Heard too much and need to vent.

On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 03:42:52 GMT, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:

"Cardman" wrote in message
.. .

I don't see how you can be so hard on the SRBs, when apart from that
design fault glitch, then they have always worked perfectly

"Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln."

Large SRB's have about a 1-2% catastrophic failure rate.

Well obviously that is not correct for the Shuttle's SRBs at least.

There has been around 120 Shuttle launches now, where even if you
include Challenger as a failure, then that is one SRB out of 240 SRBs
launched.

So although I would not consider this management blunder as a failure
myself, but SRB failure rate on the Shuttle currently stands at 0.42%.

And so much less than your estimate, which no doubt includes some test
models and unmanned launches.

While simple, when they fail, it tends to be catastrophic.

Yes and even for the Shuttle I would agree, but this is largely due to
the design.

The SSMEs on the other hand, which have had a couple of close misses
already, could well fail far more often due to their complex and high
performance design.

Possibly. But they can also fail more gracefully. The SSMEs on Challenger
began an orderly shutdown due to fuel starvation.

Yes, but you lose two or all three of those engines during the early
stage or even later, then it is goodbye time as well.

"just a design thing." Pretty big "design thing". Some early designs for
the SRBs for the Shuttle did include thrust termination ports. It was
determined the sudden decrease in thrust would rip the stack apart. Not a
great design.

Yet with a computer controlled shutdown something could be worked out
no doubt. Also I am more for trying to cut them loose, even if you
could get a bit cooked in the process.

Maybe a combination of the two would be best, when activate the thrust
termination ports to slow its output, then cut them loose and kick
them away in the normal fashion.

Sure it is quite risky, but it is better than doing nothing. And of
course this should only be done if the computer detects a fatal
problem, which goes along the line of do it or die.

As to lighting them, then it is not like they are holding a mitch to
them in a strong wind trying to get them to light. So of course they
will light, when the whole launch system aims to make that happen
without question.

True. It's an extremely reliable and at least doubly redundant design they
have.

Then it just becomes a matter of chemistry and quality control.

Still in my eyes the SRBs are perfect, when the only glitch was a
design fault. And without the SRBs the Shuttle would never get off the
pad in the first place.

And yes if one did ever not light, not that this is going to happen in
a million launches, then sure it would be time to write off another
Shuttle.

"Not that this is going to happen in a million launches... " Not that foam
block could damage RCC...

And all this is not the Shuttle, but the design and the management who
cannot spot these problems.

Something striking the shuttle at high speed, even if it is soft foam,
is one of those undesirable alarm bell ringing situations that soon
turns fatal.

It's a design issue. Perhaps one that folks are willing to live with. But
a design issue nonetheless and can not be treated cavalierly.

And I fully respect the SRBs, but I like the SRBs most because this is
easy chemistry, where both these problems so far have been human
related.

So give me a well designed and well tested SRB any day, when you know
where you are with an SRB.

Cardman.

Cardman wrote:
Loss of thrust on either SRB (such as failure to ignite) is
a "Bad Day". i.e. non-survivable.

I don't see how you can be so hard on the SRBs, when apart from that
design fault glitch, then they have always worked perfectly

Personally I would prefer to put my hands in a simple and well
understood chemical reaction, when you light them and off you go.

Well, there are three problems there.

One, 'light them off' is a one time, zero margin for error event.
If something is wrong with the ignitors or wiring on one side
that the pre-launch tests missed then, as pointed out, it's
a Bad Day; it will tear the external tank apart on the pad and
everything will go boom and fall over.

Two, 'off you go' is an irreversable event, for the most part.
With a human carrying rocket, a gentle shutdown mode is a very
important thing, because something might go wrong requiring
an abort, and if you can't shut the motors down until they
burn out then you're in real trouble if something catastrophic
breaks during their burn (say, a SRB nozzle actuator jams,
or a large piece falls off the shuttle or there's a lightning
strike on the stack and the electronics on the shuttle go down).
There's no safe crew escape mechanism during their burn time.

Three, though there is some argument about exactly how
vulnerable developed and flight tested SRBs are to catastrophic
failure, they do in fact blow up or otherwise fail. Off the
top of my head... GEM failed (probably overstressed carbon
fiber casing in ground handling) on a Delta-2 mid-90s;
Titan IV SRMU (?) failed during development and blew up
its test stand real good, discovering a new feature of
internal shockwaves, grain shaping, and internally choked
nozzles in large segmented solid boosters; and Challenger.

I think I am missing one or two. But... neither liquid nor
solid rockets are perfectly reliable, the number is not better
than 0.1% of the time and not worse than 1% of the time on
either one, probably, and when a solid goes it is much more
instantly catastrophic than when a liquid goes.

Personally, I think they should have gone with one of the
one solid booster Shuttle concepts without any segments,
but that's neither here nor there given what we did in
fact build...


-george william herbert

On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 03:52:34 GMT, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:

"Cardman" wrote in message
.. .

Not that I doubt that it has ever been looked down far very far.

That's one more cost you've got to add to your business plan.

I am more for going there and start digging, but all those methods to
find minerals in the Earth can work just as well on the Moon.

Worst case scenario then would be to get yourself a real metal rich
asteroid, but I cannot see that mining the moon would be as useless as
you believe.

Then why isn't it being done today? Why? Because it's not economical.

NASA has never been interested in mining or making a profit from
space, when NASA is full of scientist who want to do science.

And although one of those heavy metal asteroids can set up NASA for
life, but I am already fully sure that the most profit will be made
from something that you do not yet expect.

Like when the Europeans invaded North America, then they never knew
that one of the most valuable resources today would be oil.

So value is in the land, where once you own the land, then you can
make profit from it in a hundred different ways.

Well of course if you sold it all at one time it would, but doing so
slowly over time and though different sources would keep the price
reasonable.

It doesn't matter which sources, you're still selling the same amount.

To different markets...

Market diversion does indeed save pushing one market too hard once you
start moving lots of resources. So just working on Gold alone and
ignoring the other precious metals next to it would be crazy.

Also you should remember about markets is that the buyer wants to pay
less and the seller more, which means to stop the price falling you do
not sell for less than the market value.

And if you don't sell it quickly enough, your investors get antsy and
want their money back. Money isn't free you know.

It is when you are NASA. All of $50 billion on a space station and you
sure as hell cannot justify that whatever way you look at it.

Even if you go with investors, not that they have tens of billions
spare, but they understand start-up costs and that profit only starts
coming in after X number of years.

