CEV to be made commercially available

John Savard wrote:
On Mon, 17 Oct 2005 19:55:27 GMT, h (Rand
Simberg) wrote, in part:

There are many companies with rational reasons to have personnel flown
to the moon. What's lacking are companies that would be willing to do
it as expensively as the use of a CEV would require.

That's quite correct. It is absolutely true, every word of it.

However: just as Shenzou VI would not be out of the Earth's gravity if
it had a slightly higher orbit...

are you claiming that there are ways, absent the development of
far-future technologies such as a space elevator (or non-Newtonian
propulsion!), to send personnel to the moon at prices that would be
rational for even a *few* private companies to take advantage of?

That's right - cost is everything. And what drives the cost of putting
payloads into space? The cost of momentum obviously. We don't need
far future technologies to lower momentum costs. We need only a simple
program of development that assembles a capable team of scientists and
engineers, motivates them to lower costs, and provides consistent and
sufficient resources to carry out avenues of inquiry to actually lower
costs.

I recall a team from Ford went on a tour at the old Rockwell facilities
that built the SSME. The Ford team went in expecting to be impressed
by all the fancy space age technology NASA developed at great expense.
Instead they were appalled at the lack of sophistication, and even the
lack of good quality control systems. Ford was way ahead a shaping
metals and fabricating complex apparatus from them. Ahead in terms of
sophistication, tracking, quality, and cost. WHY? Because NASA
contractors operate on a COST-PLUS basis. Ford operates on a PROFIT
basis. A NASA contractor therefore is rewarded by creating additional
costs, as long as those costs are justified to the government. Ford
Motor Car is rewarded by eliminating costs, as long as those costs do
not material affect the quality or merchantibility of the motor cars
being built.

So, all we must really do is free private sector contractors from the
cost-plus contracting mindset and reward them for reducing costs.

We haven't done this, which is why we didn't follow Max Faget's advice
and reuse the F1 and J2 engine sets in building a fully reusable
shuttle with an ablative sheild.


http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221/p208.jpg

Instead we invented a new SSME and SRB combination with new thermal
tiles - since that justified higher costs and hence higher profits. We
also went from stacked stages to parallel stages which created
headaches we are still living with today (failed O-rings causing
complete destruction of the shuttle at lift-off, foam impacting thermal
tiles again causing complete destruction of the shuttle at re-entry)

Even so, we could reuse today's Shuttle technology, or even Apollo era
moonship technology - updated with modern sensing and control
technologies - to great benefit.

The External Tank could be modified as a flyback booster, lofted by
modified SSME (aka STME)

http://books.nap.edu/openbook/0309047269/html/49.html

- to create a completely reusable system based on existing airframes
put together in novel ways.

These large boosters could also be ganged together to create fully
reusable HLLVs that loft up to 500 tons into LEO - more than 4x that of
the old Apollo era Saturn launchers.

With this sort of launch capacity it would be possible to create a
lunar base that's 4x the size and 1/10th the cost of the proposed
Apollo based lunar base

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/aporbase.htm

With a fully reusable system - this could be quite cost-effective,
provided the government put in the capital needed to develop test and
build the initial fleet. Once operational, profits from fleet
operations could maintain and expand the fleet.

* * *

Failing such infrastructure development it would be possible to send
people to orbit around the moon using a variant of the venerable Soyuz
spacecraft.

http://www.thespacereview.com/gallery/7

This wouldn't involve a landing, but could involve orbiting the moon
and returning to Earth.

An updated version of the Lunikod spacecraft could be landed on the
moon, and those on orbit could drive it via wireless remote control
using telepresence though.

But the Soyuz based system could be modified with multiple launches to
support a lunar landing - along the lines of that proposed for the
Gemini program of the early 1960s.

http://www.astronautix.com/articles/bygemoon.htm

Basically, you would launch a slimmed down lunar lander to lunar orbit,
to await the arrival of a Soyuz based manned system launched later.
Then, the two would rendezvous in lunar orbit, and a crew member or
members would transit from the Soyuz to the lander - and they would
land on the moon and return to lunar orbit a short time later. They
would then transit back to the Soyuz and head back to Earth.

