We're going to be changing format a little here. The DC-X technical and political background sections will be posted separately, shortly after this update, for benefit of those who have already seen the background info often enough to have it memorized. For those of you seeing this for the first time who need a bit more context, watch for the companion posting titled "DC-X Background 8/28/93".
On Wednesday, August 18th, 1993, at 4:43:53 pm local time, DC-X's engines lit, and the cloud of white vapor silhouetting the ship's mottled gray shape turned into a brief billow of orange flame around the vehicle. A second later, the flame cloud had turned to gray smoke as the vented engine precool hydrogen finished burning off and the rocket exhaust started the concrete under the launch stand smoking. Two seconds more for the engines to settle down to a steady burn, and the DC-X reusable rocket testbed lifted off on its first flight.
DC-X, flying with a partial fuel load, jumped off the pad quickly before easing back on the acceleration and drifting to a stop 150 feet up. As the ship climbed away from the ground, the rocket exhaust cleared up, and by the time she was hovering the exhaust flames were, typically for a hydrogen rocket, almost invisible, showing only an occasional streak of orange as engine throttling produced transient changes in the fuel mix.
Thirteen seconds after liftoff, DC-X tilted over a few degrees and began "translating", sliding sideways at a brisk walking pace while holding altitude, occasional puffs of vapor from a cryo tank vent on her side punctuating her stately progress toward the landing site, 350 feet off.
Once over the touchdown point, DC-X drifted to a halt and hovered briefly, then began her careful tail-first descent. At a hundred feet, the landing legs popped out. At about thirty feet, the rocket plumes began kicking up dust from the landing pad, and the clear exhaust flames quickly turned to incandescent pillars of fire, as concrete smoke glowed in burning hydrogen.
By ten feet, DC-X was almost hidden by the smoke and dust boiling up, inching down into a swirling white-hot cushion of flame. When the landing legs finally touched ground and triggered engine cutoff, one last billow of vapor rolled out from underneath, then silence fell. DC-X stood there, at first only the nose showing through the smoke, the rest of the ship gradually coming into view as the breeze cleared it away.
The first words out of the control trailer after "touchdown, touchdown... engine shutdown" were a heartfelt "All-Riiiight!".
The worst thing that happened to DC-X during this first flight was that one side of the fiberglass nose cone was scorched. It will have to be replaced, no big deal as there are several spares. This probably happened right after engine start, when the cloud of vented hydrogen around the vehicle ignited.
This looked scary, but is a routine part of operating DC-X, albeit one that turned out to be a bit more spectacular than planned. Liquid hydrogen is run through the engines to precool them before startup, then vented to the air, producing the vapor clouds visible before engine start in the flight test video footage. When the engines start, unless there's a strong breeze the hydrogen concentration neaby is high enough to ignite, producing a half-second fireball around the bottom of the vehicle.
This is how DC-X lost its McDonnell-Douglas and SDIO decals and had its white factory paint job turned to mottled gray during the test stand engine firings back in May and June. Everything below the nose cone is designed to stand the heat, and of course in any spaceworthy descendant of DC-X the nose cone would not be made from fiberglass, since it would have to stand up to far worse heat during reentry.
Outside of that, DC-X's base suffered some minor dings from bits of concrete sent flying around by the rocket blast during landing. Nothing unexpected; the base was designed to stand a fair amount of this.
Aside from the nose cone, the main thing preventing the DC-X crew from fueling the ship and flying again right away was the fact that they were dead on their feet. They hadn't had a day off for the last month, and the final forty-eight hours before first flight were doubly hectic as all the little last second details were nailed down.
Not that the ground crew will be idle over the next couple of weeks. This first flight was like most such, in that it revealed the need for all sorts of minor procedural changes and hardware tweaks to improve operations next time out. In particular, they're going to continue working on keeping gaseous hydrogen from finding its way inside the vehicle. Hydrogen with its low molecular weight is slippery stuff, and as mentioned previously, there's a lot of vented hydrogen outside the ship before launch. Outside is where it should stay -- traces of hydrogen inside are not an immediate problem, but if levels should ever build beyond a few percent concentration, it could be a fire or explosion hazard. Best to track down and eliminate even minor sources.
MDA and BMDO are back to billing the flight they're inviting the press and various VIP's to as the real first flight -- the one we saw a week ago Wednesday was the equivalent of "a high-speed taxi test of a conventional aircraft". Never mind that when a conventional aircraft shows a hundred and fifty feet of daylight under its landing gear, they don't call it a taxi test anymore. Oh well, it shouldn't cause so much confusion now that the first flight has happened. If it's better PR for the program, OK, the test they plan for the morning of September 11th, the second time DC-X will show daylight under its landing legs, this time 300 feet worth in an otherwise similar flight profile, yeah, OK, this will be the first flight. Ayup.
There's still no guarantee of live TV coverage, though it does seem likely. The commercial networks have all been invited, but there's no way to say which if any of them might carry it live. NASA Select seems very unlikely to carry the flight at this point, as Discovery is scheduled to launch the day before. C-Span is a longshot possibility; the idea has just been suggested to the MDA Public Affairs office.