So to keep investors happy you just need a good business plan showing
when you expect to make profit and a long term forecast showing how
you expect this to grow.

And as long as you start returning profit on schedule, then so will
they be happy enough, when one day they will understand that a lot of
profit will be coming back.

And well if you are getting this stuff on the cheap, then that price
would have to go really low to not make it worth it.

Also you should not just work on Gold, when by mining many of the
other metals would produce worthwhile funds, which would ease up on
the Gold market.

Do this. Calculate current launch costs to LEO.

Best to settle off the Earth to start this one up, when you only want
to drop things into Earth's gravity well.

Let's assume the trip to the Moon and back is free.

Well I can see that setting up a Moon base would cost more than a few
billion.

And yes it would be mostly free due to my launching system on the
Moon, where I have half got the transport system worked out as well,
using that local aluminum and iron.

My problem is that I am not sure what to make my heat shield from,
when it needs to be cheap and best made on the Moon. However, I will
overlook this for now.

Also I am thinking of the ballistic approach and smashing it straight
into the ocean or ground, when this needs to be done cheap. So it may
get squashed, but it will be just fine.

Although is there a natural soft landing location on this planet? So
that it can go plop and then be dug out. Maybe swampland, deserts,
snow, a coastal area, well some testing would be needed.

Now tell me exactly how costly it is bring back
a kilogram of Gold.

Well first of all I would have to pin-point where it is found, when
such resources on the Moon would be easier than on a Near Earth
Asteroid.

Then it would have to be mined, and not just by the kilogram either,
when we will only be sending this stuff back by the ton.

I am not sure how Gold is usually mined these days, which creates a
problem in calculating for both locating and extraction.

Compare that to current Gold prices.

Well Gold is currently selling at $364 an ounce (Platinum is at $660),
where one ton of this precious metal would fetch $11,702,600.

Not a bad start, but the big question is how much it costs to find it
and extract it.

I can only see that mining heavy metal asteroids is a better option
later on, when these can be simply packed full of metals. And you
would end up with more tons than you would ever want.

Also I would need my smelter working on the Moon, which would take all
these different metals and make by own bars.

So in this picture I can see that the start up costs would be huge to
get my base mostly self supporting, transport costs would be quite
cheap due to my catapult from the Moon's surface, one way at least,
when then we just need the right equipment.

Anyway, apart from labour costs, then having a mostly self-supporting
colony in all makes future profit certain. And over time I can only
feel that this could even repay those billions spent.

However, you are correct that I should run some numbers and fill in
some blanks, when I am even doubtful if NASA knows just what makes up
a heavy metal asteroid.

So I will get back to you on that one.

We should also not forget that we only need a few tens or hundreds of
billions to fund our space programme, where you can save the rest and
just sell it as and when needed.

Only a few tens or hundreds of billions? Who exactly is funding that.

I will buy in with the Chinese... :-]

Well they do have cheaper labour costs, which would help out my
colony.

I don't know wht it's like in your country, but it's not like you can walk
up to your local bank and say, "I'd like $50 Billion please." They tend to
laugh at you.

And you cannot set up the required Moon Base without lots of money,
but I guess if we go with LEO on the cheap, then we may get in around
the range of $20 billion.

Traveling about in the local neighbourhood is the costly area though,
when NASA's idea of ships are not cheap.

Still maybe one day soon one of these smaller companies could come up
with their own ship for a lot less.

Or they understand the economics better than you do.

I understand economics, where you can indeed get lots of funding out
of it.

Then tell me who exactly is going to fund your plan.

Obviously the only people who can afford such a thing is either the
U.S or the E.U. China is also an option in years from now.

Yes, where they have only got serious in recent years. And this is
only costing them about $2 billion I recall.

Considering they are a mostly socialist country, it's pretty difficult to
put an accurate price on the cost of their program.

Well that is the price that I heard to cover the last few years.

What is most interesting is that no matter how much funding congress
puts into NASA in the future, they won't beat the Chinese. Cheap asian
labour, communism, the brute force approach and certainly the desire
to do it.

We've already beaten the Chinese.

You have just got off to an early start, where the game is not over
yet by a long way.

And Russia was laughing at you from orbit all the time that your
rockets were going bang. Remember?

Umm, not quite. It was a race, and they had their share of failures. We
were just open about ours.

Russia is more open these days. Like with their cosmonaut they killed,
then the one that landed in China.

They did beat you to space, where they would have had the Moon as well
had not the U.S not thrown tons of money and resources into it.

Go for it.

So got a few billion to spare? :-]

I thought you could get money yourself.

Then a good phase in this situation is "You have got to have money to
make money".

Sod the Gold, I am off to collect diamonds from Neptune. :-]

Trust me, I could make it work.

Umm, I'm not going to "trust you". I'd want to see a full business
plan. Considering what I've seen from you so far, I don't think any
business plan you develop would be believable.

Well I have not tried to do a complete cost break down yet, when it is
also tricky to put a cost on the unknown.

Anyway, you can hardly use NASA's plans as a good example, when we
know what their extreme costs are like with their space company
buddies.

You can do the Moon on the cheap, but as I said those in system craft
won't be cheap. After all coming up with one of my box ideas would
soon have someone flying off into space.

Then maybe you should learn the imperial might of communism instead?

Yeah. We did. Communism failed.

China seems to be doing quite well with communism.

Cardman.

On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 03:38:30 GMT, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:

"Cardman" wrote in message
.. .

And yet just saying that the O-Ring failed does not provide a valid
picture of what happened. As launching in too cold weather is just a
simple human mistake / management failure, but to ignore a long
history of putty failure falls close to unforgivable.

Ding! That's why Challenger was such a tragedy.

More like it was such as tragedy, due to no one really believing that
it could happen. That is why this time was different, when people are
now aware that it can and does happen.

A stand-down of the system
should have been done until things were fixed.

Yes, or at minimum to work on a fix while still operating.

The fact that this had happened previously and was not taken care of was a
major problem.

I am not even sure if "major" is the correct word for it, when seven
people died due to this blunder.

And an extremely serious charge if you ask me, when based upon these
earlier results it is clear what could happen. As such a failure, even
at a different point, could still damage the ET.

Ayup.

A launch the following spring would have been the most likely fatality
had it not been Challenger. Just a matter of time after all, when this
was a long term problem.

So how did they fix these SRB joints?

As immediately following this fuel and oxidizer mix (within the ET),
according to the report, the still whole Challenger was, as I quote,
"totally enveloped in the explosive burn".

