Space Access Update is Space Access Society's when-there's-news 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 the government's "SSRT" (Single Stage Rocket Technology) program, DC-X and its recently 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 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 underway shortly thereafter. Join us and help us make this happen.
Henry Vanderbilt, Editor, Space Access Update
[For more info on Space Access Society or on the DC-X/SSTO video we have for sale, write us at 4855 E Warner Rd #24-150, Phoenix AZ 85044, or email hvanderbilt@bix.com. Email sa94@lunacity.com for an autoreply message with the latest on "Space Access '94", our upcoming conference on the technology, politics, and economics of affordable access. (March 11-13 at the Safari Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona, $80 at the door. If you plan on attending but don't yet have a room reserved, call us at 602 431-9283 by Wednesday at the latest - rooms are extremely hard to find at this point.)]
It's hard to know where to begin. There's no single outstanding piece of news to report in this Update; it's more a matter of trying to describe the current rather complex situation, and lay out some of the directions, good or bad, that things could go from here in the very near future.
Let's start with last November, when Congress passed the final piece of this year's Federal budget. Among the minor last-second details was $40 million for "Single Stage Rocket Technology" (SSRT), the project that built DC-X and plans to build the SX-2 suborbital followon. DC-X and SX-2 of course are both reusable single-stage rocket vehicle testbeds, steps along an incremental development path toward a US capability to build fully reusable SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit) space transports.
In hindsight, this was a lot less minor a detail than it may have seemed at the time. The US has been for years widely acknowledged to have a serious problem with space launch - it costs too much, takes far too long to set up, and is too unreliable. There have been a number of proposed solutions kicking around for a while now, but none has been wholeheartedly adopted.
Last fall, SSTO came along and blew the other solutions out of the water in the budget battle. There wasn't much money for new launcher work, true, but the SSRT project got almost all of it. SSRT funding has since survived a serious rescission attempt, thanks largely to steadfast backing by key Congressional Defense leaders. Between DC-X's three successful flights and Congress's obvious support, the US space community has been forced to sit up and take notice, and to begin a major rethink of our future path into space.
This rethinking is taking place on multiple levels. On the official US government policy level, OSTP (the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy) is supposed to be doing a study on the future direction of US space launch. The SSRT project, of course, has been held up since last November waiting for OSTP. OSTP however is waiting on the results of a similar study underway within the Department of Defence, run by USAF General Moorman.
A bit of background here.
Major US government policy initiatives can start in either the Administration (common shorthand is "The White House") or in the Congress. From either source, a policy is unlikely to go forward without at least acquiescence by the other party. In this case, the pro-SSTO, pro-incremental "X" development policy has emerged from the Congress, and the Administration is trying to decide whether or not to go along.
The current Administration doesn't pay a great deal of attention to space; they've chosen to concentrate on other areas. Our best estimate is that they have four major concerns for US space policy:
If Congress wants a new space initiative, OSTP will probably go along, as long as it meets these concerns. SX-2 already meets the first three - it's relatively cheap if done as planned by the current SSRT crew (SX-2 is a standalone "X" project that tops out around $100m a year over three or four years), it's no threat to any of the current major NASA programs, and it's not on NASA's budget and thus won't interfere with funneling NASA money to Russia. As for what DOD thinks about all this, that's why OSTP is now waiting on the Moorman Report.
General Moorman's staff has spent much of the winter talking to everyone they can find who has something to say on future US space launch policy, and is now reportedly pulling it all together into a draft report. Rumor has it the draft may be circulated sometime this month. The final version is said to be due out in April.
Rumor also has it that the report is shaping up not as a single recommendation, but rather as a list of options in ascending order of expense. Our current picture of those options is as follows - note that this list is based on gossip and educated guesswork, and further that even if currently correct, things could change before the final report is released.
SAS's positions on these options:
The first option, standing pat, has the virtue of being the least expensive in the short term, but the vice of doing nothing to solve either DOD's ongoing difficulties with slow expensive unreliable space access, or the US commercial launch industry's declining commercial market share. We can live with these problems in the short term, but in the long term we'll pay dearly. Standing pat got us into this mess in the first place.
Part one of the second option, advanced tech work in support of eventual advanced low-cost reusable launchers, is what SAS has been pushing for all along.
Specifically we believe that this advanced tech development should take place as a series of rapid-paced "X-vehicle" flight testbed developments, with the DC-X effort as the model - in the words of Colonel Pete Worden, "three years and a cloud of rocket exhaust". Tech development efforts that aren't aimed at a specific near-term achievable flight objective have tended to bloat and bog down in recent years.
Part two of the second option, consolidation of the existing US expendable industry from three down to two manufacturers, we regard as unduly expensive and risky for the dubious benefits to be had. The existing expendable production lines are effectively sunk costs; higher production rates on two of these while a third is shut down and written off would produce more paper savings than real economies. Meanwhile the new redesigned gap-filler booster would effectively require new production and launch facilities, more than offsetting the paper savings, and would require significant development funding even if it went forward flawlessly, far from a safe bet.
The third option, a new-design expendable, is for all practical purposes the same project that as NLS and then "Spacelifter" Congress has killed twice already. Son-of-Spacelifter is still too much funding and too much programmatic risk for too little gain. It won't happen.
The fourth option looks far too much like SSTO-as-Shuttle II for our liking, much too likely to end up overpriced, overcomplex, fragile, and late. Going for an operational requirements-driven SSTO from the current experience base is a bad idea, in our view. This option however is only marginally more likely than option three to be funded in the current budget climate.
SAS supports "option 1.5", modest ongoing upgrades to current expendables, coupled with an incremental X-program approach to developing reusable rocket capability. This is politically the most salable option, being the cheapest approach that still addresses current problems. It also has the virtue of being likely to work as well as or better than any of the other options in the long run, relying as it does on a return to a time-tested method of rapidly and cheaply developing new aerospace vehicle technologies. "Option 1.5" can get us to the point later this decade where we can make informed decisions about building operational SSTO space transports, without busting any budgets.
The Moorman Report will be out soon, and the various factions are already vigorously jockeying for position. We think we have the cheapest, most sensible approach. We need to be ready to support it effectively, soon.
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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