then they would be "ours" too then wouldnt they. Besides that, there isnt really a whole lot to destroy. The surface of most of the celestial bodies in the solar system look like they were strip mined for the last billion years or so. There is no "environment" there to destroy, in fact we would be bringing an environment with us, and creating one where there was noe before, w

Good Old Boys

[StratoChief66]

What about when the backers are brought before Dubya and he asks them how much of the 400 million initial and 20 million per launch goes to helping the good old boys and the backers look at each other and groan? I've never been accused of having much faith in the US administration but I just figure the men in charge of our dear sweet US of A will just say thank you for the fine offer but we've already got a team on the problem. I've never seem the government interest peaked by cost savings unless that savings goes to their friends/screws the general public or both of the above.

The future

[promantek]

Trinity: what do you need?

Neo: estes rockets. lots of estes rockets. and big rubber bands.

Trinity: nobody has ever tried anything like this before.

Neo: that's why it's going to work.

Cheap space travel...

[The Jabberwock]

...was mastered long ago by the Chinese official, Wan Hu [wikipedia.org]. He clearly has prior art.

Re:Cheap space travel...

[Mindwarp]

mastered long ago by the Chinese official, Wan Hu. He clearly has prior art.

According to these guys [discovery.com] it's more likely that he had third degree burns rather than prior art.

Reading TFA (semi OT)

[PingXao]

Let's see....

Space.com = a trustworthy news source
Washington Times = put that in your litter box and your cat won't shit there.

50-50 split. My time is limited as it is. Pass.

Use for space tourism?

[FleaPlus]

This might be a silly question, but if they do get the NASA contract and develop a 4-person capsule with a per-launch cost of $20 million, would they be allowed to also use the same capsule design for commercial uses, like space tourism? We've already seen a number of people eager to shell out $20 million for an orbital flight, so I can imagine that the number eager to spend $5 million for the same flight would be much higher.

Hmm... I wonder if this would be able to dock with a Bigelow inflatable habitat [popsci.com].

Re:Use for space tourism?

[Vo0k]

Number eager to spend $30 million. Count the interest and insurance.

Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[Anonymous Coward]

The russian Clipper (Kliper) lifting body space capsule is already being built. There is no need for the yankee to reinvent the wheel.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/kliper.html [russianspaceweb.com]

By the way, air launch is one of the most dangerous methods. In-flight collision is invariably fatal. Remember the drone that killed the SR-71 motherplane? The idea is silly.

Re:Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[TheKidWho]

Please enlighten me why?

Is the US supposed to rely on Russia for getting into space now?

Re:Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[Vo0k]

Heh, where's the old hacker spirit?
Why develop the same thing twice and compete, when you can cooperate? I don't know the costs of the russian development, but if it's comparable, why should both parties separately pay $400M for a new design from scratch, each, if you can share the costs and pay $300M each to have a common design and two identical shuttles built.
Is the word "cooperation" so dead? Cold war rages on?

Re:Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[SupaMegaBuffalo]

Is the US supposed to rely on Russia for getting into space now?

News flash: It already does for manned space flights.

Re:Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[Vo0k]

If the separation procedure is safe enough (e.g. the shuttle is detached - dropped from the bottom of the plane and falls at least 100m before launching its own engine), it may be one of the safer methods. If the top of the carrier plane is used as a launch pad, that's a different matter. I haven't heard of a bomber plane destroyed by colliding with its own bomb midair.

Re: Aerial launch ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

The russians already built a mini-shuttle, called the MAKS. It was to launch atop the giant six-jet cargoplane AN-225. The project was cancelled. Probably the risks.

http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/maxokb2.jpg [buran.ru]

http://www.buran.ru/htm/molniya6.htm [buran.ru]

Re:Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[0123456]

"Remember the drone that killed the SR-71 motherplane?"

Yes. They were seperating while flying _AT MACH 3_. Air-dropping a rocket at more conventional speeds is trivial in comparison, and has been done many times before.

Re:Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[dabigpaybackski]

Problem is, NASA would never, EVER, use foreign technology in their beloved space program. They'd rather spend billions to develop the wheel inhouse than get it from another country.

Precisely. Our legion of subsidized aerospace contractors would never tolerate NASA's purchase of a fully-functioning design from a foreign manufacturer. Rest assured that NASA's new vehicle will be a gold-plated turkey of the sort the Pentagon favors, not a simple, robust vehicle like Soyuz or Klipper.

Re:Russia's Kliper makes this project meaningless

[TheKidWho]

You're an idiot.

No, really you are.

Accepting Investments/Donations?