Enveloped yes, but note the use of explosive as an adjective to modify burn

Yes, but already not agreeing with your statement that this burn only
reached Challenger only after it had broken up.

Further more, as I also quote, "The Challenger's reaction control
system ruptured and a hypergolic burn of its propellants occurred as
it exited the oxygen-hydrogen flames" and "The reddish brown colors of
the hypergolic fuel burn are visible on the edge of the main
fireball".

The rupture I believe occurred because of the vehicle breakup. It was not a
result of the H2/LOX mixing.

That unfortunately is not what the official report says, when this
happened and then it broke. Although this is so close that the
Challenger had already broke up once the fireball had passed.

Anyway, since Challenger was hit by an "explosive burn" coming from
the middle of the ET, then maybe this helped it to break.

That to me sounds very much like saying that the Challanger's airframe
had been damaged before it did the Mach 1.92 high speed turn.

Nope, I thikn you have it backwards there. Think about it, what would cause
the hypergolic fuel tanks to break up?

Well this is between you and the report, when the report clearly
indicates that this occurred first, then it broke.

Maybe that was just poor structuring though...

Certainly, but the Shuttle won't take much abuse before it is game
over.

Nope. Pick up Jenkin's 3rd edition. Read the section of loads. It's been
beefed up some since the original design, but as beefing up the structure
also adds mass, it's a trade-off.

You can get both lighter and stronger, when carbon nanotubes as the
obvious example. Not that these would be used...

Anyway, my point still stands that considering the speed that it has
to travel, then these kind of forces when misplaced will break the
Shuttle.

So you can only push it so far and no more.

I find it a bit odd if they could activate their PEAP, but could not
seal their face make. When again this should only take seconds.

It's not a matter of what they could do.

What they could do indicates if they were alive or not, when doing
nothing indicates that they were not.

It's the design. The PEAP was
designed for an at-pad emergency to provide air so they could egress the
craft while possibly surrounded by smoke and toxic fumes.

Yes, I see.

It was not designed to work at altitude.

Then why try to use it is the obvious question? Still, if there was
smoke and fire, then it is better than nothing.

Also I would have thought that they would have gone up with sealed
face marks, just in case of decompression. After all hitting a high
flying bird would not be good.

Nope, prior to 51-L they flew in their jumpsuits, no pressure suit of any
kind.

Again I am surprised, when at minimum one of them (the pilot?) should
have been in a pressure suit. As if for some bad reason they sprung a
major leak, then all of them would die quickly.

At least having one of them in a pressure suit and things were not
fatal, then they could provide air to the others.

Hopefully, now they consider this possibility, or is it just "oh they
would die anyway"?

it could not deliver air above ambient pressure) they would have blacked
out
very quickly at the cabin soared to over 100,000 ft.

Now I am not an expert in these matters, but I cannot see how an
unaerodynamic piece of broken Shuttle could travel another 54,000 feet
unpowered given the Mach 1.92 initial boost.

Momentum.

Yes, but I still see issues with it going that high, when this would
be as aerodynamic as a brick.

So it would have to more then double its existing height, where lets
not forget drag and gravity.

And so how height can a brick traveling at Mach 1.92 go?

Had that happened, then I could foresee a blackout either due to this
sudden high energy slowing. Then the final option would be if they
quickly slowed in a forwards direction, then they would encounter
serious issues with their seat constraints.

The medical report basically concludes they could not determine the time or
manner of death. So that's possible.

Death by seat I would have through would have been a bit more clear,
where if it went up to 100,000 feet as you say, then I doubt that the
slowing from Mach 1.92 would do it either.

That can also be calculated.

Yes and no. First, was the cabin airtight? (if so, it's unlikely they lost
conciousness.) However, it's unlikely it remained airtight.

In this situation it was next to impossible to have been airtight,
where activation of the PEAP can indicate that some of that "explosive
burn" got inside.

Or at least they saw it through the window.

If not, when did they black out?

What would they have done in the seconds following? Then did they do
it? Activation of the PEAP was the start, even if misplaced.

The immediate result would have been confusion and maybe thoughts
along the line of a cabin fire. Then of course had it been open to the
outside, then they would quickly be aware of this, where it only takes
a few seconds to come to the conclusion of death.

They may even have noticed the SRBs traveling overhead?

Anyway, due to the existing oxygen content in their body, then it
could have taken a minute or more to black out I guess.

Then you get into physiology issues of the individual

Yes, where in this situation they would react as NASA programmed them
to in the first few seconds. Loss of complete power? Extremely loud
noise? Smoke and fire? Depressurization? A change in the direction of
the cabin? Seeing the SRBs or other Shuttle parts?

and when they might regain conciousness.

Not more than a few thousand feet from impact, where they would be
coming down quite fast. I doubt that they would have regained
consciousness in that time had they blacked out high up.

In any case, I don't think you really want to go there. What's the point?

To try to understand their suffering in those final few minutes. As no
one really know how they died.

To determine if they knew their fate?

If they were not knocked unconscious to begin with, which appears to
be the case, then given the situation it would only have taken like
ten seconds to come to that conclusion.

It would go along the line of "oh f**k...".

Let's leave that in God's hands.

Yes, but they are dead, where even if you took a virtual ride along
with them to see what really happened, then this would not change this
outcome one bit.

Death is death, which tends to be uncomfortable for people to accept.

So now you can begin to understand death and how you are uncomfortable
with the knowledge of your own mortality. Everyone knows that they
will die one day, but no one believes that they will die today.

CBS News I believe and I believe the NY Times wanted a copy of the cleaned
up tapes of any voice that may have occurred after Dick Scobee's "Uh-Oh"
comment.

Well the last thing I remember was the command "Go with throttle up"
followed by "Roger, going with throttle up".

Not that we don't now know that the computer does all this work
automatically, which makes that conversion pointless.

The next thing that happened after that I will never forget, when the
NASA person doing the public announcement said "Um, there appears to
have been a major malfunction".

But at most that's a few seconds.

Also what is the truth about this flight being pushed ahead due to
some astronaut chat with the president due to some special event or
other?

As I heard that once.

Umm, the power for the SSME's comes from the ET.

So no more ET means no more use of those SSMEs. Well I mean in the
electrical sense of course.

On second thought, I checked Jenkin's. I mispoke. The reactants are stored
in vessels under the payload bay liner.

A bit closer to where the power is really needed then.

