Space Access Update is Space Access Society's semi-weekly publication. Space Access Society's goal is to promote affordable access to space for all, period. We believe in concentrating our limited resources at whatever point looks like yielding maximum progress toward this goal.
For the moment, our main focus is on supporting BMDO's "SSRT" (Single Stage Rocket Technology) program, DC-X and its planned-but-not-yet-funded followon, SX-2. Space Access Update is thus for the moment largely about the technology and politics of DC-X and SX-2.
We anticipate a change of focus in a couple of months, if all goes well. Once SX-2 startup funding is (with your help!) assured, we plan to begin working on establishment of a healthy second X-rocket development track at NASA, and on getting development of suitable engines started for the fully reusable orbital ships that should come after SX-2 and NASA's X-rocket.
With luck and hard work, we should see one or more fully reusable SSTO testbeds flying to orbit toward the end of this decade, with production prototypes entering test a couple of years after that. Join us and help us make this happen.
Henry Vanderbilt, Editor, Space Access Update
[For more info on Space Access Society, write us at 4855 E Warner Rd #24-150, Phoenix AZ 85044, or email hvanderbilt@bix.com.]
[Editors note -- For those of you seeing this for the first time who need a bit more context, look for the subsequent post titled "DC-X Background".]
You may recall that as of SAU #25, DC-X was scheduled to fly its fast turnaround test on Wednesday 10/20/93 and Saturday 10/23/93, whereupon flight test funding would run out and DC-X would be grounded until the game of fiscal "chicken" among various agencies is settled.
Last Wednesday's DC-X flight was cancelled when they ran into some sort of problem with the vehicle's GPS satellite navigation system. No details available, but whatever the problem was, it was fixed in time for another attempt on Thursday 10/21/93.
Thursday's flight attempt underwent a pad abort. DC-X's engines are run at idle for several seconds right after startup, while the vehicle runs through a self-check routine. If something is outside preset parameters, the vehicle shuts itself down again. This is what happened Thursday; a couple seconds into the engine idle/self test, DC-X's computers saw something they didn't like and shut the engines down.
By Friday, the test crew knew what had gone wrong and why: An oxidizer valve had opened more slowly than expected, with cooler-than-normal hydraulic fluid in the valve actuator line at least partly responsible. Planning was underway to fly Saturday.
Now, Saturday was the last day they expected to be able to fly; the program had been "running on fumes" for a while and the fumes were just about gone. But they had all the propellant and purge/pressurization gas for two flights on hand, and the vehicle had been hot-fired twice in one day already last spring -- they decided to fly once early Saturday morning, and if everything looked OK afterwards, to go for a second flight late Saturday afternoon. As of midday Friday, they still had a good chance to pull off the quick turnaround test before shutting down for lack of funds.
Alas, it was not to be. Friday afternoon, a gentleman who shall remain nameless in the WSMR Range Safety office took a bunch of service charges he'd been sitting on and ran them through the accounting system, draining the last dregs out of the DC-X account and leading to a more-or-less automatic "Stop Work" order. Everyone who could have fixed the problem was either in transit at 40,000 feet or already out of the office back on the East Coast, and DC-X shut down.
However tempting it is to see the hand of some anti-SSTO conspiracy behind this, low-level boneheadedness seems the most likely explanation. "Never assume conspiracy when stupidity will suffice to explain the facts", and in this case, the most likely explanation seems someone letting paperwork pile up, then running it all through at the last second -- a common failing. (For instance, this Update should have been out two days ago.)
If this were a novel, the plucky DC-X crew would have flown Saturday anyway and damn the bureaucrats, but in real life White Sands hosts dozens of test programs and flight test slots are tightly scheduled. It wouldn't do to have DC-X flying at the same time as, say, someone's new heat-seeking anti- aircraft missile. Flying without range permission was right out.
Many of the DC-X test crew have been sent back to Huntington Beach, but the flight test setup will be left intact until at least November 3rd. DC-X is sitting in its portable tent "hangar", various openings taped up against the White Sands dust, while two flights worth of cryogenic propellant quietly boils away. If flight test money comes through before the 3rd -- next Wednesday -- flight test should be able to start up again without major disruption, other than to the personal lives of the people who'll have to pack up and move right back out to New Mexico.
