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.
Right now, we think this means working our tails off trying to get the government to build and fly a high-speed reusable rocket demonstrator, an "X-rocket", in the next three years, in order to quickly build up both experience with and confidence in reusable Single-Stage To Orbit (SSTO) technology. The idea is to reduce SSTO development cost while at the same time increasing investor confidence, to the point where SSTO will make sense as a private commercial investment. We have reason to believe we're not far from that point now.
One major current focus is on supporting the Department of Defense's Single Stage Rocket Technology (SSRT) program, DC-X and its funded (but so far stalled) followon, SX-2. We're also working on getting a healthy X-rocket development going at NASA, and on getting work underway there on suitable engines for the fully reusable orbital transports that should come after SX-2 and NASA's X-rocket.
With luck and hard work, we should see fully reusable SSTO testbeds flying to orbit toward the end of this decade, with production ships a-building 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 *new* DC-X/SSTO video we have for sale, including flight 3 and flight 5 footage and a White Sands Missile Range travelogue, email hvanderbilt@bix.com, or write us at: SAS, 4855 E Warner Rd #24-150, Phoenix AZ 85044. Please forgive any delay in our reply; we're a couple weeks behind in answering non life-or-death email right now.]
The official investigation into the 6/27/94 DC-X accident, like a lot of other aspects of the project, finished in record time -- less than three weeks. Our compliments to everyone who burned the midnight oil to get this done; typically such investigations take months.
We expect it helped that the cause (in hindsight at least) was fairly obvious. The official conclusions pretty much match what we were able to figure out from our amateur video of the flight plus a couple clues from our next-day site tour - the reports we published in the last two Updates.
The damage was done by a fluke low-grade external explosion, brought about by a combination of previously unseen vented precool hydrogen plume behavior (clinging to the ground for ~80 feet, and also we suspect to the vehicle lee side, rather than rising and dispersing right off the vents) plus a wind direction that aimed the plume right at a launch-stand ventilation duct air intake. The combination was both unlikely and unpredictable; future prevention should be fairly simple.
Discovering and fixing this sort of obscure failure mechanism is why flying hardware beats the hell out of running simulations -- very few simulation designers are as fiendishly clever as Murphy. (Of "Murphy's Law" fame...)
The three options officially presented, now:
Option one is downright silly. The program still has almost half of the $5 million allocated for this spring's flight test program restart, enough to complete most or all of the needed repairs.
Option two is only marginally less silly. For one thing, NASA would really rather start the DC-XA modifications from a known-flyable vehicle, not one that might still have hidden glitches. For another, it's penny-wise and pound-foolish not to finish the current flight test program; the expense involved ($5 million more, including some pad for further contingencies) is small compared to both the additional data to be garnered, and to what's already been spent (near $70 million) to get to this point.
Option three is the way to go, and the place to get the additional $5 million is the $35 million already appropriated in ARPA for SSTO work. Fix DC-X now, fly it again ASAP, and only then turn it over to NASA.
Speaking of ARPA, someone over there has finally decided they want to spend that $35 million that a lot of people worked so hard for.
This is the $40 million in FY'94 SSTO funding we fought for last year, minus the $5 million allocated to get DC-X flying again last month.
We had to fight again this spring to keep this money from being rescinded (dumped back into the Treasury) and just barely won that brawl. We got $5 million for DC-X only at the absolute screaming last second, and even then only after NASA (Administrator Goldin, really) had thrown a million of their own money into the pot as a sign of support.
Now ARPA is proposing to divvy up the remaining $35 million among a bunch of micro-launcher and propulsion development proposals, many of which may in fact be worthy, but NONE of which are what we fought for or what the Congress thought it was putting up the money for, completion of DC-X testing and startup of the SX-2 followon to DC-X.
ARPA's theory seems to be that NASA is going to do SX-2 or something like it now, so ARPA should try to look at some low-cost alternatives that might be useful for lightweight "sortie vehicles", the sort of spacecraft that could carry, say, two guys in pressure-suits plus a toolkit or instrument package for a quick couple of hours in orbit.