Up to 5 pairs of H2/O2 tanks can be flown.

And I am sure that 5 pairs are usually flown, when the likes of
weather can delay landing.

Then had there been an in-flight recorder, then maybe that would have
made this investigation easier.

Possibly, but you have to weigh the cost and mass of a "black box" that can
survive something like Columbia's breakup for a 5 ship fleet.

Well you already have five computer systems processing all that data,
where it should not be too hard to have one with a secondary emergency
power backup and a recording device.

Also these computers could have seen this one coming long before
everyone else did. After all it would have noticed the drop in
pressure in the left SRB (undesirable), followed by drop in pressure
on the hydrogen tank (bad).

However, when it noticed the left SRB skewing off course, then it
would have red lighted and activated the emergency escape system.

Too bad that there was not one...

So all the computers did was to watch the Shuttle slowly fail, when
the rupture of the oxygen tank came next, the explosive burn caused
the shuttles fuel intake to drop, ME-2 went for shutdown, ME-3 went
for shutdown, ME-1 went for shutdown, a few more events, then no more
shuttle.

And so these computers would certainly have detected this fatal event
shortly before it happened.

And there I was thinking that not only does NASA like to talk to their
Astronauts, but they like to see them as well.

Not really. A lot of the flight is done w/o visual cues to the ground.

Odd, when they could.

Cardman.

There are no minerals on the Moon it is worth the cost of going to get
and ship back. There just aren't. Check out the mineral price
indexes if you don't believe me. And remember the cost of the R&D on
-every piece of equipment- is included in your cost-structure.





Cardman wrote in message . ..
On Sat, 26 Jul 2003 12:42:21 GMT, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:

Actually there are at this time no known major concentrations of ore on the
Moon.

Not that I doubt that it has ever been looked down far very far.

Any sizable meteorite impact breaks up the meteorite and distributes
it fairly evenly.

Worst case scenario then would be to get yourself a real metal rich
asteroid, but I cannot see that mining the moon would be as useless as
you believe.

Secondly, study basic economics. If you saturated the world market with say
1000 tons of gold, the price would drop so much that you'd be losing money.

Well of course if you sold it all at one time it would, but doing so
slowly over time and though different sources would keep the price
reasonable.

And well if you are getting this stuff on the cheap, then that price
would have to go really low to not make it worth it.

Also you should not just work on Gold, when by mining many of the
other metals would produce worthwhile funds, which would ease up on
the Gold market.

We should also not forget that we only need a few tens or hundreds of
billions to fund our space programme, where you can save the rest and
just sell it as and when needed.

In all one of the best things to do is to turn out your own ingots and
to pay people in Gold. As one of the first things that I would buy
with my wealth is an entire country on this planet.

Accept Gold do you?

And of course there is water on the Moon if the science data is
correct, which is worth more than anything.

That is probably one of the more valuable items on the Moon

Yes for humans, air and rocket fuel.

Well we can always claim it all, bottle it and them sell it to the
Chinese astronauts. ;-]

Anyway, yes this water is important to my moon base plan.

So if they don't want to go to the Moon and become as rich as
anything, then they are obviously crazy.

Or they understand the economics better than you do.

I understand economics, where you can indeed get lots of funding out
of it.

Also China will be on the Moon one day soon, where not only will they
steal your He3, but they will get all these valuable asteroids as
well.

I wouldn't hold my breath for the Chinese. They've been planning on
orbiting a human for 20 years now.

Yes, where they have only got serious in recent years. And this is
only costing them about $2 billion I recall.

Looks like they might actually do it.

Yes, only about 3 months away now.

What is most interesting is that no matter how much funding congress
puts into NASA in the future, they won't beat the Chinese. Cheap asian
labour, communism, the brute force approach and certainly the desire
to do it.

If the Chinese builds the infrastructure, then so will you Americans
pay them to ride it.

Well there is always the space elevator, but then China will get their
own one and still beat you in space.

As we went from orbiting a person to landing them on the Moon in less than
10 years and their manned space program is well over 20 years old,

Yes, but your rocket technology also came from WWII, which means that
you took around 15 years to develop it.

And Russia was laughing at you from orbit all the time that your
rockets were going bang. Remember?

at this rate I suspect they'll be landing on a man on the Moon by
say 2203. :-)

Laugh all you want, but you may want to catch up on your Chinese
language course. Still as long as you can say "oh glorious masters
please give me a space job" in chinese, then you should get by. ;-]

And I am willing to bet you now that the Chinese will have a Moon Base
before you do. And the first person on Mars will be Chinese.

Hell if I had the money to form my own space organization, then I
would be off to the Moon in no time to claim my fortune. Even have a
throne of diamonds and call myself the Moon King. ;-]

Go for it.

So got a few billion to spare? :-]

Trust me, I could make it work.

Trust me, most folks here would be thrilled to go to the Moon. But we also
know the unfortunate reality of the economics.

Then maybe you should learn the imperial might of communism instead?

Cardman.

On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 00:14:08 -0600, Charles Buckley
wrote:

Not really. The SSME's fail one major core design flaw. They are at
the edge of the materials properties. The best way to improve
reliability is to never really challenge the material's core properties.
If it fails at 3000 degrees, stay at a lower temp. If it fails at a
certain chamber pressure, stay away from that pressure.

Very nice, where of course their full power is 109% (eh?), where they
usually do up to about 106%. This according to them keeps these
engines running on for twice as long.

What you really need is a very well designed high performance engine,
which can go as fast as the rest, but as you say not to pressure the
material properties.

With the SSME's, their superficial design flaws tend to obscure their
fundamental design flaws.

Superficial design flaws?

All well and nice, but these engines tend to spring up surprises,
which is why they give these SSMEs a very good check.

Definately inspect, but if you have an engine like the RL-10, you
usually have an engine that can essentially run indefinately. I think
the longest burn on an RL-10 was something like 45 minutes and
ceased because they ran out of fuel for the test stand as opposed
to the engine having problems.

Why do I have a feeling that this engine does not come top of the
class for performance?

Getting to LEO as best you can is all about getting there as quickly
as you can, which involves pushing your engines. Still getting the
Shuttle to LEO adds a very large overhead.

If only failure could be predicted so well...

Every part has a projected design life. Standard aviation practice
to pull an engine after a certain amount of hours. I see no real
reason why such a procedure would not be used here.

Ever listened into air plain broadcasts? As a lot more fails on these
things then they would wish you to know, but yes they swap out engines
before they usually blow.

