NASA panel says US cannot do space any more.

Because NASA isn't getting enough money!

rt.com/usa/163736-mars-nasa-funding-strategy

You need bigger rockets to do bigger things, and NASA doesn't have the budget for that.

Elon Musk's vision

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Colonial_Transporter

Based on an older vision

http://www.wired.com/2013/01/ford-ae...c-empire-1962/

The issues are the same.

Bigger hotter rockets.

http://www.bobkrone.com/sites/defaul...iam%20Mook.pdf


What we can do today, that we couldn't do in '62:

(1) We know water is abundant on Mars, and a lot about Mars' CO2 atmosphere - so we can make methane and LOX to fuel engines using solar power;

(2) Self-replicating micro-machinery, micro-reactors, convert CO2 to plastics, self-assemble products, again using solar power;

(3) Suspended animation is a solved problem - check out Mark Roth MD;

(4) Anti-radiation medication - check out Ex-Rad;

The Musk Mars Colonial Transporter uses nine methane fuelled Raptor engines in each rocket module. They generate 454 tonnes of force each. That's 4,090 tonnes of force at lift off to propel a 3200 tonne rocket module into space.

A 7 element MCT system, very similar to the one I've described previously, masses 23,650 tonnes at lift off and carries 1,250 tonnes into Low Earth Orbit.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/45631474/S...rived-Launcher

The Mars Colonial transport payload consists of a stage carrying 929 tonne of Methane and LOX. Another 121 tonnes is propellant tank and engines. Finally, 200 tonnes are crew and cargo spread across 253 persons.

The 929,000 kg propellant consists of a 10 meter diameter 17.324 meter long lozenge - with spherical end caps - and a spherical bulkhead 10.58 meters from the bottom end.

The bottom hemisphere is surrounded with an annular aerospike nozzle truncated with a heat shield that is used for boost and for atmospheric entry.

http://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/Sp...DP_Drawing.gif

The MCT stage is designed very much like the 'wet station' concept by vonBraun from 1964.

Once the tank is depleted, people move in to use the tank interior as a habitat during transit.

A 10 meter diameter x 11.62 meter long pressure vessel with 6 levels, is the former lox tank. It's divided into 252 private cabins which can be joined together in pairs.

At launch 252 people are situated in four rings around the top of the tank's hemisphere, 63 outward facing seats per ring. These seats allow direct access to the outside and operate as individual airlocks, changing stations, where each sit in their own personal long duration space suit.

Each station is self contained and is equipped for ejection and re-entry during launch and landing.

The seats also support suspended animation and emergency medical treatment - so they are a private support centre for each passenger.

There is a 1 meter diameter lock at the centre of the top hemisphere for tank interior access. There is an annular storage space behind the circular wall of 252 outward facing seats. This is the social centre of the ship during transit, allowing one to retire to their personal space.

After landing on Mars, the self replicating machinery builds stuff from the Martian soil powered by sunlight.

https://vimeo.com/25401444

Building a self-sufficient home/factory/farm for each family/person, which is itself capable of self-replication.

The MCT upper stage acts as a hotel during build out of the self replicating system. A 1 tonne replicator takes 11 replications to build 10 tonne habitats for each of the 200 colonists. Of the 253 another 30 are tourists, who return to Earth and 23 are crew, which return or cycle out with crew members on Mars support side.

Once the colonists, tourists and crew members are removed from the ship, the tank is reset for refill, and refilled using solar power to process water and CO2 into CH4 and LOX. The ship then returns to Earth with crew and tourists.

At $500,000 per colonist, the 200 per trip generate $100 million per trip. The tourists pay $3.5 million and generate another $105 million per trip.

The delta vee required to leave Mars on a flight back to Earth is 6.72 km/sec. This requires a propellant fraction of 84.9% With a 929 tonne propellant load, and a 121 tonne inert mass, this leaves 44.2 tonne of return payload. 3 tonnes of Mars materials, mostly for the jewelry trade, are returned to Earth at a cost of $32 per gram. This earns another $100 million per trip.

In article ,
says...

Because NASA isn't getting enough money!

Bull$****! NASA is being forced to spend money in stupid ways due to
politics. SLS/Orion are the poster child for wasteful government
spending designed to spread spending throughout as many key districts as
possible.

Bigger and bigger launch vehicles aren't the answer to everything. In
particular, developing technologies like inflatable reentry shields is
one of many enabling technologies that helps to eliminate the "need" for
very large launch vehicles for a manned Mars mission. Cryogenic storage
of LH2, LOX, and other cryogenic propellants is another. In space
refueling of cryogenics is yet another. In situ fuel production...

