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.
Our major focus has been on supporting the Department of Defense's Single Stage Rocket Technology (SSRT) program, DC-X and its funded (but for the last year stalled) followon, SX-2. This now looks likely to get underway soon as a cooperative NASA/DOD/industry project called "X-33". We're also working on getting development started of engines suitable for the fully reusable commercial orbital transports that should follow X-33.
With luck and hard work, we should see fully reusable SSTO testbeds flying to orbit late this decade, with production transport ships a-building shortly thereafter. Join us, and help us make this happen.
Henry Vanderbilt,
Executive Director, Space Access Society
[For more info on Space Access Society or on the DC-X/SSTO video we have for sale (Two hours, includes footage from all five flights to date, plus DC-X and SSTO backgrounders, plus a White Sands Missile Range travelogue),
email: hvanderbilt@bix.com or write us at: SAS, 4855 E Warner Rd #24-150, Phoenix AZ 85044.]
[The tape is twenty bucks, fifteen for SAS members, checks only, VHS only, all proceeds go directly back into running SAS. Email SAS membership is thirty bucks a year. Apologies for this crass commercial message; it saves people waiting on our alas wildly variable email-response time.]
Welcome to our latest issue, Space Access Update #47. No, you haven't missed any Updates; it's been seven weeks since the last one. Our apologies for the news hiatus. Post budget-season burnout, the two-week cold from hell, kidney stones, tree roots taking over the drainpipes, more kidney stones, a hard disk crash, various personal aggravations, and no end of phone calls and email and faxes to deal with. "Nibbled to death by ducks" is a friend's apt description of the condition...
You may recall from SAU #46, back in the mists of time, that the DOD DC-X people have been budgeted $65 million this fiscal year ($35m transferred ARPA money, $30m new FY'95 money) to finish up DC-X flight test and help out with NASA SSTO work. NASA, meanwhile, finally got Administration go- ahead to start up the X-33 reusable single-stage rocket testbed as a fast- track, government-private cooperative project.
Everything should be just fine now, right? Affordable space access via fast-turnaround reusables is now the common wisdom, NASA and DOD are funded and working on this, and we can finally sit back and relax, right?
Hah. Practical cheap access is being nibbled to death by ducks. Mind, nobody we know ever actually died of being pecked on the shins by flocks of obnoxious bureaucrats, er, waterfowl, but it slows things down a great deal, and it is intensely annoying.
We're running into two main opposing camps. One simply wants to kill SSTO, and will use any tactic available to do so. These people range from McNamara-ite arms-controllers ideologically opposed to technological progress that might make their treaties obsolete (they killed the X- programs once back in the sixties; they're not about to stand aside while we start X back up again), through people in the "National Technical Means" spysat business resisting threats to their massive 30-year old orbital info empire, down to a scattering of people who still sincerely believe SSTO simply can't be made to work. There's a lot of overlap.
The other opposition camp claims they just want to help us wild-eyed radicals do it RIGHT. They see SSTO as the next great space funding bandwagon, and they want to hop on and love it to death, stretching the program out forever while funding lots and lots of neat little study projects, all aimed at eventually producing the One Perfect Spaceship which will do every mission anyone ever dreamed of. Badly and at huge expense, but in theory it'll do all those missions. In a word, Shuttle II.
We've spent much of the last few years fighting attempted hijacks, bureaucratic delaying tactics, and occasional outright sabotage. We expect we'll keep on running into this !@#$%! for a long time to come.
Oh, no, not again... You may recall that after DC-X was damaged last June 27th (she did a successful emergency landing after being hit just before launch by an external explosion), the plan that evolved was to repair her and fly out the remainder of the current test program this winter, before handover to NASA next spring for a year-long rebuild to the lightweight DC-X-A configuration. The remaining flight-test funding from this spring was going to be just enough for McDonnell-Douglas to do the repairs at their Huntington Beach plant, and the winter flight tests would be funded out of the $35 million in SSTO money we all finally pried loose from ARPA in September, after they'd wasted a year sitting on it. (We mistakenly assumed last year that a DOD branch called the "Advanced Research Projects Agency" would make a good home for SSTO work. Wrong. ARPA turns out to be very good at killing projects that someone high in DOD apparently wants killed.)
Well, things still might happen that way, but surprise, surprise, the DOD bureaucracy is still dragging their feet -- and worse.
The worst first. After DC-X was trucked back to California this summer, the Phillips Lab flight test account was closed out; the $779,000 left out of $5.1 million we pried loose from ARPA last spring was sent back to... ARPA.