Looking further ahead, there's no specific word on when the third flight will be, but chances are it'll happen toward the end of September. Historically, test programs of radically new vehicles tend to start out taking their time between flights, then gradually work up to quicker turnarounds as experience is gained and the number of post-flight tweaks drops.
DC-X may break this pattern with an early demo of quick turnaround between flights, but such a demo has not yet been specifically scheduled. In general, the near-term push is going to be to expand DC-X's forward flight envelope, looking at base drag and dynamic pressure on the airframe at higher subsonic speeds. Beyond that, flight testing will depend on the earlier results, as well as on the arrival of DC-X's final $5m in FY '94 funding.
[Note from the editor: If you've never contacted your elected representatives in Washington before, now is a good time to start. It's painless, it can actually be pretty effective, and if you don't believe developing the means of affordable space access is a good cause, chances are you wouldn't be reading this, eh? For some tips on making effective contact, see the Politics section of the current "DC-X Background". -HV]
Well, we hope y'all enjoyed your vacation from talking to politicians; it's time to get back to work. Congress is due back from their month-long recess right after Labor Day, and three different key events in getting SX-2 startup funding for next year are going to happen in quick succession before mid- September. In theory everything is supposed to wait until the House and Senate Defense Authorization bills we've been working on all summer are passed in floor votes, but in practice we're going to see a lot of things going on in parallel with the routine wrapup of the Authorization bills.
In expected order now, with best-guess dates and SAS action reccomendations:
The House Appropriations Committee, Defense Subcommittee markup. John Murtha, D PA, will preside over markup of the Defense Appropriations bill. Murtha has told his subcommittee members to be ready to meet on Tuesday September 7th, a day before Congress is even formally back in town. He's in a hurry.
House Appropriations Committee, Defense Subcommittee List
("Representative XYZ", office#, "Washington DC 20515" will get mail to them)
Name office# phone fax (AC 202)
John Murtha, chair (D-PA12) 2423 RHOB 225-2065 225-5709
Joseph McDade, RRM (R-PA10) 2370 RHOB 225-3731 225-9594
Jerry Lewis (R-CA40) 2312 RHOB 225-5861 225-6498
Charles Wilson (D-TX2) 2256 RHOB 225-2401 225-1764
Norm Dicks (D-WA6) 2467 RHOB 225-5916 226-1176
Martin Olav Sabo (D-MN5) 2336 RHOB 225-4755 225-4886
Julian Dixon (D-CA32) 2400 RHOB 225-7084 225-4091
W.G. Hefner (D-NC8) 2470 RHOB 225-3715 225-4036
Peter Visclosky (D-IN1) 2464 RHOB 225-2461 225-2493
Buddy Darden (D-GA7) 2308 RHOB 225-2931 225-0473
C.W. Bill Young (R-FL10) 2407 RHOB 225-5961 225-9764
Bob Livingston (R-LA1) 2368 RHOB 225-3015 225-0739
Joe Skeen (R-NM2) 2367 RHOB 225-2365 225-9599
The next important event, probably underway a few days after Labor Day, will be the Senate Appropriations Committee, Defense Subcommittee markup. Senator Inouye will preside over a process similar to that going on in Murtha's House subcommittee -- they'll be going through the Senate Defense Authorization bill and deciding what items to actually appropriate money for.
Senate Appropriations Committee, Defense Subcommittee List
("Senator XYZ", office#, "Washington DC 20510" will get mail to them)
SENATOR STATE FAX PHONE Office#
-----------------------------------------------------------
Bond, Christopher R MO 224-7491 224-5721 SR293
Bumpers, Dale D AR 224-6435 224-4843 SD229
Byrd, Robert D WV 224-4025 224-3954 SH311
Cochran, Thad R MS 224-9450 224-5054 SR326
D'Amato, Alfonse R NY 224-5871 224-6542 SH520
DeConcini, Dennis D AZ 224-2302 224-4521 SH328
Domenici, Pete R NM 224-7371 224-6621 SD434
Gramm, Phil R TX 228-2856 224-2934 SR370
Harkin, Tom D IA 224-9369 224-3254 SH351
Hollings, Ernest D SC 224-3573 224-6121 SR125
Inouye, Daniel, chmn D HI 224-6747 224-3934 SH722
Johnston, J.Bennett D LA 224-2952 224-5824 SH136
Lautenberg, Frank D NJ 224-9707 224-4744 SH506
Leahy, Patrick D VT 224-3595 224-4242 SR433
Nickles, Don R OK 224-6008 224-5754 SH713
Sasser, Jim D TN 224-8062 224-3344 SR363
Specter, Arlen R PA 224-1893 224-4254 SH303
Stevens, Ted R AK 224-2354 224-3004 SH522
The House-Senate Defense Authorization Bill conference, meanwhile, should be getting underway the week after Labor Day.
List of HASC R&T subcommittee and selected full HASC members follows. (Apologies for the lack of a full HASC members list -- call your local library info desk for info on who your local Representatives are and whether they're members of House Armed Services Committee.)
House Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee On Research And Technology
(all phone #'s in 202 area code, all addresses are Washington DC 20515,
in either the Cannon, Longworth, or Rayburn House Office Buildings.