The list is seemingly endless, but each piece, if taken as a small R&D
program, wouldn't be terribly expensive compared to the seemingly
"obvious" alternative of the uber expensive SLS.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

On Thursday, June 5, 2014 11:32:53 PM UTC+12, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,

says...



Because NASA isn't getting enough money!



Bull$****! NASA is being forced to spend money in stupid ways due to

politics.

Agreed - that wasn't the point of my discussion, but its a valid point nevertheless.

It is the nature of political institutions to be political. As Milton Friedman once said, expecting a political institution to be free of politics and the attendant waste that implies is like expecting a cat to bark or a dog to meow.

Bottom line, NASA isn't getting enough money, is a mantra cuts to the chase of what NASA needs to do something. Its not the low cost solution however.. Its only a symptom of NASA being a government agency.

The ONLY way a government agency can do wonderful amazing things is when there is a massive RATE OF INCREASE in spending. Then, they'll spend generations memorializing their wonderful achievement if you let them, as they suck ever more money out the taxpayers. This will continue across the board until the Republic fails, as already happened in the former Soviet Union, is happening in Europe and Japan, and will happen in the USA and China.


SLS/Orion are the poster child for wasteful government
spending designed to spread spending throughout as many key districts as
possible.

Agreed.


Bigger and bigger launch vehicles aren't the answer to everything.

Agreed. Space travel is a complex business. You have to do many things well. Even so, we can look at the highlights needed today.

Highly reusable vehicles, ones that have 20 year working lives, cost less than 0.1% or less their purchase price in maintenance to reuse, and are usable 2,000x or more without compromising safety or reliability - is a critical technical achievement.

However, in concise conversation, bigger and hotter launch vehicles lower the cost of space access more rapidly than anything else, if choices must be made about what to talk about in a 4 minute elevator conversation.

In
particular, developing technologies like inflatable reentry shields is
one of many enabling technologies that helps to eliminate the "need" for
very large launch vehicles for a manned Mars mission.

Inflatable technologies are near and dear to me. I've been a proponent of inflatable technologies for low-cost re-entry and entry into Mars' atmosphere for many years.

Saying we have to ignore one good idea to do another good idea is the fallacy of 'false choice' - there is nothing in inflatable thermal protection gear that makes us not choose to build adequately sized vehicles with high exhaust velocities. (bigger & hotter)

Cryogenic storage
of LH2, LOX, and other cryogenic propellants is another.

Agreed - interestingly that's the 'hotter' side of the equation I mentioned - as far as chemical rockets go - since LOX/LH2 gives a hotter exhaust (and higher exhaust velocities) than LOX/RP1 or N2O4/A-50.

In space
refueling of cryogenics is yet another.

Absolutely correct. If I can refuel my BMW Hydrogen 7 at the pump, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to refuel a hydrogen vehicle in space.

In situ fuel production...

Yes, I've written extensively on that in these posts recently, as well, giving peer reviewed papers on the subject as reference.



The list is seemingly endless,
but each piece, if taken as a small R&D
program, wouldn't be terribly expensive compared to the seemingly
"obvious" alternative of the uber expensive SLS.

Absolutely correct. A natural path toward continuous improvement must be followed. There are a variety of ways this may be done. The scale of the problem is known.

If you take a graduate degree in Aerospace engineering as I have done, you will find there are about 3,000 things you must do well to do space travel. Failure to do ALL of them well, ends up in failure. Alternatively, it gives you about 2,999,000 ways to do a two-way combination of factors to improve things. The ways to organize ALL those factors optimally is very large, not infinite, but larger than the number of subatomic particles in the visible universe.

The only approach that provides sustained progress is an emergent one, which you have outlined one way that can occur. There are others. In fact, the present epoch may not only be replete with failure of the international regime as we have known it, but also known for the rise of emergence as a method of governance.


..




Jeff

--

"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would

magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper

than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in

and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

In article ,
says...

On Thursday, June 5, 2014 11:32:53 PM UTC+12, Jeff Findley wrote:

Bigger and bigger launch vehicles aren't the answer to everything.

Agreed. Space travel is a complex business. You have to do many
things well. Even so, we can look at the highlights needed today.

Highly reusable vehicles, ones that have 20 year working lives,
cost less than 0.1% or less their purchase price in maintenance
to reuse, and are usable 2,000x or more without compromising
safety or reliability - is a critical technical achievement.