The plan was that ARPA would then send this money to BMDO, still the nominal DC-X contractor, and BMDO would then send it to McDonnell-Douglas to pay for the DC-X repairs. We are told that a Colonel Mike Francis at ARPA told BMDO in writing that he'd send the money on to BMDO for that purpose, before Phillips handed the money over to him.
We are told that instead, what USAF Colonel Francis did when the money came back to ARPA was to put it in a pot used for SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) grants. We think there's a case to be made that this was misappropriation of Federal funds, in part or in whole.
(A bit of detail here: SBIR's are funded by an internal "tax" on Federal R&D funds. This "tax" in 1994 was 1.5%. Based on the $5.1 million which was all that ARPA ever actually dispensed for DC-X, ARPA could legitimately have diverted $76,500 of the DC-X money to SBIR. They are presumably justifying grabbing the whole $779,000 by some combination of the higher 1995 SBIR "tax" rate, and basing the "tax" on the total $40 million appropriation. However, it was FY'94 money, and $35 million of it was never seen by ARPA, having been taken back and sent elsewhere by act of Congress.)
We are (editorially speaking) extremely annoyed, since the result of this was that DC-X sat unrepaired for far too long while the clock wound down on the opportunity for reflight before NASA takeover. We understand that the only reason the repairs are getting done now is that NASA came up with the money at the last second. (Thanks, guys!)
We understand that some very sharp lawyers are looking into this affair. We understand that some future Senate and House military oversight committee heads will likely be briefed on this. We understand that the USAF still has a radar station on Shemyat Island in the Aleutians. Nice place to winter over, the Aleutians...
Meanwhile, we're also running into good old-fashioned foot-dragging problems with the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Comptroller's Office. The OSD Comptroller is the person who can actually write a check for that $35 million ARPA roadblocked for over a year -- $35 million that Congress this year redirected to USAF Phillips Lab via NASA, for SSTO related work including DC-X flight test program completion.
OSD Comptroller's Office last we heard still hasn't even started to ship the money over to NASA for passing on to USAF Phillips Lab as laid out in the FY'95 DOD Appropriations Act. They've said that when they eventually do get started, they want to do it via a route they claim involves a statutory 30-day delay. This looks like delaying operating funds for DC-X reflight long enough so even if it is repaired in time, flight test completion would still run into the planned NASA rebuild. This also is getting close to slowing X-33 startup; much of the first-year X-33 funding is supposed to come out of this money.
We would like to see OSD send the $35 million directly to NASA for passage on to USAF Phillips Lab, NOW. We understand that the OSD Comptroller is John Hamre, and that the guy handling this issue for him is Ron Garant. (We do _not_ recommend any direct public contact with these gentlemen on this matter, by the way; we mention their names for the record and for benefit of interested parties who may be able to influence events.)
Enough is enough; this apparent DOD sabotage of Congresionally mandated SSTO research has gone on for over a year now, and that's a year too long.
When last we wrote, Congress had just approved funding for the DOD share of a new, rocket-powered, single-stage-to-as-near-orbital-as-possible X-vehicle, to be developed by a cooperative deal between NASA, DOD, and industry, in accordance with the new Presidential launch policy.
"X-32", the designation we originally expected, turns out to have been taken already for a semi-stealthy light tactical fighter demonstrator project. For those who care about such things, the X-32 project is aimed at an F-16 replacement with an STOVL (Short-TakeOff/Vertical Landing) option.
NASA, the lead agency on X-33, plans to do it under something called a "Cooperative Agreement Notice" or CAN, a new sort of government-industry partnership arrangement that involves the industry partner coughing up a significant chunk of money and resources. NASA issued a draft CAN for the X-33 at a meeting with industry in Huntsville October 19th, with a request for comments by early November.
NASA proposes to budget $650 million of their own money for X-33 over the next few years. The amount the contractor or contractors (the draft CAN specifically allows for the possibility of a flyoff) bring to the project will be a factor in evaluating bids.
The draft X-33 CAN was supposed to be internet-available, but there were delays. (World Wide Web address should be http://procure.msfc.nasa.gov.) SAS got hold of a paper copy in time to read it over, run it past some of our advisors, and put together a quick response. The full text of SAS's response is appended to the end of this Update.
The revised post-comment X-33 CAN is, we hear, due for release on Monday November 28th. In a related matter, NASA's draft overall RLV policy has been bouncing around White House OSTP (Office of Science and Technology Policy) and OMB (Office of Management and Budget) for the past few weeks. We've heard that OMB doesn't know quite what to make of all this; more on that when we know more.