Rep. Schroeder's address, for instance, would be written as:
Representative Schroeder
2208 Rayburn HOB
Washington DC 20515 )
phone fax address
Patricia Schroeder, D 1 CO Chair 225-4431 225-5842 2208 RHOB
George J Hochbrueckner, D 1 NY 225-3826 225-0776 229 CHOB
Owen B Pickett, D VA ? ? ?
H Martin Lancaster, D 3 NC 225-3415 ? 2436 RHOB
James H Bilbray, D 1 NV 225-5965 225-8808 2431 RHOB
Chet Edwards, D 11 TX 225-6105 225-0350 328 CHOB
Don Johnson, D 10 GA 225-4101 226-1466 226 CHOB
Frank Tejeda, D 28 TX 225-1640 225-1641 323 CHOB
Martin T Meehan, D 5 MA 225-3411 226-0771 1216 LHOB
Jane Harman, D 36 CA 225-8220 226-0684 325 CHOB
Elizabeth Furse, D 1 OR 225-0855 225-9497 316 CHOB
Earl Hutto, D 1 FL 225-4136 225-5785 2435 RHOB
Dave McCurdy, D 4 OK 225-6165 225-9746 2344 RHOB
Bob Stump, R 3 AZ 225-4576 225-6328 211 CHOB
Stephen E Buyer, R 5 IN 225-5037 225-2267 1419 LHOB
Peter G Torkildsen, R 6 MA 225-8020 225-8037 120 CHOB
James M Talent, R 2 MO 225-2561 225-2563 1022 LHOB
Roscoe G Bartlett, R 6 MD 225-2721 225-2193 312 CHOB
Duncan Hunter, R 52 CA 225-5672 225-0235 133 CHOB
John R Kasich, R 12 OH 225-5355 ? 1131 LHOB
James V Hansen, R 1 UT 225-0453 225-5857 2466 RHOB
The following are members of the full House Armed Services Committee who are also worth contacting on this. Dellums is the full HASC Chairman, Spence is the senior HASC Republican, Lloyd, Tanner, and Geren are also on the House Space, Science, and Technology Committee, while Dornan and Cunningham are interested in SSTO.
Ron Dellums, D 9 CA HASC Chair 225-2661 225-9817 2136 RHOB Floyd Spence, R 2 SC 225-2452 225-2455 2405 RHOB Marilyn Lloyd, D 3 TN 225-3271 225-6974 2406 RHOB John Tanner, D 8 TN 225-4714 225-1765 1427 LHOB Pete Geren, D 12 TX 225-5071 225-2786 1730 LHOB Bob Dornan, R 46 CA 225-2965 225-0275 2402 RHOB Duke Cunningham, R 51 CA 225-5452 225-2558 117 CHOB
On the Senate side of the House-Senate Defense Authorization Bill conference, getting underway the week after Labor Day:
Senate Armed Services Committee List
("Senator XYZ", office#, "Washington DC 20510" will get mail to them)
Name office# phone fax (AC 202)
Sam Nunn (D-GA) SASC Chair SD-303 224-3521 224-0072
James Exon (D-NE) "Nuke" Chair SH-330 224-4224 224-5213
John McCain (R-AZ) SR-111 224-2235 224-8938
Richard C. Shelby (D-AL) SH-313 224-5744 224-3416
Joseph I. Lieberman (D-CT) SH-502 224-4041 224-9750
Bob Graham (D-FL) SD-241 224-3041 224-6843
Dirk Kempthorne (D-ID) 224-6142 224-5893
William S. Cohen (R-ME) SH-322 224-2523 224-2693
Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) SR-315 224-4543 224-2417
Carl Levin (D-MI) SR-459 224-6221 224-1388
Dan Coats (R-IN) SR-504 224-5623 224-1966
Trent Lott (R-MS) SR-487 224-6253 224-2262
Bob Smith (R-NH) 224-2841 224-1353
Lauch Faircloth (R-NC) SH-716 224-3154 224-7406
Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) SH-524 224-5521 224-1810
John Glenn (D-OH) SH-503 224-3353 224-7983
Strom Thurmond (R-SC) SR-217 224-5972 224-1300
John Warner (R-VA) SR-225 224-2023 224-6295
Charles S. Robb (D-VA) SR-493 224-4024 224-8689
Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) SH-311 224-3954 224-8070
Whew. That's it. It is a lot to ask. But if we can get through the next few weeks without losing SSRT funding, we'll be in good shape for the final hurdle, the House-Senate Defense Appropriations conference, when HAC Defense and SAC Defense will work out their differences. More on that next time.
To everybody who's worked hard to make DC-X fly, politics and hardware, and to everyone working on getting a follown funded, thanks.
Henry Vanderbilt "Reach low orbit and you're halfway to anywhere Executive Director, in the Solar System." Space Access Society - Robert A. Heinlein hvanderbilt@bix.com "You can't get there from here." 602 431-9283 voice/fax - Anonymous -- Permission granted to redistribute the full and unaltered text of this -- -- piece, including the copyright and this notice. All other rights -- -- reserved. In other words, intact crossposting is strongly encouraged. --