This is going to take several iterations of designs to get there. The
space shuttle was iteration 1.0, and it sucked. The problem was that
NASA sold it as "operational" after five flights and proceeded to treat
it as "finished". It wasn't. Continuous spiral development could have
improved it quite a bit. Instead, we got a few piecemeal upgrades, some
driven more by replacing obsolete, hard to maintain, hardware rather
than staying "ahead of the curve". In other words, they reacted to
problem rather than being proactive.

It's unclear how much it could have truly evolved though, because the ET
being throw-away with the SSME's on the orbiter was a design decision
that meant that the system could never have been made fully reusable
without a major change to the overall system design. In other words, it
was a dead end in terms of reusability.

Falcon 9R is another approach to resuability, but it's not quite there
yet. The hardest part will be trying to reuse the second stage. I'd
say we have at least 5 to 10 years before we'll know if the second stage
can become reusable. Then, and only then, will we truly find out if
this approach is viable.

Reusable systems with 20 year working times are far, far into the
future. Because of this, I'd rather focus on the present and what can
be done with relatively inexpensive vehicles like Falcon 9R.

However, in concise conversation, bigger and hotter launch vehicles
lower the cost of space access more rapidly than anything else, if
choices must be made about what to talk about in a 4 minute elevator
conversation.

I quite disagree. Going big early (for launch vehicles) locks you into
super high fixed costs and very low flight rates, preventing rapid
spiral development of launch technology. Saturn V had this problem, the
shuttle had this problem, and SLS will have this problem.

Going big early would only work with a massive infusion of cash
amounting to at least 10s of billions of dollars of *additional* NASA
funding per year. THIS ISN'T GOING TO HAPPEN, EVER!!!! Not accepting
this reality is what keeps NASA going down this same FAILED path
repeatedly. This is a lesson that NASA and you should learn.

In
particular, developing technologies like inflatable reentry shields is
one of many enabling technologies that helps to eliminate the "need" for
very large launch vehicles for a manned Mars mission.

Inflatable technologies are near and dear to me. I've been a
proponent of inflatable technologies for low-cost re-entry and entry
into Mars' atmosphere for many years.

Saying we have to ignore one good idea to do another good idea is
the fallacy of 'false choice' - there is nothing in inflatable
thermal protection gear that makes us not choose to build
adequately sized vehicles with high exhaust velocities. (bigger &
hotter)

It would be far better to invest in the following *before* investing in
big launch vehicles:

Inflatable habitat modules.
Inflatable heat shields for Mars atmospheric entry and braking.
Cryogenic storage of propellants.
Transfer of cryogenic propellants (i.e. fuel depots).
In-situ fuel production (lunar as well as Mars).

If all of the above prove successful, the need for large launch vehicles
is reduced or perhaps even eliminated. Most of what you need for a Mars
mission is fuel. That does *not* have to go up on a large launch
vehicle since it's infinitely divisible into smaller pieces.

Putting the launch vehicle first, before you really know how big the
payloads *need* to be is stupid, plain and simple.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

On Friday, June 6, 2014 11:37:45 PM UTC+12, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,

says...



On Thursday, June 5, 2014 11:32:53 PM UTC+12, Jeff Findley wrote:



Bigger and bigger launch vehicles aren't the answer to everything.



Agreed. Space travel is a complex business. You have to do many

things well. Even so, we can look at the highlights needed today.



Highly reusable vehicles, ones that have 20 year working lives,

cost less than 0.1% or less their purchase price in maintenance

to reuse, and are usable 2,000x or more without compromising

safety or reliability - is a critical technical achievement.



This is going to take several iterations of designs to get there.

A continuous improvement process gets there, and moves beyond - the time it takes is a measure of the effort expended and the efficiency of the expenditure.

The
space shuttle was iteration 1.0, and it sucked.

Nixon wanted something different than the Apollo era hardware because they were associated strongly with JFK, whom he did not like. I think it poetic that the Shuttle is remembered the way you mention, and its associated with him.

Anyone who remembers the 1952 Collier's cover "Man Will Conquer Space Soon" knows that vonBraun had promoted fly-back boosters for a long time,

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=24888

http://i.imgur.com/D67k1.jpg

and it would have been a natural extension of the Saturn booster to make it so;

http://www.aerospaceprojectsreview.c...es/v1n2ad8.gif

http://up-ship.com/blog/wp-content/u.../05/image3.gif

http://sites.google.com/site/spaceod...9/stsbl70a.jpg

If you look at NASA's budget, and subtract out;

(1) the SRB,
(2) the SSME (sticking with J2/F1/RL10 combination),
(3) the ultra-light heat shield,
(4) the advanced delta wing,

And modify the Saturn V first two stages to produce a hydrogen/oxygen upper stage, powered by J2 engines, with an F1 powered first stage, along the lines of Maxime Faget's design, you end up with a $2 billion - not $200 billion system.