Also unlike say the Shuttle, then most airplanes get along just fine
if one of their engines fail, where it is just repaired or replaced
when they reach their destination.

Well actually I was also thinking along the lines of these use once
and throw away engines, when they won't all start that first time.

Well, use-once gains you nothing. You are more likely to encounter
manufacturing issues if you have a lot of engines cycle through.

There is something to be said for these engine types, when some
rockets just won't be coming back. And having your engine mass
produced does save on the recovery and servicing costs.

Also there is no real extra issue with large scale production, when in
fact they could improve in quality as they get the hang of it.

No, but new materials like for anti-coking goes to improve
reliability. Keeping it simple and yet well designed seems to be a
good model for a rocket engine these days.

Not really. Essentially they are spending a lot of money to re-invent
the wheel for the most part.

Same concept, vastly different designs.

You can get the same rough class of
performance with proven engines as anything new.

How about some tried and tested in the 1 to 1.5 million lb class
range?

The older engines
has thousands of runs to build up a reliability database and
incorporated improvements.

And so will these new engines soon show what they can do.

The best way to improve reliability is to
not add a lot of performance parts to get around the fact that you
are unnecessarily trying to get an engine to do more than it can do
safely without those improvements.

True, but modern materials and construction can indeed take those
limits beyond what has been seen before.

Also there is something to be said for increased fuel flow and higher
chamber pressure, when this results in a smaller engine that has a
high performance.

A marginal improvement in performance
rarely has an improvement reliability. Quite often the loss in
reliability outweighs the performance upgrades.

Very true, but NASA has the option to run their SSMEs as they see fit,
where 104% to 106% is common. Running at something like 80%, which
would certainly keep their engines running for a long time, I doubt
that they would make orbit on.

That NASA's suppliers need to be in a competitive market including
price competition. Maybe space has not gone that far yet, but this is
all adding a couple of extra zeros to the price tag.

Chicken and egg sort of equation. They have designs that have been
paid off and in service for 30 years now. The price plateau is one
of the major barriers to entry into the field. It is very difficult
to actually determine the manufacturing cost of some of those engines.

Yes, but I can only feel that they make a nice tidy sum out of it,
where the following service support is bound to be good.

But, one the bright side, there are a lot of guerilla movements that
are stressing some basic tech. If you want cheap and reliable, try
looking at nitrous and rubber.

Nitrous and rubber? One of those hybrid engines I presume.

I suspect that when someone like XCOR

That is one interesting company, when they like making rocket engines
and really showing them off.

And if anyone is interested...
http://www.xcor.com/

actually kicks out an engine that lands major contracts,

The military and their unmanned planes seems like one obvious
customer. And certainly they have engines worthy enough to go on your
usual NASA probes.

There could also be great interest in rocket planes, but I would be
doubtful about the fly time.

Well lets see if they can do the X-Prize thing and get their
sub-orbital craft running.

I am sorry to say that I am one of the people who falls under "I will
believe it when I see it", when going sub-orbital is far easier said
then done. And well... no one has won that X-Prize yet.

I will look forwards to the next X-Prize, which I expect will be
requiring three whole orbits and a quick turn around time. That if won
would really put NASA to shame.

we'll see the same sort of price drop that we saw when AMD jumped into
the lead in chip development.

Well things did not change that much except in the lower price chip
market, when for a very long time people purchased Intel on the brand
name alone.

The likes of AMD, Cyrix and IBM were giving Intel a fair run, but it
was only with the AMD Athlon did Intel have a big headache due to
their faster and lower cost processor.

Anyway, it shows what competition can do for the market.

The big advantage that a number of established
manufacturers have is that they have amortized off their development
costs before a large number of people on this group was even born.

I see.

Then that explains where a large chunk of NASA's budget goes to, but
hey congress is always willing to cough up more.

Not always. This whole X-Prize thing is getting interesting in that
regard. The major players have all come in with designs at 10% of
the NASA cost estimates. If it had only been one of them, it would
be a fluke. But, it is *all* of them coming in much lower and that
sort of thing is hard to overlook. NASA is a bit to public and
unpopular enough in Congress that there is likely to be someone who
use this for ammo.

I am sure about that. And NASA will soon point out that no one has won
the X-Prize yet, where some are not even close to doing so.

Although I can only feel that the humans in space section of NASA
these days is just not doing at all well, where maybe one day in the
future the useful probe section should be spun off and them got rid
of.

Still I will save judgement on that based upon how well this OSP
project works out. As now that this shuttle and station will soon be
out the way, then maybe they can turn the corner and improve.

I wonder if NASA asked XCor for a OSP quote? :-]

Crawl before you walk and all that.

Also I can see how hard it is for any company to get into this space
business, both now and in the future, when going to orbit is a very
hard thing to do and often counts as a primary goal.

Sub-orbital makes things much easier, but no one has done that yet
either.

Still I am a feeling that someone very soon will, when there is a huge
tourist market for them to buy into now.

Going orbital would make things very interesting, when NASA would soon
be hoping mad over all those unannounced callers to the ISS. :-]

Cardman.

On 27 Jul 2003 01:11:32 -0700, (George William
Herbert) wrote:

Cardman wrote:
Loss of thrust on either SRB (such as failure to ignite) is
a "Bad Day". i.e. non-survivable.

I don't see how you can be so hard on the SRBs, when apart from that
design fault glitch, then they have always worked perfectly

Personally I would prefer to put my hands in a simple and well
understood chemical reaction, when you light them and off you go.

Well, there are three problems there.

One, 'light them off' is a one time, zero margin for error event.
If something is wrong with the ignitors or wiring on one side
that the pre-launch tests missed then, as pointed out, it's
a Bad Day; it will tear the external tank apart on the pad and
everything will go boom and fall over.

Well that has not happened yet, where although NASA has not been doing
too well with safety and all that recently, but I am sure that these
SRBs are treated with great respect.

After all, as you point out, if someone messes up here, then you would
be down one more Shuttle.

In fact I would say that the SRBs are good for the Shuttle, when the
NASA management can get too relaxed with the Shuttle (explaining the
putty and the foam), where the clear danger of the SRBs keeps them on
their toes in the safety area.

Two, 'off you go' is an irreversable event, for the most part.

So is every rocket launch... As when you leave that pad there is no
going back to it.

Well except for one test model that I can think of.