QUICK RESPONSE PROGRAM USING BEST-AVAILABLE HARDWA

COST OF COMMERCIAL RIDE TO ORBIT: $20 million
COST OF COMMERCIAL RIDE TO LUNAR-ORBIT: $120 million
COST OF COMMERCIAL RIDE TO LUNAR-SURFACE: $1,500 million

NOVA CLASS REUSABLE LAUNCHER WITH RESUABLE HARDWARE ON MOON:

COST OF LOW-COST REUSABLE MOONSHIP: $6,500 million
COST PER FLIGHT: $300 million
TONS ON LUNAR SURFACE: 100 tons (1 way)
30 tons (round trip)

COST PER TON: Cargo one way: $3 million/ton
Round trip: $10 million/ton

50 passengers, 5 crew - $6 million per person (cost)
$10 million per person (retail)

Fleet of 3 - one flight per month
600 people per year

12 flights per year - $6,000 million/year revenue
$2,000 million/year EBITDA

Add another - cargo carrier - for 1 way flights - and send 400 tons per
year to the moon one way. With inflatable habitats and other
innovations, one could put together a lunar resort in short order
within these budgets.

http://www.pubs.asce.org/WWWdisplay.cgi?0306201



Of course, looking at prices in my local department store... if it
weren't for the effects of the balance of payments deficit, perhaps the
U.S. could just buy Shenzou rockets from China!

Or, given NAFTA... Hecho en Mexico, anyone?

On the other hand, I think that it is possible to launch *small* rockets
quite inexpensively. On the Astronautix site, for example, the low cost
of the German V-2 is cited.

What with all the advances in microelectronics and medical science,
perhaps in a few decades people will be able to "upload" themselves into
a matchbox-sized mass of electronics. We could call it the Henry
Wadsworth Akeley method of space travel.

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html
http://www.quadibloc.com/index.html
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On 20 Oct 2005 10:50:04 -0700, "William Mook"
wrote, in part:

We haven't done this, which is why we didn't follow Max Faget's advice
and reuse the F1 and J2 engine sets in building a fully reusable
shuttle with an ablative sheild.

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221/p208.jpg

Instead we invented a new SSME and SRB combination with new thermal
tiles - since that justified higher costs and hence higher profits. We
also went from stacked stages to parallel stages which created
headaches we are still living with today (failed O-rings causing
complete destruction of the shuttle at lift-off, foam impacting thermal
tiles again causing complete destruction of the shuttle at re-entry)

This is a very good example.

I should have been more specific, I guess. I am not at all intending to
deny that there are a lot of ways to make spaceflight a little cheaper.
Or even a lot cheaper - compared to what it costs now.

What I don't believe is possible, though, at any time in the near
future, is making spaceflight *cheap*. Not until rockets can be replaced
by something else.

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html
http://www.quadibloc.com/index.html
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John,

Rockets themselves need not be any more expensive than the combustion
and exhaust sections of a modern jet engine. In fact, jet engines are
in some ways far more complex than rocket engines.

Why are rockets more expensive? Because the lack of investment in
rocket technology.

Propellants for rockets are not that expensive either. Water can be
converted to hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis and liquified for
about 50 kWh per kg. At $0.05 per kWh that's $2.50 per kg - or $2,500
per metric ton. The equipment to make hydrogen and oxygen in this way
adds little to the power costs.

Throwing rockets away after each use, well that is expensive. But
several means have been proposed to cheaply recover the pieces of a
multi-stage rocket that appear workable - not involving any new
technology - just application of stuff we know works. What is lacking
is clear direction, and clear and consistent investment to lower costs.