The problem was that
NASA sold it as "operational" after five flights and proceeded to treat
it as "finished". It wasn't.

If you read the internal documents and endless white papers of the committees that reviewed the project you will see how much spending was politically motivated. Those who wanted to get their piece of the pie were actually fearful of efficient low-cost designs since it would break their rice bowl.

This is the nature of real leadership, the willingness and capacity to break rice bowls in the service of efficient achievement of goals. Standing up to the Army for example and telling them you weren't going to use SRBs on the system, no matter what that did to the price of gunpowder.

Continuous spiral development could have
improved it quite a bit.

Continuous improvement is a good idea, as long as it doesn't morph into and excuse for continuous waste. This goes back to the motivations and rewards of individuals.

Instead, we got a few piecemeal upgrades, some
driven more by replacing obsolete, hard to maintain, hardware rather
than staying "ahead of the curve". In other words, they reacted to
problem rather than being proactive.

That's the nature of long-standing government bureaucracies. They actually repel innovative thinkers. Which is why vonBraun and Faget were sidelined early in the process.

https://archive.org/details/MiltonFr...ndCollectivism


It's unclear how much it could have truly evolved though, because the ET
being throw-away with the SSME's on the orbiter was a design decision
that meant that the system could never have been made fully reusable

Yes, the ET-redesigned as a modular booster would have been a natural evolution of the Shuttle technology, once it got flying. The ET was actually built at the same facility Michoud, as the Saturn V first and second stages were built, so, this was the real heart of the infrastructure that gave the US leadership in space. At least as far as airframes go.

without a major change to the overall system design. In other words, it
was a dead end in terms of reusability.

An inflatable thermal protection system, to protect it and maintain it at the right altitude during re-entry, so that the heat and gee loads were survivable, with an inflatable lift system after its speed falls to subsonic speeds, would have been an interesting experiment to try, especially after the lift capacity of the shuttle was derated.


Falcon 9R is another approach to resuability, but it's not quite there
yet. The hardest part will be trying to reuse the second stage. I'd
say we have at least 5 to 10 years before we'll know if the second stage
can become reusable.

Timing is a function of effort level, and the efficiency of that effort. We've been building re-entry vehicles from suborbit since the 1950s. There's no real reason we cannot build a TSTO-RLV highly reusable vehicle.

Then, and only then, will we truly find out if
this approach is viable.

We know how to build TSTO-RLV and we know how to build highly reusable modular rockets. Its just a matter of giving the right team the right money to do it.


Reusable systems with 20 year working times are far, far into the
future.

Not necessarily. If we spent as much developing boosters as we spent on developing ICs we could have something flying in 2 years, with the right people and financial controls in place.

Because of this, I'd rather focus on the present and what can
be done with relatively inexpensive vehicles like Falcon 9R.

The SpaceX developments benefit from TRW's work on the Pintle Fed engine throughout the 1960s 70s 80s and 90s, when he bought those assets from TRW in 2003. He has since invested several billions of dollars - with appropriate fiscal controls and management oversight - to move steadily forward.

Had he $70 billion a year instead of $0.7 billion a year, he would already be flying his Mars Colonial Transporter, which is basically a large modular freighter rocket capable of putting up over 1,250 tonnes into LEO.

Musk is struggling against forces within the military and government that fear that he will break their rice bowls. He is benefiting from the fact that lack of funds are creating other issues for the same folks he threatens, and so there is a distraction there. Still, its the politics, not the technology that is challenging.


However, in concise conversation, bigger and hotter launch vehicles
lower the cost of space access more rapidly than anything else, if
choices must be made about what to talk about in a 4 minute elevator
conversation.



I quite disagree. Going big early (for launch vehicles) locks you into
super high fixed costs and very low flight rates, preventing rapid
spiral development of launch technology.

Well, it depends on what the mission is. If your goal is to increase the mass flow rate between worlds for each dollar invested, you need bigger hotter rockets to achieve that. Its pretty straight forward.

Experimental rockets to prove a concept before committing to larger systems, is part and parcel of the larger rocket programme. Fortunately, there are many opportunities for many types of missions. So, for a commercial operation, you can use profits from one scale to fund the development of another scale, as you explore design details.