[Anonymous Coward]

$400 million seems like an awfully low price to start up a viable (ie. not a slowly dying legacy) space program. Put in perspective, the population of a mid-sized town could easily fund that and provide something to give the whole world (or for the more cynical, at least Americans) some hope in what people can accomplish.

Are they accepting investments/donations?

What I wonder...

[Vo0k]

...is, whether NASA will retain exclusive rights to the vehicle.
$400mln to develop, probably below $100mln to build next, once first one has been built, ground infrastructure of some $50mln required... I guess there would be quite a few companies willing to invest some $200mln to provide orbital tours, maybe later build "orbital hotel" etc. The investment would probably pay back in 20 or so flights, maybe a year...

Meh. Time to end rockets

[91degrees]

Rockets are bulky and inefficient.

We need to switch to trebuchets.

what about blimps?

[alizard]

Check out the blimp-to-orbit project here [jpaerospace.com]. Not to say that I wouldn't rather see $400M of funding put into that project, but we're at the point now where it makes sense to try multiple ways to get into space to find out what's most cost-effective, and JP Aerospace has a $70M USAF contract to build ultra-high altitude blimps at this point.

Re:Meh. Time to end rockets

[StratoChief66]

This is for human launching, buddy. Isn't the earth escape velocity something in the order of 11 km/s? I don't know if this factors in air resistance on the way up but I suppose at that speed you are not in the atmosphere for long. Wouldn't a trebuchet have to give the 'cargo' a velocity in this order to put them in orbit if not to escape earth's gravity?

I say cargo instead of crew because I think they would be more of a paste if accelerated by a trebuchet to this speed in the small time they would be in c

Re:Meh. Time to end rockets

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Maybe not trebuchets. How about rail guns? You can make the barrel a couple of miles long to spread the accelleration out a bit.

Seriously though

[kf6auf]

If you used a giant rail gun or gauss cannon (hey, it can double as an ICBM launcher so that NASA won't need to pay for it) before the rockets fired you could probably save some cash in the long run. And as long as you fired it slowly at first you could withstand the forces. Not to mention, you could use it to almost completely launch satellites into orbit but just giving them a heat shield and a couple of rockets to move into position.

Re:Seriously though

[lgw]

A rocket needs about 25000 fps of delta-V to get into low Earth orbit (you probably need a higher muzzle velocity from your gauss gun, as a roacket never actually goes 25000 fps, but let's ignore that for now). You'd need about 4 minutes of acceleration at 3Gs to reach that speed. That's pretty rough, but Astronaughts are in peak condition, so maybe.

D=(at^2)/2, a=100f/s, t=255s, so d=3125000f

Your gauss gun would be about 600 miles long. Just something to keep in mind.

try 40G acceleration

[alizard]

The size of the launcher becomes a lot more workable that way.

While it's a ride an astronaut wouldn't be happy about taking, most items we'd want to put into orbit can either handle the trip or can be disassembled into chunks that can.

to really make space industrialization go...

[alizard]

we need tens of dollars a pound for shipping freight to orbit, not thousands or even hundreds. What's the price point where we can start putting semiconductor growing facilities in orbit cost-effectively? I think silicon wafers the size of basketballs might do some interesting things to semiconductor pricing.

Rockets aren't good enough.

That leaves rail/coilguns, JP Aerospace (BTW, I've heard there are other blimp-to-orbit projects), and the Space Elevator.

Modular design

[Timberwolf0122]

Lets just hope that the STS can support upgrades easier than the shuttle can, as I recall there was a story not so long ago about NASA having to scrounge off e-bay [geek.com] to find replacement 8086 chips that are no longer made.

Low-Cost

[Cow Jones]

I keep reading Lost-Cow Space Shuttle Replacement
... must wake up ... need coffee ...

Whoa . . .

[Selanit]

For a moment I read that story title as "Lost Cow Space Shuttle Replacement Proposed." And I was like -- wait, when did we build a cow spaceship? Was it built from cows or for cows? How'd we lose it? Is there now a cow family wandering the vast black reaches of the galaxy looking for a way home, with a cow-robot that keeps saying "Danger, Bessy Cowbinson, Danger!" . . . ? o.O

Why does the shuttle not have a fuel line?

[bobbis.u]

A genuine question: why doesn't the shuttle have a fuel line so that fuel can be pumped from the ground for the first 30m or so of liftoff? The pipe could then disconnect as the shuttle moved clear of the tower and transfer to its main fuel tank.

I read somewhere (no ref. to hand) that 1/3 of the fuel is used just to clear the tower. Wouldn't it be much more efficient to pump fuel from the tower until the shuttle is at least a few meters off the ground?

