CEV to be made commercially available

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
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"OM" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 00:13:52 +0000 (UTC), Sander Vesik
wrote:

Any particular reason they should have prefered the Apollo programme to
advertising dollars?

...Because it's news *and* history in the making, which is honestly
more important than satisfying Ethyl Soapsjunkie and Joe Punchclock in
their efforts to find something banal to make their dreary lives
supposedly tolerable.

The flights up to 11 were history-in-the-making. 12-17 weren't news, to the
uninitiated.

(Andre Lieven) wrote:


Perhaps NASA should be split into two parts; One like NACA, to
develop technologies, the other to operate *some* of them. There
could well be problems with this notion. But... its a notion.

In general I'm wary of generalizations about NASA; it's no more
monolithic than any other big organization, and has as many frustrated
critics inside as outside. By the same token, I'm wary of broad-brush
prescriptions for its improvement.

But there's no question that in the sequence of research, development,
and commercialization, its competence goes down step by step. While
the United Space Alliance of today is hard to love, I've always
wondered what would have happened if Klaus Heiss' ideas for spinning
off STS operations had been put into effect from the beginning, with
serious incentives to drive down ops costs.

Pat Flannery wrote:

http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/modern_flight/mf2.htm
Yeah, I'd be confident taking on Bf-109s in that.... :-D

The text suggests that the Japanese applied, uhh, real-world market
incemtives before the Germans got a chance.

"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.

Pat Flannery wrote:
Andre Lieven wrote:



The DC-3 was a stretched version of the DC-2. The DC-2 was the
production variant of Douglas' original DC-1 prototype. The DC-1 was
produced for TWA as a competitor to the Boeing Model 247s being flown
by United (United was owned by Boeing, at the time), and incorporated
the same technology. The Boeing 247 was essentially an airliner
flavor of Boeing's Y1B-9 bomber prototype.



Indeed. Lets re-cap: The military based plane LOST. The wholly civilian
plane, was developed through three marks, the third of which was a great
success. That fits with my earlier statements.

As for the " same technology ", well... proof ?



Ever see the B-18? It's the bomber version of the DC-2.
This almost beat the B-17 as the Air Corps main bomber, but luckily
saner heads prevailed:
http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/modern_flight/mf2.htm
Yeah, I'd be confident taking on Bf-109s in that.... :-D

Well, technically, the 299 lost the fly-off. Something about trying to
take off with the tail surfaces locked, and only the trim tabs
operating -- enough to get the nose up, but not enough to actually
climb.

The AAC had to buy the winning plane, but they had been impressed
enough that they found a way to sneak a small contract in.

BTW, the 299 ("Grandpa", IIRC) was more servicable than the B-17: the
wing was large enough to have a tunnel for the crew chief to scoot out
to the engines during flight.

I think the B-17 bio I read lo these many years ago was by Caidin, but
I could be confused by his having written "Everything But the Flak",
which is just a brief interlude in the later life of the B-17.

/dps

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

"snidely" wrote:
BTW, the 299 ("Grandpa", IIRC) was more servicable than the B-17: the
wing was large enough to have a tunnel for the crew chief to scoot out
to the engines during flight.

You are confusing the B-17 with the B-19.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Derek Lyons wrote:
"snidely" wrote:
BTW, the 299 ("Grandpa", IIRC) was more servicable than the B-17: the
wing was large enough to have a tunnel for the crew chief to scoot out
to the engines during flight.

You are confusing the B-17 with the B-19.


IT would take more time than it is worth to retrieve the cite, but no,
I'm not confused. I was reading the B-17 bio; it was the prototype for
the B-17 (not the B-17 itself) that had the in-flight access to the
engines.

/dps

On 25 Oct 2005 18:35:48 -0700, "snidely" wrote:

Derek Lyons wrote:
"snidely" wrote:
BTW, the 299 ("Grandpa", IIRC) was more servicable than the B-17: the
wing was large enough to have a tunnel for the crew chief to scoot out
to the engines during flight.

You are confusing the B-17 with the B-19.

IT would take more time than it is worth to retrieve the cite, but no,
I'm not confused. I was reading the B-17 bio; it was the prototype for
the B-17 (not the B-17 itself) that had the in-flight access to the
engines.

Sure you're not thinking of the XB-15?

Dale