With a human carrying rocket, a gentle shutdown mode is a very
important thing, because something might go wrong requiring
an abort, and if you can't shut the motors down until they
burn out then you're in real trouble if something catastrophic
breaks during their burn (say, a SRB nozzle actuator jams,
or a large piece falls off the shuttle or there's a lightning
strike on the stack and the electronics on the shuttle go down).

Yes all good and well, but they power up the Shuttle first for a very
good reason. So if anything is going to fall off or go wrong, then it
has a couple of seconds to do so.

The main danger with the SRBs is oddly enough the SSMEs, when the SRBs
are perfectly happy doing their job, but if the SSMEs screw up, then
their failure can allow the SRBs to destroy the Shuttle.

So that is one of the things that I don't like about the Shuttle, when
the SSMEs have to balance the Shuttle.

And so a better Shuttle design would have been to put a mini-shuttle
on one side, the cargo on the other, where the SSMEs are then
connected to the ET.

That design would have also allowed the mini-shuttle to separate from
the ET in case of danger, but of course getting the cargo would have
been a little bit of a problem.

There's no safe crew escape mechanism during their burn time.

And that is the main problem here. As it is clear to see that this
design did not account for the notion that for 14 astronauts so far
there came a point where they really did not want to be on the shuttle
anymore.

Clearly a thing that could have been done, which can be from ejection
seats to the front coming off into a mini plane.

Three, though there is some argument about exactly how
vulnerable developed and flight tested SRBs are to catastrophic
failure, they do in fact blow up or otherwise fail.

Only if either badly designed or badly handled.

Off the
top of my head... GEM failed (probably overstressed carbon
fiber casing in ground handling) on a Delta-2 mid-90s;

That does not sound like a system that included some back-up
redundancy, when these things should be made to handle quite a lot
more than the normal load.

Titan IV SRMU (?) failed during development and blew up
its test stand real good, discovering a new feature of
internal shockwaves, grain shaping,

So why did it fail?

And as you said this was during development, which highlights that
this design has "issues"... SERIOUS ISSUES.

and Challenger.

Yes Challenger, where their own managers chose to use a design that
their own engineers said was no good. Then the sealing putty begin to
leak, which they ignored and in part covered up. And as the O-Rings
stopped bad things from happening, then so did they oddly conclude
that this system was working just fine.

Then we come to Challenger, the unlucky Shuttle in the game of dodgy
boosters, where due to another management mistake and launching on
cold weather the O-Ring leaked as well and the rest is history.

It is hard to blame the booster given such safety incompetence.

Well, at least now they use a better design, where this one so far has
a zero failure rate.

I think I am missing one or two. But... neither liquid nor
solid rockets are perfectly reliable,

True, but they can be if you fully understand the limits of the
hardware and do not push it that far.

I mean has NASA yet even ran one of the SSMEs until it totally failed?

the number is not better
than 0.1% of the time and not worse than 1% of the time on
either one, probably, and when a solid goes it is much more
instantly catastrophic than when a liquid goes.

Yes, but solids are often far less complex.

Personally, I think they should have gone with one of the
one solid booster Shuttle concepts without any segments,

Well I am sure that the design used was the most efficient, where the
load is quite well balanced as well.

but that's neither here nor there given what we did in
fact build...

And these days you can only has wished that they kept the cargo on the
outside, when that allows for your cargo size to vary, where the
Shuttle would have been a lot smaller as well.

Cardman.

On 27 Jul 2003 04:01:50 -0700, (John Ordover) wrote:

There are no minerals on the Moon

That is a crazy thing to say.

it is worth the cost of going to get and ship back.

Depends.

The key to the Moon is to aim on getting your Moon Base self
sufficient, or close to that, when then your extreme cost in getting
it up and running is complete.

As at that point you only need to pay for replacement craft, when a
lot of things can now be made yourself.

Once you have killed the construction and support costs, then from
this point on you can start thinking profit.

There just aren't.

As I said worst case situation is just to hunt down some heavy metal
near Earth asteroids. When just one of those things would weigh
hundreds or thousands of tons.

Check out the mineral price indexes if you don't believe me.

Yes and I can bring all these precious metals back for only the cost
of the fuel and the human time in mining it out. When my Lunar launch
system can drop things into Earth atmosphere for next to nothing.

And just what is the market price for He3 these days?

Also you are not adding in the invaluable scientific return for being
able to explore, research and utilize the Moon over the long term.

And remember the cost of the R&D on
-every piece of equipment- is included in your cost-structure.

There will be a few special craft, yes, but I would never use NASA's
construction system to build them.

Look at the ISS for an example of what they can do, where this $50
billion could have paid for my Moon Base no problem.

To begin with each ISS section is unique and very heavily researched
and developed, where doing this is vastly more expensive then just
coming up with some low cost inter-connecting tubes.

And here you have a system that does not do food production, air
recycling, water recycling and all their station parts need to be
brought up from Earth.

So the ISS due to it's design needs to be serviced constantly, which
sure enough gives NASA a reason to still run their Shuttle. So a
couple of billion dollars are added on to the ISS costs each year,
simple due to the fact that the ISS is not self-supporting.

Anyway, I will leave it to China to prove that their is a lot of
profit to be found in having a Moon Base.

Cardman.

Cardman wrote:
On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 00:14:08 -0600, Charles Buckley
wrote:


Not really. The SSME's fail one major core design flaw. They are at
the edge of the materials properties. The best way to improve
reliability is to never really challenge the material's core properties.
If it fails at 3000 degrees, stay at a lower temp. If it fails at a
certain chamber pressure, stay away from that pressure.


Very nice, where of course their full power is 109% (eh?), where they
usually do up to about 106%. This according to them keeps these
engines running on for twice as long.


The rating 109% has nothing to do with the engine, per se. IIRC, back
in the initial design of the Shuttle and the engines, they has a
certain baseline performance they were aiming for. The numbers you see
are as much about their relative value against that baseline number
as anything else. ie, they have not necessarily been making huge
gains in performace. They just have never really adjusted the baseline
performance rating.

What you really need is a very well designed high performance engine,
which can go as fast as the rest, but as you say not to pressure the
material properties.


With the SSME's, their superficial design flaws tend to obscure their
fundamental design flaws.


Superficial design flaws?



Well, the SSME's have a very complex start procedure. So, half their
control systems are actually not located on the engines themselves.
They are located in the pad. So, the SSME's can only be fired from
specific locations. They are not restartable away from those pads.


All well and nice, but these engines tend to spring up surprises,
which is why they give these SSMEs a very good check.