For example, you can build a small one stage suborbital transport for space tourism, use it later as an upper stage for a small two stage to orbit RLV to put up communications satellites, then use the first stage as the upper stage on an even larger RLV, to put tourists into orbit, while a three stage version is used for GTO, and deep space applications.

Of course, if you're not cash strapped, and you have a larger vision, you can start larger as in the Apollo programme.


Saturn V had this problem,

The problem of Apollo was that the plug was pulled in a meeting on November 24, 1963 between McNamara and LBJ - this was actually the first meeting of the new President following the assassination and leaders like vonBraun were sidelined.

Cutting back the 1964 NASA budget, and actually reducing funding dramatically thereafter, while increasing the budget for Vietnam turned the Saturn V from a workhorse into a white elephant.

Had the $200 billion spent on Vietnam in the 1960s would have been added to the $20 billion spent on Apollo, at the same time, we would have seen broad commercial ventures in space bear fruit by the 1970s. Had ROVER/NERVA funding been maintained and continued support from the US military been sustained throughout the 1960s, we would have seen safe reliable, low cost, compact high temperature reactors roll out by the 1970s that made synthetic oil from sea water and coal at about $0.10 per barrel, which would have ended the age of conventional oil, and sustained continued economic growth in the 8% to 12% range from 1960 through 2000.
the

shuttle had this problem,

The shuttle's original design and flight rate was perfect for expanded low cost presence in space. Continual redesign to meet political goals combined with a reduction in actual flight rate because there was no budget for the payloads, made this potential workhorse into a white elephant also.

and SLS will have this problem.

Yes, given who is doing it and why, and how it is being done, combined with a lack of clear mission.



Going big early would only work with a massive infusion of cash
amounting to at least 10s of billions of dollars of *additional* NASA
funding per year.

NASA shouldn't be designing and building spacecraft. NASA should be controlling transfer and access to classified information for qualified vendors, and funding fundamental research into improved technology with the help of the US military. In this role they would operate like NACA did during the heyday of airline development in the 1920s, and the result would be the same, the commercial development of space.

THIS ISN'T GOING TO HAPPEN, EVER!!!!

No, the USA has collapsed economically. So, US government agencies, not allied with the drug and criminal cartels, don't have the money to carry out any mission.

Not accepting
this reality is what keeps NASA going down this same FAILED path
repeatedly.

NASA, like George Washington, should step back from the power offered them. Washington was offered Kingship over the American colonies following the Revolutionary War. He stepped back and urged the people to support a Republic.

NASA should step back from the roles they have played in the past, sell off the assets they no longer need, to qualified commercial entities, and focus on those tasks that secure the national interest, public safety and progress, carried out by commercial operators.

This is a lesson that NASA and you should learn.

Building small test vehicles to gain an understanding that can then be used by commercial ventures is a good model for NASA to follow. NACA played a similar role with the introduction of streamlining, monocoque construction, jet engines, and cantilevered wings in airliners.

In
particular, developing technologies like inflatable reentry shields is
one of many enabling technologies that helps to eliminate the "need" for
very large launch vehicles for a manned Mars mission.



Inflatable technologies are near and dear to me. I've been a
proponent of inflatable technologies for low-cost re-entry and entry
into Mars' atmosphere for many years.

Saying we have to ignore one good idea to do another good idea is
the fallacy of 'false choice' - there is nothing in inflatable
thermal protection gear that makes us not choose to build
adequately sized vehicles with high exhaust velocities. (bigger &
hotter)

It would be far better to invest in the following *before* investing in
big launch vehicles:



Inflatable habitat modules.

Inflatable heat shields for Mars atmospheric entry and braking.

Cryogenic storage of propellants.

Transfer of cryogenic propellants (i.e. fuel depots).

In-situ fuel production (lunar as well as Mars).

There are 471 civilian nuclear plants in the world produce 2,756 TWh of electricity. along with over 5,500 coal fired power plants in the world that produce 8,700 TWh of electricity. The average cost of electricity in the world today is $0.14 per kWh. The nuclear plants earn $385 billion per year.. The coal fired plants earn $1,218 billion per year.

A programme that arranged for off-take contracts for nuclear plant operators as well as coal plant operators to buy electricity from space at $0.06 per kWh has the potential to reduce the cost of energy for these operators as well as generate $165 billion per year for nuclear plant operators and $522 billion per year for coal plant operators.