We hear rumors that US Air Force Space Command is thinking about providing $5 million out of their current operating funds to continue DC-X flight test through January, but that there's opposition to this within USAF Air Staff. Fiscal "chicken" continues; head-on impact is November 3rd. Stay tuned.
We obtained a copy of briefing materials used in the infamous Dawson/Mansfield space staffers meeting of a couple weeks back (see Aviation Week for October 11th for an "anonymous source" account of the revive-NLS lovefest. Tim Kyger was there; he recounts it a bit differently in his recent "One Small Step" column.)
It turns out that these people agree almost entirely with the SSTO Underground on the nature of the problem: Our current launchers are too fragile, too complex, too inflexible, and take far too many people to run, resulting in slow, uncertain, expensive military launches, and a civilian launch market moving rapidly overseas.
Where these people differ is in their proposed solution. They want to build a rugged, high-margin, fast-turnaround, small-ops-crew expendable launcher to match Ariane and Proton and Long March. Fine so far, though trying to beat the foreigners at this game when they have a ten-year head start may not be the smartest way to regain the commercial launch market. It would at least in theory give us reliable military launch.
In theory. If, that is to say, we managed to pull off such a development successfully. The catch is that these people want to build this rugged, high-margin, fast-turnaround, small-ops-crew expendable launcher via a massive consortium of major aerospace companies, supervised by all the Federal agencies with any interest in launch, and operated out of the existing national launch ranges. These are the hidebound bureaucracies that got us into our current situation; the first principle of any solution ought to be to bypass them, not embrace them.
(This is a major foundation of the current SSTO effort - build it as a series of fast-and-lean "X" projects with minimal bureaucratic entanglement, and DON'T let it anywhere near KSC or Vandenberg. No "Spacelifter", no "Shuttle II", no national standing-army hi-tech jobs program, just develop the means for private industry to build useful general-purpose space transports, fast and cheap.)
The "Spacelifter" Mafia's idea for dealing with this problem is to appoint a government "Launch Czar" who would magically sweep away overmanning and old ways of thinking at the government agencies and launch ranges and established expendable space launch contractors. Maybe if this guy had a genuine Czar's powers of arbitrary arrest, torture, and execution - otherwise, not a chance. Never underestimate the inertia of an entrenched bureaucracy.
The current SSTO effort is not just built around a radically different launcher configuration, it includes a radically different way of doing business. Not a new way of doing business, mind, but it might as well be, given how long it's been since anyone was allowed to operate this way outside the "black" world.
Any "rugged, high-margin, fast-turnaround, small-ops-crew expendable launcher" built by the current US launch establishment will end up fragile, overcomplex, over-manned, over-schedule, and overpriced, as surely as the sun will rise.
So, why not build a new high-margin expendable using a rapid-prototyping "X" approach? The payoff in ultimate launch-cost floor may be poorer than reusable SSTO by an order of magnitude, but isn't the technical risk much lower?
In a word, no. The time for SSTO has arrived.
We hear there's a draft paper circulating around Washington written by one Ivan Bekey, a highly respected advanced space technology type at NASA HQ. This paper reportedly uses NASA Langley data (you may recall Langley as the source for some very pessimistic assessments of SSTO) to reach the conclusion that SSTO's technical risk is low and that the necessary technology can be in hand with a couple years of development work. Which sounds remarkably like an endorsement of SSRT's current build-a-little, test-a-little approach.
In other words, the payoff from achieving useful reusable SSTO capability is far higher than that for a new expendable, while the technical risk looks only slightly higher. (Frankly, the dominant risk in any new launcher development in the US these days is the political risk of bureaucratic bogdown.)
Make the fixes needed to nurse our current launchers along for a few more years, shelve "Spacelifter", and go full speed ahead on multiple reusable SSTO X-developments. THAT is the path to take to assure that the 21st century also goes down in the history books as "The American Century".
We will finally be getting in our first batch of duplicated DC-X flight videos next week; those of you who have already ordered, your tapes should be shipped by the end of the week. Apologies for the delay. (Write or email for ordering info - if you've already emailed for info, we should be getting back to you early next week. Ditto for SAS info requests; we haven't lost your requests, we're just horrendously backlogged. Our sincere apologies for these growing pains.)