Definately inspect, but if you have an engine like the RL-10, you
usually have an engine that can essentially run indefinately. I think
the longest burn on an RL-10 was something like 45 minutes and
ceased because they ran out of fuel for the test stand as opposed
to the engine having problems.


Why do I have a feeling that this engine does not come top of the
class for performance?


It's down in the 10000kgf range, that is true. But, the RD-170
comes in higher than the engine you were touting earlier in the
thread.

Getting to LEO as best you can is all about getting there as quickly
as you can, which involves pushing your engines. Still getting the
Shuttle to LEO adds a very large overhead.



Nonsense. The only criteria for reaching LEO on a technical side is
that you can reach LEO. Speed has little to do with it. Speed puts
a much higher impulse on the vehicle, which means you have to then
build a slightly stronger frame, which generally means heavier. Slower
means a bit mroe fuel. There really is not much difference within a
rough range and it really does not matter whether you reach LEO in
12 minutes vs 15 minutes, or whatever numbers you use. When it comes to
LEO, the important point is orbit insertion, which is a certain speed
and angle of flight. About the only thing you get by having a shorter
flight is that you've moved the launch window over by the number of
minutes you gain by a faster insertion. You do not gain anything in the
physics of the orbit.

If only failure could be predicted so well...

Every part has a projected design life. Standard aviation practice
to pull an engine after a certain amount of hours. I see no real
reason why such a procedure would not be used here.


Ever listened into air plain broadcasts? As a lot more fails on these
things then they would wish you to know, but yes they swap out engines
before they usually blow.

Also unlike say the Shuttle, then most airplanes get along just fine
if one of their engines fail, where it is just repaired or replaced
when they reach their destination.


Well actually I was also thinking along the lines of these use once
and throw away engines, when they won't all start that first time.

Well, use-once gains you nothing. You are more likely to encounter
manufacturing issues if you have a lot of engines cycle through.


There is something to be said for these engine types, when some
rockets just won't be coming back. And having your engine mass
produced does save on the recovery and servicing costs.

Also there is no real extra issue with large scale production, when in
fact they could improve in quality as they get the hang of it.



Complexity of design tends to force more complexity in the
manufacturing phase and that tends to lead to more QA oversight
requirements and other things that drag mass production issues.


No, but new materials like for anti-coking goes to improve
reliability. Keeping it simple and yet well designed seems to be a
good model for a rocket engine these days.

Not really. Essentially they are spending a lot of money to re-invent
the wheel for the most part.


Same concept, vastly different designs.


There are about 3 overall concepts for feeding rockets and about 1
real core concept for rockets. Everything else is just additional
hardware tacked on.


You can get the same rough class of
performance with proven engines as anything new.


How about some tried and tested in the 1 to 1.5 million lb class
range?


Like the RD-170 family? It's core design is from the early 1980's.
The main reason that you don't see anything current in that range is
that it has no real purpose.

The older engines
has thousands of runs to build up a reliability database and
incorporated improvements.


And so will these new engines soon show what they can do.


The best way to improve reliability is to
not add a lot of performance parts to get around the fact that you
are unnecessarily trying to get an engine to do more than it can do
safely without those improvements.


True, but modern materials and construction can indeed take those
limits beyond what has been seen before.

Also there is something to be said for increased fuel flow and higher
chamber pressure, when this results in a smaller engine that has a
high performance.


A marginal improvement in performance
rarely has an improvement reliability. Quite often the loss in
reliability outweighs the performance upgrades.


Very true, but NASA has the option to run their SSMEs as they see fit,
where 104% to 106% is common. Running at something like 80%, which
would certainly keep their engines running for a long time, I doubt
that they would make orbit on.


That is only rated against the target thrust level. That was not
an improvement in the design.


That NASA's suppliers need to be in a competitive market including
price competition. Maybe space has not gone that far yet, but this is
all adding a couple of extra zeros to the price tag.

Chicken and egg sort of equation. They have designs that have been
paid off and in service for 30 years now. The price plateau is one
of the major barriers to entry into the field. It is very difficult
to actually determine the manufacturing cost of some of those engines.


Yes, but I can only feel that they make a nice tidy sum out of it,
where the following service support is bound to be good.


But, one the bright side, there are a lot of guerilla movements that
are stressing some basic tech. If you want cheap and reliable, try
looking at nitrous and rubber.


Nitrous and rubber? One of those hybrid engines I presume.


I suspect that when someone like XCOR


That is one interesting company, when they like making rocket engines
and really showing them off.

And if anyone is interested...
http://www.xcor.com/


actually kicks out an engine that lands major contracts,


The military and their unmanned planes seems like one obvious
customer. And certainly they have engines worthy enough to go on your
usual NASA probes.

There could also be great interest in rocket planes, but I would be
doubtful about the fly time.

Well lets see if they can do the X-Prize thing and get their
sub-orbital craft running.


XCOR is not really going to a prize. They are going for a specfic
design to meet a specific market. If they incidentally meet the
requirement of X-Prize, so much the better. But, they will make their
money either way. They are building to contract specs. They get paid
for building to those specs.

I am sorry to say that I am one of the people who falls under "I will
believe it when I see it", when going sub-orbital is far easier said
then done. And well... no one has won that X-Prize yet.

I will look forwards to the next X-Prize, which I expect will be
requiring three whole orbits and a quick turn around time. That if won
would really put NASA to shame.


we'll see the same sort of price drop that we saw when AMD jumped into
the lead in chip development.


Well things did not change that much except in the lower price chip
market, when for a very long time people purchased Intel on the brand
name alone.

The likes of AMD, Cyrix and IBM were giving Intel a fair run, but it
was only with the AMD Athlon did Intel have a big headache due to
their faster and lower cost processor.

Anyway, it shows what competition can do for the market.


The big advantage that a number of established
manufacturers have is that they have amortized off their development
costs before a large number of people on this group was even born.


I see.


Then that explains where a large chunk of NASA's budget goes to, but
hey congress is always willing to cough up more.

Not always. This whole X-Prize thing is getting interesting in that
regard. The major players have all come in with designs at 10% of
the NASA cost estimates. If it had only been one of them, it would
be a fluke. But, it is *all* of them coming in much lower and that
sort of thing is hard to overlook. NASA is a bit to public and
unpopular enough in Congress that there is likely to be someone who
use this for ammo.


I am sure about that. And NASA will soon point out that no one has won
the X-Prize yet, where some are not even close to doing so.