If the governments of the world gave nuclear and coal plant operators ten years unregulated operations if they signed up for a solar receiver for each of their plants, and committed to clean laser energy from space, these operators would sign up for 20 year contracts and make a modest deposit against their first year's plants. The value of a 20 year contract, discounted at 6.25% per year, is worth $1,854 billion for the nuclear side and $5,867 billion for the coal side. A total value of $7,721 billion.

Of course, these off-take commitments, and the deposit, cannot be spent today. But they can be used to arrange a bond, or some other debt instrument, that bears substantially higher rates of return for energy speculators. Let's say we have a 5 year programme that follows a typical development schedule;

$0.08 - the first year
$0.17 - the second year
$0.33 - the third year
$0.25 - the fourth year
$0.17 - the fifth year/startup

$1.00 - total

If we pay 40% annual rate of return, compounded, for all money at risk over the term of the programme, we have the following return schedule;

RISK RETURN
$0.08 $0.45 - Year one
$0.17 $0.64 - Year two
$0.33 $0.91 - Year three
$0.25 $0.49 - Year four
$0.17 $0.23 - Year five

$1.00 $2.73 - Total

Dividing the amount risked, into the total percentage of the return allocated to support that risk, gives market value of the programme going forward;

PCT $/pct

16.44% $0.51 - year one
23.48% $0.71 - year two
33.55% $0.99 - year three
17.97% $1.39 - year four
8.56% $1.95 - year five

100.00% TOTAL

So, basically, for each dollar invested, there is $2.43 allocated. If the cost of delivering all the power contracted for in the 20 year deliver schedule (starting in five years) is less than

$7,721 billion / 2.43 = $3,177 billion

then we can offer 40% compounded annual rates of return. We can also profit share, splitting any savings with investors, contractors, and managers to reward efficiency. This will cut costs to a minimum since it will result in profit without any cost and is beneficial to all as long as profit margins are below 30% to 40% range.

So, this gives the scope of a programme that can be used to displace nuclear and coal fired power plants with beamed energy from space.

Within this context, we cut out a budget to build an adequately sized highly reusable launcher to support these operations.

We require to orbit 1.3 trillion watts of solar power satellites. The Mars Colonial Transporter proposed by SpaceX has a capacity of 1,250 tonnes into LEO. An inflatable concentrator that masses an average of 4 grams per square meter, forms a disk 20 km in diameter and intercepts 425.3 billion watts. With a 30% conversion and transfer efficiency, this generates a laser beam 127.6 billion watts. A total of 11 satellites are required to meet the demands of the contracts called for. A fleet of five launchers consisting of 36 modules, along with a supply of 12 satellites, with sufficient budget for small scale trials, would have a high probability of delivering the power on time and on budget. Allocating $1 trillion for the satellites, and $1 trillion for the launcher, and reserving $1.177 trillion for over-runs, and incentives, we have $200 billion per launcher and $82 billion per satellite as our budget.

Since the Market Cap of Boeing is $101 billion and the Market Cap of Lockheed is $53 billion, and the market Cap of United Technologies is $109 billion - we can see that the ability to raise $3,177 billion in financing leans heavily toward the MAKE in our MAKE BUY decision matrix.

That is, we would be buying so much hardware, that it makes more sense to buy the company, once financing is secured, than to buy rockets.

So, we buy the largest commercial space operations around today, merge them all together, then break the companies along divisional lines, into independent operations, and sell those divisions we don't need for our programme, then use the money received to fund the development of the launcher and satellite supply chain.

That's how you do it.

You don't go hat in hand to the American people or the US government or NASA and beg to spend this or that few hundred million this or that way.

If all of the above prove successful, the need for large launch vehicles
is reduced or perhaps even eliminated.

It depends on what your goals are.

Most of what you need for a Mars
mission is fuel. That does *not* have to go up on a large launch
vehicle since it's infinitely divisible into smaller pieces.

The logistical cost is a factor, as well as reliability. There is no demand to go to Mars. There IS a demand for clean, low-cost, abundant energy.

On a smaller scale, there is a demand for global wireless broadband. One can build a system around that. However, the total amount of money, and lift capacity, needed, is such that, you cannot support the acquisition of assets. The MAKE BUY decision leans toward BUY in that case. This puts you in the headlights of oncoming interest groups that will flatten you and derail the programme.