The overall thrust of the X-33 CAN is toward an Advanced Technology Demonstrator ("ATD", another name for an X-vehicle), intended "..to support government and private sector decisions by the end of this decade on development of an operational next-generation reusable launch system." In general SAS approves, although we'd like to see less emphasis on the government role in a potential operational followon. No offense, guys, but we used the phrase "Shuttle II" to frighten small children these days. Insisting on specs that will meet all possible government space missions is likely to greatly reduce the commercial potential (and thus commercial financeability) of an operational RLV. ("Reusable Launch Vehicle", another new piece of NASA-speak.) More immediately, it will complicate the X-33 design greatly, with attendant delays and increased expense. KISS.
The NASA X-33 draft CAN calls for three phases: initial bids from all comers with a quick downselect to a handful of competitors, then a 13-month detail design phase with downselect to 1-2 competitors "by the end of FY 1996" (9/30/96), then a three-year construction phase, culminating in flight sometime in 1999. SAS's take on this is that delay both unnecessary and potentially fatal -- we have some momentum from the DC-X program now; we must not allow it to dissipate. Hardware contractor downselect by the end of next summer, followed by a two-year construction phase, ought to allow flight by late 1997. The flight vehicle(s) might not be as fancy or capable, but they will FLY. Delay only encourages NASP X-30 paper- aircraft-forever syndrome.
As for the specifics of what the X-33 is to look like, SAS's main comment is that the draft CAN is far too closely tied to a direct payload-for-payload Shuttle replacement. The draft calls for the X-33 to be "directly traceable" to a vehicle capable of carrying a 25Klb load to the proposed Station orbit, essentially a Shuttle-class payload. SAS believes the X-33 contractors should be given more latitude to address the private launch market with smaller vehicles, if NASA's goal of private funding for the operational followon vehicle is to have any chance of being met.
Our understanding is that the revised CAN due next Monday is considerably shorter than the draft version. This is probably a good sign. We await the revised version with interest.
Meanwhile, we hear that a certain mid-level NASA official has been claiming that the new Administration launch policy calls for delaying any decision on a reusable launcher testbed until December '96, two years from now. Uh... The early drafts of the Administration policy did in fact say "not until December '96". We had to fight like hell to get that changed to "no later than December '96". But changed it was.
The specific language of NSTP #4 states, III, (2), (b) "Research shall be focused on technologies to support a decision no later than December 1996 to proceed with a sub-scale flight demonstration which would prove the concept of single-stage-to-orbit."
"No later than." As in not ruling out "considerably earlier than." We've been hearing rumors of attempts to delay (and thus NASP-ize) X-33 by others as well, notably Terry Dawson, the longtime SSTO opponent and soon-to-be former House Science Space & Technology Committee staffer, who we hear by the way may now be trying to get a job at NASA.
USAF Colonel Gary Payton is a former astronaut (he flew on the first DOD Shuttle mission), a former NATO pilot for the US, and was in charge of and helped to start what became the DC-X/SSRT program at SDIO (now BMDO). He still works at BMDO, reporting directly to BMDO's boss, General O'Neill. His BMDO tour has about six more months to run.
We hear that Jack Mansfield, new head of NASA's Office of Space Access & Technology, wants to hire Colonel Payton to run X-33, but that BMDO doesn't want to let Payton go early unless they're provided with a replacement. USAF meanwhile has become reluctant to detail their officers to other government agencies as a matter of general policy, so a replacement is hard to come by.
Payton's current boss, General O'Neill, and Secretary of the Air Force Sheila Widnall both report directly to Deputy Secretary of Defense John Deutch. Intervention at Deutch's level or higher may be needed to prevent considerable delay in getting X-33 underway.
The "National Launch System"/"Spacelifter" all-purpose new expendable booster project has risen from the grave once again, this time as "EELV", the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle.
The idea now is to put together a modular expendable launcher (a Titan Four/Atlas/Delta replacement) out of modified existing launcher hardware, rather than starting from scratch with a totally new-design vehicle. This is progress, of a sort -- EELV is only supposed to cost two billion to develop, down from ten billion plus for Spacelifter.
In theory only two billion. "Modified existing hardware" is supposed to mean mix-and-match of existing expendable booster stages. But EELV is all too likely to end up with lots of little modifications piling up, in a prolonged expensive process resulting in an effectively new design. The net result could well be ten years and many billions spent, for an at-best marginal improvement on current expendables.
SAS still advocates sticking to ongoing reliability and operability upgrades to existing expendables, while vigorously pursuing "leapfrog" reusable launcher technology, as the most effective use of the limited resources available for upgrading the nation's space capabilities.