Re:Why does the shuttle not have a fuel line?

[Vo0k]

1) Prevent explosion of the line upon disconnect.
2) 1/3 of the fuel is A LOT. Actually, 1/3 of the solid state fuel in the helper rockets. Not pumpable and even if it was, way too much to be pumped in such a short time.
3) They are disconnected really fast after, so that's not much of the problem anyway.

The suggested solution is much more radical: get the shuttle some 10 miles up by a jet plane and then launch it from there.

Re:Why does the shuttle not have a fuel line?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

The Saturn V burned 30% of it's fuel to get off the ground. Try not to think of it in terms of height, but in terms of speed. In that 30m the craft is accellerating all that mass, and as it burns fuel it gets lighter.

The Space Shuttle uses solid rocket boosters to get started moving.

Your idea for a 30 meter "snorkel" is too dangerous. Most rocket fuel is cryogenic, i.e. WAY cold, and under extreme pressure. You can't use flexible piping with that. Rubber and plastic would shatter. A steel or copper tub

Re:Why does the shuttle not have a fuel line?

[Ancient_Hacker]

I count about 15 seconds on the Apollo 11 blastoff from ignition to tower clear. The first stage burns for about 150 seconds total. That would make the fuel burnoff about 10%, not 30%.

Getting back to basics...

[vrmlguy]

Finally, an idea that makes sense. The shuttle has failed because it serves too many masters. The Soviets had big budget constraints (at least compared to NASA), so they designed their spacecraft sensibly. Allow me to quote from http://www.astronautix.com/articles/wastolen.htm [astronautix.com]:

The Russian Soyuz spacecraft has been the longest-lived, most adaptable, and most successful manned spacecraft design. In production for over thirty years, more than 220 have been built and flown on a wide range of missions. The design will remain in use with the international space station well into the next century.

So, how should a man-rated system be designed? Let's see:

Put all systems and space not necessary for re-entry and recovery outside of the re-entry vehicle, into a separate jettisonable 'mission module', joined to the re-entry vehicle by a hatch. Every gram saved in this way saves two or more grams in overall spacecraft mass - for it does not need to be protected by heat shields, supported by parachutes, or braked on landing.

Obviously, using seperate man-rated and non-man-rated launchers for the service and mission modules can save even more money. But what should the spacecraft look like:

Use a re-entry vehicle of the highest possible volumetric efficiency (internal volume divided by hull area). Theoretically this would be a sphere. But re-entry from lunar distances required that the capsule be able to bank a little, to generate lift and 'fly' a bit. This was needed to reduce the G forces on the crew to tolerable levels. Such a manoeuvre is impossible with a spherical capsule. After considerable study, the optimum shape was found to be the Soyuz 'headlight' shape - a hemispherical forward area joined by a barely angled cone (7 degrees) to a classic spherical section heat shield.

OK, so the Soyuz was designed for use with lunar missions. But is the overall design usable for other missions?

By changing the fuel load in the service module, and the type of equipment in the mission module, a wide variety of missions could be performed. The superiority of this approach is clear to see: the Soyuz remains in use 30 years later, while the Apollo was quickly abandoned.

Flying the MoonBus

[rben]

I think the sensible way to travel between the Earth and the Moon is to set up a space station, we'll call it the MoonBus, that flies a figure-eight orbit between the Earth and Moon. (It could use ion-engines and solar panels to keep it on the unstable orbit.)

By building a stable platform in the Earth-Moon orbit, we could provide safe and comfortable transportation. Once the station is in place, it would require only a minimal amount of fuel to get people to the station and from the station to the Moon. Over time, we could continue to add to the station itself, building our capabilities.

I got this idea from a book that Buzz Aldrin published a number of years ago. In his book, he proposed a somewhat similar scheme for moving people between Earth and Mars. Once the fixed assets are in place, the cost for moving additional people goes way down.

The main point is that we need to be building our capabilities for doing things in space, not reducing them. We need to establish goals that help us develop a space industry that might help reignite our economy. We shouldn't be giving over the exploration of space to the Chinese or anyone else.

Since we face some unknown risk of extinction from asteroids, perhaps we should have a set of prizes designed to develop an ability to move asteroids. Why not set up prizes for things like building structures in space? For establishing a mining base for water on the Moon? For creating a simple habitat that makes a figure-eight path around the Earth and Moon?