The problem is that it's still not at all clear what NASA is going to do about SSTO.
Administrator Goldin seems to understand what's needed, a quick, cheap flight demonstrator to prove out lightweight structures and high-speed flight ops at a high flight rate and with a small ground crew.
But a lot of his troops still seem to hear "$36 billion 20-year Shuttle II!" when they're told "quick and dirty SSTO demonstrator." And a lot more seem to misunderstand "quick and cheap" to mean five years and a billion dollars rather than three years and three hundred-four hundred million. And then there's the problem of "high flight rate" being understood as several times a year off a rebuilt pad at KSC instead of several times a month off a patch of desert with a few equipment trucks, and "small ground crew" being understood as a few thousand instead of as a few dozen.
Many within NASA haven't yet come to grips with what's actually required here. And until it's crystal clear that NASA's SSTO project is committed to the right direction, we will be firmly opposed to DOD abandoning the "SSRT" DC-X/SX-2 SSTO development path.
One possible solution we've heard kicked around would be to have NASA effectively subcontract their X-demonstrator's definition and operation to the SSRT guys, who are going to be working out of USAF Phillips Labs in future. This would leave NASA free to concentrate on their strong suit, developing various technologies in support of the demonstrator and future full-SSTO successors, and would give all of us political types a lot more confidence that NASA SSTO is going to give the nation value for money.
We'd be happy to see ARPA putting, oh, half of that $35 million into micro-SSTO technologies as part of such a deal, with $5 million going to finish DC-X's current test program and the rest going to getting Phillips Lab off to a running start on getting NASA the best possible deal on an SX-2 class demonstrator.
Absent some such deal, there could end up being a lot of very unhappy SSTO supporters, in the Congress and elsewhere. We're hoping everyone is reasonable about this.
The critical House-Senate conference on FY'95 DOD Authorizations finally got underway at the start of this week. As you'll no doubt recall, the House authorized $100 million for DOD SSTO, while the Senate Armed Services Committee came within one vote of supporting SSTO funding. We're hoping for a favorable compromise out of this conference in the next few days. More when we know more.
On the DOD Appropriations front, the situation remains that the House has appropriated $50 million and the Senate still hasn't started on their FY'95 DOD Appropriations. We expect that the final result here will track whatever we end up getting in the Authorizations.
NASA, meanwhile, seems set to get around $40 million in the coming year to get a number of "RLV" (Reusable Launch Vehicle) technology projects underway, including the DC-XA upgrade. The Administrator wants it, and the amount is basically lost in the noise in NASA's overall FY'95 budget of around $14 billion.
Apropos of NASA SSTO, there was a hearing in the House Space Science Subcommittee (the House NASA oversight committee) on July 19th, for the purpose of determining the proper balance between ground-based technology and experimental flight vehicle development. Witnesses called were NASA's Assistant Administrator for Access Jack Lee and Dr. Ivan Bekey, General Daniel O. Graham of the Space Transportation Association, USAF Colonel Simon Worden (head of advanced tech at SDIO when DC-X was started), Bill Gaubatz and Pete Conrad of the McDonnell-Douglas DC-X team, and Jerry Grey of the AIAA.
At issue was what we will uncharitably call the Dinosaur position, the view that we need to spend tens or hundreds of millions per year for many years to develop all sorts of additional advanced technology before we're ready to try flying anything, with the implicit assumption that the first vehicle we fly has to be as near as makes no difference a perfected final product. We merely note that the rapidly shrinking NASP project was conducted on this premise, and that even they have tried to refocus on flying test hardware (the HYFLITE proposal) over the past year.
Most of the witnesses supported our preferred alternative (immediate pursuit of a less-than-perfect flight testbed as a way of keeping the effort focused and moving forward) to one degree or another. Colonel Worden put it most succinctly. "Unless that program is centered on a flight demonstration within a few years - I would suggest no more than three - it is my opinion that it is pointless to proceed." He went on to say that without such a near-term goal, "technology programs quickly decay into sandbox activities which survive more on their contribution to local employment and vested interests than on real future needs."
Couldn't have said it better ourselves.
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 -- 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. --