Meanwhile, NASA has released another draft CAN, this one for the "X-34". This is a somewhat contradictory beast -- it's supposed to be a partially reusable commercial launcher aimed at reduced-cost 1-2Klb to LEO payloads, and also supposed to support hypersonic test of reusable thermal protection, SCRAMjet test articles, etc.
The problem with this is that there are already a number of totally commercial ventures aimed at the low-cost 1-to-2Klb-to-LEO market; NASA subsidy of one competitor would by itself be illegal government interference in the private market. The X-34's legal fig-leaf is, you guessed it, also being an X-vehicle.
NASA proposes to spend only $70 million total as their share of the X-34 development; all additional funding would have to come from the contractor.
The widespread rumor is that X-34 started out as an old-boy net gimme for an Orbital Sciences Corporation reusable son-of-Pegasus. Even if this is no longer true, even if this is now a truly open competition, the basic rationale for X-34 is seriously flawed. The commercial market is already addressing this need. Let it work for once.
We got hold of the NASA tape of the Reusable Launch Roundtable that took place in DC back in mid-September. (Kudos to Bill Taylor for digging it out, by the way.) We're going to do a one-time duplication run in mid- December; anyone who wants a copy, get your order mailed off by December 7th. The tape is four hours worth of middle-aged guys in suits sitting around a table talking, but a lot of them are people you've heard of, and a lot of them have interesting things to say on how we should go about financing and building the new reusable launchers.
We're pricing this the same as our two-hour DC-X/SSTO video tape, twenty dollars postpaid, fifteen for SAS members. You get twice as much footage, but no explosions on this one. At least no hydrogen explosions... Our DC-X/SSTO tape has footage of all five flights thus far, by the way, plus lots of other good stuff. Order both! Any surplus beyond duplicating and shipping expenses goes directly back into running SAS. VHS only. Send checks only (no cash or credit cards) to: SAS, 4855 E Warner Rd #24-150, Phoenix AZ 85044. Be sure to specify which tape you're ordering, Roundtable, DC-X/SSTO, or both.
Space Access Society currently plans to run our third annual conference, Space Access '95, in late April or early May, 1995. The conference focus will once again be on the business, technology, and politics of radically cheaper space transportation. The location will once again be in the Phoenix, Arizona metro area. The date should be pinned down in the next week or two; we're negotiating with a number of local hotels. (Room and function space charges look like being radically lower if we go for the first weekend in May; Phoenix has become an incredibly popular winter tourist destination in recent years.)
Behind-the-scenes efforts to fix various problems continue, and it's still not clear that there's any particular point where public pressure will help. This could change on short notice, though, so keep your powder dry. Well, actually, keep those word processors and fax machines and phones tuned up and ready... The coming year should be an interesting one. We're cautiously optimistic about the new Congress as regards support for SSTO.
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
To: Dr Jack Mansfield, NASA OSAT
cc: Dan Goldin,
Gene Austin, MSFC,
Lt.Col Sponable, Phillips Lab
RE: Comments on the draft X-33 CAN 8-1 3 pages
From: Henry Vanderbilt, Executive Director,
Space Access Society
602 431-9283 voice/fax
hvanderbilt@bix.com email
November 2nd, 1994
Gentlemen:
This is a preliminary response; we may have followup comments to make
in the next few days. Distribution of this draft has been slow. (As
you're probably aware, as of Monday the draft CAN was still not
available on the internet.) We will of course be more than willing to
explain any points we might not have made as clearly as we'd like.
We should note before going on that we understand quite well that the
most important factor in the success of any project is the people
running it. Good managers can make even a less than ideally
structured project fly, and from what we've heard, X-33 is in the
hands of good managers.
That said, we'd prefer to see those managers set up with the right
program structure at the start, rather than spending the next few
years fighting one battle after another to deal with the problems
caused by an inappropriate initial setup.
SAS X-33 CAN 8-1 Comments
First, a problem with the generic CAN structure described in Appendix
B, "Instructions For Responding To NASA Cooperative Agreement Notice":
Section 5, "CAN-Specific Items": "Cooperative agreements require
substantial involvement by NASA in performance of the work under the
agreement." Appendix B goes on to describe a requirement for specific
signed deals with a NASA Center Director or Directors for use of
Center resources as part of any CAN proposal, and reemphasizes this
requirement several times subsequently.
We feel that this requirement is a mistake. Given the context of past
NASA practices, this will be seen by potential contractors as a broad
hint that the more NASA center resources they use (and thus gain
funding for), the more likely their proposal is to be accepted. The
contractors should be encouraged to use only those NASA resources they
believe necessary for successful completion of the project.