Better to think big, go after the dirtiest energy producers, acquire what you need, and then use your profits to

a) expand into the global communications market
b) expand off world into;
i) Mars colonization;
ii) asteroid mining;
c) develop laser propelled spacecraft to replace chemical boosters



Putting the launch vehicle first, before you really know how big the
payloads *need* to be is stupid, plain and simple.

Correct.



Jeff

--

"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would

magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper

than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in

and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0e2FJmXujA

SO, you buy up the major aerospace companies, divide them along functional lines, and sell off the assets you don't need for your programme, pocketing the gains.

Since this merger and allocation of focus is likely to add 20% or more to the bottom line of the facilities you spin off, your acquisition programme not only cuts out you paying profits to build your flight hardware and supply chain, it actually pays dividends.

The total Market Cap of the companies listed below is $322 billion a little more than 10% of the $3,177 billion in your budget once you have commitments from TEPCo and other nuclear plant operators, along with coal fired plant operators.

You only need 51% control to take over the company. As you acquire more of the company prices will likely rise. An efficient acquisition programme by a qualified buyer, will likely gain control for less than its Market Cap at the time the acquisition started.

Merging similar operations, realizing efficiencies, and selling off unneeded divisions and operations, after efficiencies are realized, raises total assets controlled by the acquiring party by $65 billion, to $387 billion. Selling off the divisions and business groups not needed returns $230 billion cash, with you retaining $157 billion of space launch assets, leaving $65 billion more in your pocket in the form of stock and cash.

The cash is sufficient to organize the assets you have along the lines needed to build the large booster and satellite system going forward.

The process also supports the national interest as well since it makes all operations more efficient and removes nonproductive capacities from the market.

* * *

Northrup Grumman $27 billion Market Cap:

Northrop Grumman is made up of four business sectors:

Aerospace Systems
Electronic Systems
Information Systems
Technical Services

Subsidiaries

Scaled Composites

* * *

Raytheon has a Market Cap of $32 billion:

Raytheon is composed of four major business divisions:

Integrated Defense Systems--based in Tewksbury, Massachusetts; Dan Crowley, President

Intelligence and Information Services--based in Dulles, Virginia; Lynn Dugle, President

Missile Systems--based in Tucson, Arizona; Taylor W. Lawrence, President

Space and Airborne Systems--based in McKinney, Texas; Rick Yuse, President.

Raytheon Business Exports Federation based in San Antonio, Texas

Raytheon's businesses are supported by several dedicated international operations including: Raytheon Australia; Raytheon Canada Limited; operations in Japan; Raytheon Microelectronics in Spain; Raytheon UK (formerly Raytheon Systems Limited); and ThalesRaytheonSystems, France.

* * *

Lockheed: $53 billion Market Cap:

Lockheed's operations were divided between several groups and divisions, many of which continue to operate within Lockheed Martin.

Aeronautical Systems group

Lockheed-California Company (CALAC), Burbank, California.
Lockheed-Georgia Company (GELAC), Marietta, Georgia.
Lockheed Advanced Aeronautics Company, Saugus, California.
Lockheed Aircraft Service Company (LAS), Ontario, California.
Lockheed Air Terminal, Inc. (LAT), Burbank, California, now Bob Hope Airport and owned by the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority.

Missiles, Space, and Electronics Systems Group

Lockheed Missiles & Space Company, Inc., Sunnyvale, California.
Lockheed Propulsion Company, Redlands, California.
Lockheed Space Operations Company, Titusville, Florida.
Lockheed Engineering and Management Services Company, Inc., Houston, Texas.
Lockheed Electronics Company, Inc., Plainfield, New Jersey.

Marine Systems group

Lockheed Shipbuilding Company, Seattle, Washington.
Lockport Marine Company, Portland, Oregon.
Advanced Marine Systems, Santa Clara, California.

Information Systems group

Datacom Systems Corporation, Teaneck, New Jersey.
CADAM Inc., Burbank, California.
Lockheed Data Plan, Inc., Los Gatos, California.
DIALOG Information Services, Inc, Palo Alto, California.
Metier Management Systems, London, England.
Integrated Systems and Solutions, Gaithersburg, MD.

* * *

Boeing with a Market Cap of $101 billion

The two largest divisions are Boeing Commercial Airplanes and Boeing Defense, Space & Security (BDS).

Boeing Capital
Boeing Commercial Airplanes
Boeing Defense, Space & Security
Phantom Works

Engineering, Operations & Technology
Boeing Research & Technology
Boeing Test & Evaluation
Intellectual Property Management
Information Technology
Environment, Health, and Safety[100]

Boeing Shared Services Group
Boeing Realty
Boeing Travel Management Company
Boeing Supplier Management

* * *

United Technologies Corporation $109 billion Market Cap

Business Units:

Carrier: A global manufacturer of heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigeration systems.