Not a shuttle replacement

[amightywind]

The submitter should RTFA. tSpace is not proposing a shuttle replacement. They have apparently ceeded that to Boeing or Lockmart. They are proposing a lunar transfer vehicle. They are trying to get in on the CEV bidding without going through the formal review process. These earth LEO rendezvous achitectures are dumb. It is all because bidders seem to believe that the only booster vehicles are EELV's (Delta 4, Atlas V), which are too small for the job. This is foolish. A shuttle derived unmanned launcher could be easily developed from existing hardware and deliver 250,000 lbs to LEO. The manned CEV might then launch on an EELV.

Spending money on space is a *BAD* idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I read that we are spending $1B USD PER DAY to keep a military presence in Iraq.

If we start buying this kind of crap, we may have to pull out of Iraq a day early. Then where would we be?

return to moon by 2020?

[CrazyTalk]

funny - 15 years to return to the moon, when we did it the first time in 10 - over 35 years ago!

More money for contractors who will never deliver

[elrous0]

Wow, hard to believe NASA is once again throwing a bunch of cash at contractors who will never deliver on the promised product. It would be even harder to believe if they hadn't spent the last 30 years doing it over and over again.

NASA Engineer: Hey do you think we should do something original this decade?
NASA Boss: Well, we haven't done anything original since the Viking Lander. Why spoil a good thing?
NASA Engineer: Good point. Doing something new might require actual work.
NASA Boss: Yeah. Hey, let's throw some money at Lockeed, Boeing, or Northrop. They'll give us cool animations and huge promises
NASA Engineer: Will they actually deliver the product?
NASA Boss: No, but the public will have forgotten about all our original promises long before realizing they never delivered. And we'll have a whole new batch of cool animations and promises to distract them by then.
NASA Engineer: Sounds like a plan. I'm going to go take a nap. Wake me up when our funding is renewed
NASA Boss: You got it!

-Eric

Re:Why not?

[Seumas]

This whole plan will prove miserable when the world discovers the frightening corners that are cut to meet the low-bid necessary to win the contract.

I wouldn't be too concerned

[alizard]

the tech has improved so much in the 30 years since the Shuttle was designed that almost anything Bert Rutan is likely to come up with will be a hell of a lot safer. Reentry from orbit is the most stressful thing anyone does with anything that flies, and any current construction isn't going to have 30 years of accumulated material fatigue in it. The other point was that the design of the Shuttle was dictated largely by political considerations which partitioned the design components to put as many militar

Because they are still useful

[WindBourne]

At this moment, the shuttle has the largest capacity of any craft that America has. But it has really 2 main issues.

1. It was designed to haul up ppl and cargo. One vehicle with 2 very differing targets. Big mistake.
2. The Braun has bigger capacity by moving the main engines to the fuel tank rather than on the shuttle. It allows them to drop the shuttle and just lift cargo.

What is needed is to re-use the shuttle as a remote control cargo carrier. By removing the cockpit and increasing the size of the cargo

Re:Because they are still useful

[Vo0k]

1) Buran, not Braun.
2) You need very little to haul cargo into space, and most of it is so cheap that it simply doesn't pay to care about its safe return to Earth - let it burn in the atmosphere.
3) There's still one advantage a shuttle has over any other solutions - it's able to haul bigger things not designed for reentry back to earth. But one hardly ever needs that.

Back on topic.

[ehack]

Too cheap, hence too little pork to slice.
Won't fly.

Re:CXV?

[Motherfucking Shit]

Something does not compute! Ahem CTV Ahem.

Have you heard of localization (l10n)? Internationalization (i18n)? Whereas we geeks often use numbers to shorten words, in aviation, the letter X is the shortcut.

It seems to have started with the "ics" words, likely because of the "ix" sound. Mechanics became MX, logistics became LX, avionics became AX. It branched out from there; maintenance is now often abbreviated to MX (and is somewhat interchangeable with mechanics), and weather is WX. Not positive whether

Yep, this would be (conservative/fascist) moonies

[ianscot]

The Washington Times, you ask. Why,

• it's Washington's second-largest newspaper;
• it was founded, and is still owned and controlled, by investors "associated with" the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church;
• it's consistently ultra-conservative in outlook;
• it was endorsed by then-President Reagan;
• and continue with the queasying bedfellows angle...

The FAIR site has a nice quote from "Former top UC official Steve Hassan" to the effect that the paper's a Trojan Horse -- "Conservative politics is

Re:Passing from one Era to another.

[tsotha]

While I recognize that the STS has issues, most of which stem from politics, it's very important to note that anything that replaces the STS, be it the CXV or something else, won't really be any safer.

I think you could pretty convincingly make the point a vertical stack is much safer than the STS design. A vertical stack would definitely have prevented the Columbia's destruction and would have given Challenger a fighting chance.