We suggest that this "requirement" for use of NASA center resources be
changed to an offer of such resources, and that an explicit statement
be added to the generic CAN response requirements in Appendix B, to
the effect that degree of use of NASA resources will not be a factor
in contractor selection.
X-33 Draft CAN-Specific Problems:
We see problems here in a couple of broad areas, the 25Klb-to-Station
RLV followon requirement and the associated business/financial plan
requirement.
The strong linkage to a 25Klb-to-Station followon RLV throughout the
draft CAN is in our view a grave mistake, for a number of reasons:
- First, it drives X-33 toward being an operational prototype rather
than a quick-and-dirty X-vehicle, which in turn will substantially
increase the project's complexity, cost, and schedule.
- Second, it forces the contractors to focus on a vehicle (and level
of technology) other than that which might in their best judgement
be most likely to be commercially viable. This renders the required
"business plan"/commercial financing projections farcical. (We had
occasion to show this CAN to a respected venture capital
professional with some expertise in the aerospace field; his
considered judgement was that no way in hell would the followon RLV
as described in the draft attract commercial funding, absent 100%
government guarantees, and that the "business plans" generated in
response to this CAN could not be other than pure fiction.)
The CAN as written attempts to obtain for NASA a followon vehicle
built to NASA's spec as a one-for-one Shuttle replacement, yet
financed with someone else's money. Frankly, all data we've seen to
date indicates that such a vehicle would be grossly oversized and
overdesigned for the majority of commercial missions. If NASA wants
such a vehicle, NASA is, one way or another, going to have to finance
it at some point.
Obviously NASA does have to address its need to replace Shuttle
sometime early in the next century. We'd like to suggest a two-phase
strategy more likely to get NASA what it needs at affordable cost than
that laid out in the draft X-33 CAN.
- Phase 1: Via the X-33 process, encourage development of
commercially viable, commercially financeable SSTO transports,
sufficient in capability for routine Station crew transfer and
resupply missions if not for transporting entire station modules.
Availability of such commercially financed ships for NASA charter
should considerably reduce both Shuttle usage and overall costs of
supporting Station, freeing up considerable NASA resources, even if
their payload to Station is considerably less than 25Klb.
- Phase 2: Apply these freed resources to development and purchase
of several copies of a "stretched" version of a suitable existing
flight-proven commercial SSTO, with provision for launch assist of
some sort (strap-ons, or perhaps the proposed magnetic launcher) for
occasional heavy-lift missions.
A relatively small amount of assist early in flight can increase an
SSTO's useful payload several times over. The added operational
complexity of such assist rules it out for routine commercial
missions, but for the occasional NASA heavy-lift mission, the
greatly reduced development cost of such an assisted-launch
derivative (as compared to a purpose-built heavy lifter) may well
compensate for the added complexity.
SAS Suggested Changes To The X-33 CAN, Preliminary List
- Revise the X-33 CAN by substituting throughout "traceable to a
commercially viable SSTO transport able to carry a useful load to
and from Station" for "traceable to a 25Klb-to-station SSTO
transport" If "useful load" must be defined further, leave it at
"sufficient for a useful crew transfer or cargo delivery container".
In general, let industry figure out the implementation details.
- Deemphasize NASA evaluation of followon RLV business/financial
plans as part of the selection process. In the first place, such
plans if serious will likely be proprietary and confidential. In
the second place, such are outside NASA's main expertise. Such
plans should exist, but the incentive for sound planning should be
potential future profit, not NASA oversight.
- Change X-33 engine-out safe abort from "goal" to "requirement".
At the same time, get rid of the "safe recovery" probabilities
requirement; such calculations require far too many assumptions
about as-yet unknowns. Substitute a general requirement for
reliable intact abort throughout flight despite any likely
individual system failure.
- Downgrade "Abort Once Around" from required to desirable. (As
commonly used "AOA" implies return to launch site cross-range.)
Given self-ferry ability plus alternate CONUS launch/landing site
availability, AOA is less important than commonly believed for the
military, and not very important at all for commercial flights.
- Remove the "subscale" specification. If a contractor wants to bid
a "full-scale" X rocket, they should be able to, assuming they think
they can build such on the available funds.
- Change "7 day turnaround" to "rapidest possible turnaround" - let
the contractors decide what they can do, and then use this as a
factor in evaluating the bids. Considerably better than 7 days
should be the goal.
- Accelerate the overall X-33 schedule considerably, to one more
appropriate to an X-vehicle. We strongly urge that first flight
target date be no later than mid-1997, with incentives for reaching
that milestone earlier.
sincerely,
(signed)
Henry Vanderbilt
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