NORESCO

UTC Aerospace Systems: Designs and manufactures aerospace systems for commercial, regional, corporate and military aircraft; a major supplier for international space programs. Provides industrial products for the hydrocarbon, chemical, and food processing industries, construction and mining companies. UTC Aerospace Systems was formed by combining Hamilton Sundstrand and Goodrich in 2012.

Otis Elevator Company: Manufacturer, installer, and servicer of elevators, escalators, and moving walkways.

Pratt & Whitney: Designs and builds aircraft engines, gas turbines, and rocket engines.

Pratt & Whitney Canada:

Sikorsky Aircraft: Maker of helicopters for commercial, industrial, institutional, government, and military uses.

PZL Mielec

UTC Fire & Security: Makes fire detection and suppression systems, access control systems, and security alarm systems; provides security system integration and monitoring services.

United Technologies Research Center (UTRC): A centralized research facility that supports all UTC business units in developing new technologies and processes.

* * *

The balance of the market:

Humanity uses 989 TWh per year made from oil and another 4,768 TWh per year made from Natural Gas. This requires another 6 satellites - a total of 18 - launched over the first year of real operations. At $0.06 per kWh this translates to an additional $345 billion per year which means as an annuity paying 6.25% over 20 years this has a value of $3,878 billion.

This more than doubles the value of the operation once we fulfill our agreements with the coal and nuclear folks.

But this isn't the sweet spot in energy.

The sweet spot in energy is liquid fuels.

Humanity uses 3,574 million metric tons of crude oil each year at a cost of $2.6 trillion per year.

Once we have a dozen satellites orbiting the Earth, beaming energy to 6,000 nuclear and coal fired power plant facilities, and add another 6 satellites to provide for the needs of natural gas and oil fired power plants, we then acquire the major coal reserves, and convert the 7,783 million metric tons of coal stranded into 7,783 million metric tons of syncrude with the direct addition of hydrogen made from natural gas and 1,167 million metric tons of hydrogen produced by electrolysis using beamed energy from space.

This cuts out entirely the CO2 from conventional oil sales, since the cost of producing oil is greater than the selling price of oil at this volume. The price of fuel drops to around $1 per gallon, as oil prices drop below $40 per barrel, generating $2.1 trillion per year.

To make this hydrogen requires an additional 52 power satellites of the size described, increasing total number of satellites to 70. With five launchers, we increase rates of launch to two per week.

This increased volume of low-cost syncrude sparks an economic revival of unprecedented proportions. Converting the $2.1 trillion per year revenue into an annuity worth $23.6 trillion - radically improves our value and cash flow.

At this point we have the resources and the skill set needed to settle Mars, develop the asteroids, collect energy near the solar surface, develop large laser rockets, and ultimately, depopulate the world.

They need to change there approach, bigger rockets are not the answer. smaller satellites and probes is the answer they need to go miniature even Nano. surely a Nano probe could be fired into space (not orbit) from a ground based canon. either that or put all there efforts into the space elevator.

On Sunday, June 8, 2014 3:34:55 AM UTC+12, jody lee wrote:
They need to change there approach, bigger rockets are not the answer.

smaller satellites and probes is the answer they need to go miniature

even Nano. surely a Nano probe could be fired into space (not orbit)

from a ground based canon. either that or put all there efforts into the

space elevator.









--

jody lee

I've mentioned MEMS based systems as well. Nanosatellites are indeed interesting outcomes, with very small launchers. We still need minimum sized collectors and emitters however to meet the Rayleigh Criterion for optics. But within those constraints, small is good! Especially if it self-replicates, and is capable of swarming to form larger objects when needed.

congress and nasa need to end the good old boys giving killer contracts for stuff like SLS orion.

They need to fund more $$$ as eed money for people like elon Musk.

Orion . SLS shouldnt be built.....

"jody lee" wrote in message ...


They need to change there approach, bigger rockets are not the answer.
smaller satellites and probes is the answer they need to go miniature
even Nano. surely a Nano probe could be fired into space (not orbit)
from a ground based canon. either that or put all there efforts into the
space elevator.


Guns into orbit from Earth don't work overly well.

The drag from the atmosphere is a huge problem. And something smaller in
some ways is even worse (less momentum).

And you can't get into orbit using JUST a gun, need something to circularize
it.






--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net