Although I can only feel that the humans in space section of NASA
these days is just not doing at all well, where maybe one day in the
future the useful probe section should be spun off and them got rid
of.

Still I will save judgement on that based upon how well this OSP
project works out. As now that this shuttle and station will soon be
out the way, then maybe they can turn the corner and improve.

I wonder if NASA asked XCor for a OSP quote? :-]


Let's see. They asked Boeing. Pretty sure about that. They might have
asked Orbital and LockMart. I think that's about the limit of who
NASA calls. The rest have to answer the publically posted RFP.

Crawl before you walk and all that.

Also I can see how hard it is for any company to get into this space
business, both now and in the future, when going to orbit is a very
hard thing to do and often counts as a primary goal.

Sub-orbital makes things much easier, but no one has done that yet
either.

Still I am a feeling that someone very soon will, when there is a huge
tourist market for them to buy into now.

Going orbital would make things very interesting, when NASA would soon
be hoping mad over all those unannounced callers to the ISS. :-]

Cardman.

On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 20:46:32 -0600, Charles Buckley
wrote:

Cardman wrote:
Very nice, where of course their full power is 109% (eh?), where they
usually do up to about 106%. This according to them keeps these
engines running on for twice as long.

The rating 109% has nothing to do with the engine, per se.

Well obviously full power should be at 100% and not 109%.

IIRC, back
in the initial design of the Shuttle and the engines, they has a
certain baseline performance they were aiming for.

Yes, getting to orbit with their cargo.

The numbers you see
are as much about their relative value against that baseline number
as anything else.

So they work 9% better than they needed.

ie, they have not necessarily been making huge
gains in performace. They just have never really adjusted the baseline
performance rating.

No performance improvements in later SSMEs?

Superficial design flaws?

Well, the SSME's have a very complex start procedure. So, half their
control systems are actually not located on the engines themselves.
They are located in the pad.

Saves on the launch mass.

So, the SSME's can only be fired from
specific locations. They are not restartable away from those pads.

Well it not like you can blast off from international airports anyway.

Getting to LEO as best you can is all about getting there as quickly
as you can, which involves pushing your engines. Still getting the
Shuttle to LEO adds a very large overhead.

Nonsense. The only criteria for reaching LEO on a technical side is
that you can reach LEO.

That is only the primary consideration.

Speed has little to do with it.

Sure it does.

The slower you go the longer the trip takes. The longer the trip takes
the more time that gravity has to pull you back down. The more that
you are pulled back down the more fuel you need to compensate. The
more fuel you have the heaver your mass is. The greater your mass the
longer time it takes to get to orbit.

So the most efficient route to orbit is always the fastest route,
where the saving in fuel allows you to take more cargo.

Speed puts
a much higher impulse on the vehicle, which means you have to then
build a slightly stronger frame, which generally means heavier.

And like in the next RS-84 engine the increased fuel flow creates
better thrust. Due to the increased pressure involved the main chamber
(I think that it has a pre-burner as well?) is made smaller, which
makes for a smaller and lighter engine.

Sure, more powerful engines need a stronger frame, but a system like
the Shuttle is side loaded in order to keep the mass near the ground,
where the real issue is in having the cargo at the top and the engines
at the bottom, when then the frame gets compressed between the two.

So if you balanced all the weight at the engine level, then that is
the only place where you need to strengthen. Sure you need to be
careful when punching through the lower atmosphere, but soon enough
you can open it up all the way.

That to me sounds a better idea than with carrying more fuel and
adding more tank structure to hold that fuel.

Slower means a bit mroe fuel.

And the more fuel the more mass. So it is a case that the slower you
go, the slower that you will go.

There really is not much difference within a
rough range and it really does not matter whether you reach LEO in
12 minutes vs 15 minutes, or whatever numbers you use.

And how far would this heavy craft fall if subject to 3 minutes more
of gravity?

When it comes to
LEO, the important point is orbit insertion, which is a certain speed
and angle of flight.

Sure, where the flight control systems are only happy to adjust.

About the only thing you get by having a shorter
flight is that you've moved the launch window over by the number of
minutes you gain by a faster insertion. You do not gain anything in
the physics of the orbit.

You gain by being able to take more cargo with you, which is one of
those $/lb things.

There is something to be said for these engine types, when some
rockets just won't be coming back. And having your engine mass
produced does save on the recovery and servicing costs.

Also there is no real extra issue with large scale production, when in
fact they could improve in quality as they get the hang of it.

Complexity of design tends to force more complexity in the
manufacturing phase

Yes, where reusable engines are a lot more complex than the use once
and throw away kind.

and that tends to lead to more QA oversight
requirements and other things that drag mass production issues.

All you need to ensure that your mass produced engines are up for the
job is a good quality control department.

Same concept, vastly different designs.

There are about 3 overall concepts for feeding rockets and about 1
real core concept for rockets. Everything else is just additional
hardware tacked on.

And as mentioned modern materials can well make for a tougher engine
that needs far less servicing.

Also the RS-84 engine will be one of two possible choices to make the
first ever reusable Kerosene (LP-1) based rocket engine. That would
save the heavy weight of all that insulation foam common with hydrogen
type engines.

Very true, but NASA has the option to run their SSMEs as they see fit,
where 104% to 106% is common. Running at something like 80%, which
would certainly keep their engines running for a long time, I doubt
that they would make orbit on.

That is only rated against the target thrust level. That was not
an improvement in the design.

No, but my point is that if they stop thrashing the hell out of these
SSMEs at 109%, then so do these engines last longer. As by running
them at the 104% to 106% level, then so do these engines really last
over twice as long before they need replacing.

Well lets see if they can do the X-Prize thing and get their
sub-orbital craft running.

XCOR is not really going to a prize.

They are making a sub-orbital craft, where this would certainly be one
step away from winning.

They are going for a specfic
design to meet a specific market. If they incidentally meet the
requirement of X-Prize, so much the better.

Just depends on if someone beats them there or not.

But, they will make their money either way.

Certainly, where this prize would certainly help with costs and even
to start on their orbital version.

They are building to contract specs. They get paid
for building to those specs.

They got the contracts though?

I wonder if NASA asked XCor for a OSP quote? :-]

Let's see. They asked Boeing. Pretty sure about that. They might have
asked Orbital and LockMart. I think that's about the limit of who
NASA calls.

Yes, I thought that would be it.

The rest have to answer the publically posted RFP.

And as I said they would have to make their own craft before showing
that they could make one for NASA as well.

Cardman.