The structural fraction - is a wash. Whether you have a rocket
propelled vehicle, or something else -you're going to pay the same for
payloads, structures, flight control surfaces and so forth... So,
that's a wash.

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/dela4000.htm

A typical price for structure is about $1,000 per kg - for spacecraft.
This is about the same as a typical jumbo airliner

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747

Which weighs the same but costs 10x more per vehicle - but has 10x more
structure!

So, the structure cost is about the same $1,000 per kg.

Size, rate at which the vehicle is flown, and a number of other factors
affect price. Bigger vehicles flown more often are less costly per
unit payload to fly.

Making reasonable assumptions about that if we can imagine a two stage
fully reusable rocket, propelled by hydrogen and oxygen engines -
capable of putting up 500 tons into LEO with a structural fraction of
say 12% - we can expect a payload fraction of say 4% - so, the vehicle
would mass 12,500 tons at launch, probably produce 20,000 tons of
thrust at lift off - consist of 84% propellant - that's 10,500 tons of
hydrogen and oxygen - which at $2,500 per ton totals $26,250,000
recurring cost - %52.50 per kg - and the structure of 16% (including
payload) of 2,000 tons - at $1 million per ton, that's a $2 billion
vehicle - reused 1,000 times over 20 years, that adds $2 million to the
cost of each launch - and add another 0.1% per flight for the operating
and refurbishment costs - these are typical of the airline industry and
should be achievable here. So, we can launch 500 tons into LEO for
about $30 million - which is about 100x better than we're doing today.

A fleet of three would likely be developed and built for less than $6.5
billion - and if each vehicle has 2 days off for each day of flight,
the fleet of three would permit nearly daily launches of 500 tons each.

This would permit 150,000 tons of payload to be put into orbit... At
$1 million per ton - this payload would cost $150 billion - unless the
bulk of it were fuel. If we can say that 20% of the payload is
structure - that's 30,000 tons - or $30 billion - and 80% of the
payload is propellant - hydrogen/oxygen - or just plain hydrogen if we
postulate a nuclear thermal rocket like NERVA - that's 120,000 tons -
at $2,500 per ton - for the H2/O2 mix - that's another $300 million -
at 9x that figure for hydrogen alone - water is 1/9th H2 by weight and
if you don't use the O2 -all your cost is borne by the H2, that's $2.7
billion for propellant.

At this mass flow rate off world - we could cycle 3,000 tons throughout
the inner solar system each year if we used chemical rockets - or 9,000
tons throughout the inner and outer solar system per year if we used
nuclear thermal rockets - all for about $33 billion per year - which is
nearly what NASA now spends keeping its labs open.

But this $33 billion - would be added to a $12 billion vehicle and
payload construction program - and be used to build and operate space
vehicles - $45 billion per year total.

To reduce political infighting, I would suggest if this were government
money, that it be ADDED to today's NASA budget - with the proviso that
it all goes to building and operating flight hardware.

A metric ton can support a person anywhere in the solar system with
current technology for a year - this is a good figure to remember. So,
3,000 tons per year can support a population of 3,000 - or with nuclear
thermal rockets, a population of 9,000 - for $45 billion per year.
That's $5 million per person year - about $13,700 per day.

Lower the cost of momentum, and you get a multiple of these figures...


Advanced Orion type vehicles - consisting of micro-fission pellets
using ICF techniques to detonate them, these ignite fusion pellets to
multiply their effect - but remain small enough to be totally contained
in thrust chambers - albeit of enormous size - built for $1,000 per kg
-with $1,000 per kg for the fuel - but with very large exhaust
velocities -which reduce propellant fractions for a single stage
vehicle capable of travel throughout the solar system - would permit
increasing the population off world to over a million persons at these
levels of expenditure.

But, at some point, investment in this technology pays for itself. A
free people when presented with a new frontier and the means to explore
and exploit it - will eventually develop economic uses for it.

Once profits can be made in space - then subsidies can end, or if they
remain constant - will be dwarfed by commercial efforts.