We now have a firm contract with the Safari Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona for "Space Access '94", our March 11th-13th 1994 look at the near-term technology, politics, and economics of affordable access. (Note that some of our earlier flyers listed the wrong hotel.) The preliminary SA '94 speakers list includes Hunter, Gaubatz, Hudson, and Burnside Clapp from the rocket world, Niven from the SF world, Pournelle, Harry Stine and Rick Cook from both sides. We expect to add more as the conference approaches. Write or email for info. (Honest, we're getting organized on answering info requests!)
Will this budget season never end? Last week, the Congressional DOD funding process was supposed to be wrapped up by this week. The week before, by last week. The latest word we hear is that, sure enough, everything will be wrapped up by next week.
This time for sure. ("Hey, Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!")
It might be true this time; there has been visible progress lately. As of this afternoon, both the House-Senate DOD Authorizations conference and DOD Appropriations conference were (finally) officially underway.
(The DOD Authorizations conference is essentially the Senate Armed Services Committee meeting with the senior two-thirds of the House Armed Services Committee. The Defense Authorizations bill in general sets out what items money may be spent on, in what manner, and under what conditions.)
(The DOD Appropriations conference is mainly made up of the Defense Subcommittees of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. The Defense Appropriations bill sets the actual amounts of money available for various programs, in effect writing the checks.)
The DOD Authorizations conference has been going on unofficially for weeks now, with staffers drawing up a draft compromise bill, and more recently with key subcommittees going over the draft. The official conference should go quickly now that it's started.
As of Monday, SSRT followon had $11 million, with a further pool of $25 million available for new launcher development in general (read more "Spacelifter" paper studies.) As of Tuesday, a move was afoot to redivide that $36 million total as $18 million for SSRT followon, $18 million for new launcher work. No further word on what's happening here, but it looks like we'll get the essential minimum -- inclusion of SSRT as a separate funded program. The actual funding amount will be set in the Appropriations bill.
The DOD Appropriations conference isn't nearly as far along; they will likely have to work into next week to come up with a final version. As of early this week, word was SSRT would likely see $30-$40 million in actual FY '94 funding. This is by no means a sure thing, however.
The House is tentatively scheduling a vote on the DOD Appropriations conference bill next Wednesday afternoon. This might or might not happen on time. On past experience, it will likely move back at least a couple days. Maybe this will all be over next week, maybe not.
Whatever the DOD Authorizations conference is going to do, by now it's likely a done deal. All we can do is wait to hear what happens. (Late word: $17m for SSRT, with lots of attached language we haven't seen yet.)
The DOD Appropriations conference is our sole remaining target. They should be working into next week. We have a promise of support from the key figure on the House side, John Murtha. We have very little support on the Senate side. The next few days would be a good time to call, write, or fax Senator Inouye plus any Senator from your state on the SAC Defense list attached.
The message is: Fund the DOD Single Stage Rocket Technology (SSRT) project at $80 million in the DOD Appropriations conference. [See the companion piece "DC-X Background" for tips on effectively contacting Congressmen.]
-- Senate Appropriations Committee, Defense Subcommittee list --
("Senator XYZ", office#, "Washington DC 20510" will get mail to them.)
(* = voted for the Domenici Amendment favoring full funding for SSRT.)
(note - Phil Gramm of Texas did not vote either way on the amendment.)
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
Hatfield, Mark R OR 224-0276 224-3753 SH711
Hollings, Ernest D SC 224-3573 224-6121 SR125
Inouye, Daniel chair 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 RRM R AK 224-2354 224-3004 SH522
Henry Vanderbilt "Reach low orbit and you're halfway to anywhere
Space Access Society in the Solar System."
4855 E Warner Rd #24-150 - Robert A. Heinlein
Phoenix, AZ 85044
602 431-9283 voice/fax "You can't get there from here."
(hvanderbilt@bix.com) - Anonymous
"SSTO? C'mon, the only people who support that are Trekkies
and right-wingers." - The Unknown Staffer
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