Consider the following;

ENERGY - the world uses over $1 trillion per year in energy -
proposals have abounded since the 1970s of capturing energy in space
and beaming it to buyers on Earth and elsewhere - at a profit. The per
capita energy usage of the average American is some 11x greater than
the world average. This tells us that unconstrained by supply if made
available at reasonable cost - while still yeilding tremendous profit -
energy usage could increase at least 11x today's level - and if
everyone has a helicopter, or even a spaceship in their garage - levels
of energy use could rise to even higher levels than this. Since
economic activity correlates with energy use - we can expect global
wealth to multiply if this route is taken. Today's $40 trillion global
economcy could easily grow to exceed $1 quadrillion in very short time
- creating a world vastly different than the one we see today - and
this will be just one benefit of harvesting space resources for
industry and humanity.

RAW MATERIALS - there are currently a handful of strategic materials
the world pays $200 billion per year for. Like energy, Americans
consume something like 10x as much of these materials per capita than
the average person in the world. This again is a huge opportunity for
growth if supply is unconstrained. And the rich asteroids of the solar
system could easily be captured and moved to Earth orbit, and mined,
and the materials sent to Earth and elsewhere they're needed. The $1
quadrillion human economy postulated above would need something like $2
trillion worth of these materials to support it - perhaps more if
everyone has a helicopter, or a spaceship in their garage.

THE PATH FOR GROWTH USING ROCKETS

Reusable chemical rockets - supporting

Global wireless internet $200 trillion global economy
Global wireless power - $1,000 trillion global economy

Reusable nuclear pulse rockets - supporting

Asteroid capture and mining - $5,000 trillion global economy

Reusable laser sustained rockets - supporting

General access to Earth Orbit - space homes - $25,000 trillion

Reusable laser light sails - supporting

General access to solar system and nearer stars - $125,000 trillion

Synthetic black holes - supporting (perhaps)

Fast interstellar travel
Time travel
Time signalling

With a 7% growth rate starting at $40 trillion today, we can estimate
the approximate times we can see each of these - assuming a robust
investment in space travel (without any need for anything other than
rockets and light sails)- of 25 years per step...

2025 AD - global wireless
2050 AD - global power
2075 AD - asteroid capture
2100 AD - space homes
2125 AD - solar system
2150 AD - fast interstellar travel

Since population growth rate grows until we reach about $10,000 per
capita per year, and then falls, below replacement levels when we
exceed $25,000 per capita per year, we can expect global population to
peak around 2050 - 2075 time frame, and fall off thereafter. This
combined with a vast expansion across the cosmos - means that the
density of humans falls off very rapidly after 2075... but no matter,
around 2040 - Hans Moravec, and others, predict human level computing -
and likely robotics - will be available, to take up the slack. That
is, humans will form an increasingly sparse component in a highly
technical structure expanding across the cosmos...

Of course, one of the interesting efforts of recent note was the human
genome project. One can imagine similar efforts arising in the future
- ultimately, to recreate every single human who has ever lived, and
set them up in that future to live the life they were meant to... why?
For the same reason we promote freedom and diversity to the extent
possible today - it makes life interesting and multiplies wealth.

Cheers.


John Savard wrote:
On 20 Oct 2005 10:50:04 -0700, "William Mook"
wrote, in part:

We haven't done this, which is why we didn't follow Max Faget's advice
and reuse the F1 and J2 engine sets in building a fully reusable
shuttle with an ablative sheild.

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221/p208.jpg

Instead we invented a new SSME and SRB combination with new thermal
tiles - since that justified higher costs and hence higher profits. We
also went from stacked stages to parallel stages which created
headaches we are still living with today (failed O-rings causing
complete destruction of the shuttle at lift-off, foam impacting thermal
tiles again causing complete destruction of the shuttle at re-entry)

This is a very good example.

I should have been more specific, I guess. I am not at all intending to
deny that there are a lot of ways to make spaceflight a little cheaper.
Or even a lot cheaper - compared to what it costs now.

What I don't believe is possible, though, at any time in the near
future, is making spaceflight *cheap*. Not until rockets can be replaced
by something else.

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html
http://www.quadibloc.com/index.html
_________________________________________
Usenet Zone Free Binaries Usenet Server
More than 140,000 groups
Unlimited download
http://www.usenetzone.com to open account

"William Mook" wrote:

Rockets themselves need not be any more expensive than the combustion
and exhaust sections of a modern jet engine. In fact, jet engines are
in some ways far more complex than rocket engines.

Why are rockets more expensive? Because the lack of investment in
rocket technology.

.... And you move on briskly from there to propellant cost. Just for a
change of pace, ask yourself WHY there has been a "lack of investment
in rocket technology."

Was there a lack of investment from 1953 to 1963, when DoD spent 2 1/2
Apollo budgets to develop ICBMs and the first generation of spy
satellites? No -- because that reflected a high level of *demand*
(justifiable or not) for national security. The investment yielded
Redstone, Jupiter, Atlas, Titan, avionics, telemetry and tracking
networks, re-entry technologies, systems engineering -- in other
words, most of what went into Mercury, Gemini and Apollo other than
Saturn and the spacecraft themselves.

But by the mid-1960s, ICBMs were basically "good enough" -- and the
weight of DoD spending moved towards more convenient solid-fueled
boosters, more precise guidance for smaller warheads, and ever-better
spy satellites... in other words, much less of a _de facto_ R&D
subsidy for space. Since then, space technology has had to pay most of
its own way based on the much lower level of *demand* for space
activity.

We might prefer that our culture/society/Congress put a higher value
on our expansion into space than on blowing things up fast from far
away, but the historical record says otherwise quite clearly.

William Mook wrote:

Rockets themselves need not be any more expensive than the combustion
and exhaust sections of a modern jet engine. In fact, jet engines are
in some ways far more complex than rocket engines.

Why are rockets more expensive? Because the lack of investment in
rocket technology.

that and a little matter of scale...


Propellants for rockets are not that expensive either. Water can be
converted to hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis and liquified for
about 50 kWh per kg.

erm, isn't water already liquefied?


snip

--
Terrell Miller


"Suddenly, after nearly 30 years of scorn, Prog is cool again".
-Entertainment Weekly

On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 20:57:10 -0400, Terrell Miller
wrote:

erm, isn't water already liquefied?

....Not according to Mookie. Remember, he tried to start his fortune by
patenting dehydrated water.

OM
--
]=======================================[
OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld
Let's face it: Sometimes you *need*
an obnoxious opinion in your day!
]=======================================[

Terrell Miller wrote:
William Mook wrote:

Rockets themselves need not be any more expensive than the combustion
and exhaust sections of a modern jet engine. In fact, jet engines are
in some ways far more complex than rocket engines.

Why are rockets more expensive? Because the lack of investment in
rocket technology.

that and a little matter of scale...

Really? THe figures don't support your statement.

Rockets like the Delta IV mass about 733 tons at lift off. Aircraft
like the Boeing 747 mass about 415 tons gross weight at take off.

When you count the huge propellant fraction of the rocket, the scale of
construction for the airplane is larger by a factor of four.



Propellants for rockets are not that expensive either. Water can be
converted to hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis and liquified for
about 50 kWh per kg.

erm, isn't water already liquefied?

Yes it is. Obviously, if you would take the trouble to actually read
things before responding to them you would find the last sentence you
quoted talks about liquifying hydrogen and oxygen gasses. Clearly
these must be liquified to be used efficiently as rocket propellants.


snip

--
Terrell Miller


"Suddenly, after nearly 30 years of scorn, Prog is cool again".
-Entertainment Weekly

"William Mook" wrote:

When you count the huge propellant fraction of the rocket...

That's a bug, not a feature.