1990s US Big Dumb Booster Project?

I remember a project I read a website in the late 1990s. A private US
company was developing an impressive new aproach for a large low price
expendable rocket. It had pressure feeding, carbon(?)-filament tanks and the
extreme cheap ablative nozle was already tested by the Air Force. A
guidance computer was developed and the whole thing in a year ready to go.
I was unable to find the website again. Thats all from fade memory.
Was it my dream or something for real?


## CrossPoint v3.12d R ##

wrote:
I remember a project I read a website in the late 1990s. A private US
company was developing an impressive new aproach for a large low price
expendable rocket. It had pressure feeding, carbon(?)-filament tanks and the
extreme cheap ablative nozle was already tested by the Air Force. A
guidance computer was developed and the whole thing in a year ready to go.
I was unable to find the website again. Thats all from fade memory.
Was it my dream or something for real?

I suspect that you are thinking of Andrew Beal's
Beal Aerospace, which shut itself down on
October 23, 2000. The company did succeed in
test firing one of its powerful liquid propellant
rocket engines, but the commercial sat launch
market collapsed before a launch vehicle could
be assembled.

The remains of Beal's web site is at:

"http://www.bealaerospace.com/"

- Ed Kyle

I remember a project I read a website in the late 1990s. A private US
company was developing an impressive new aproach for a large low price
expendable rocket. It had pressure feeding, carbon(?)-filament tanks and
the extreme cheap ablative nozle was already tested by the Air Force. A
guidance computer was developed and the whole thing in a year ready to go.
I was unable to find the website again. Thats all from fade memory.
Was it my dream or something for real?

I suspect that you are thinking of Andrew Beal's
Beal Aerospace, which shut itself down on
October 23, 2000. The company did succeed in
test firing one of its powerful liquid propellant
rocket engines, but the commercial sat launch
market collapsed before a launch vehicle could
be assembled.

The remains of Beal's web site is at:

"http://www.bealaerospace.com/"

- Ed Kyle

Yep, thanks, thats it!
Unfortunately I found no way to access the old pages of the site. But
I read about it at "Astronautix". I think it was the most impressive
rocket development project since the end of Saturn V production. And
the logical follow on after the Saturn V.

But its superior concept missed the point. Rocketry was always more to
get most money out of the market. Be a gate guard, not to offer cheap
access to space. So I saw no chance for Beal and expected he got killed
(not literaly) by the Space Alliance. That Beal blamed NASA surprised
me somewhat. NASA and Congress were only the instruments to get him out.

Somehow its a disappointment that it was not much mentioned here,
specially by the next generation discussions.

Beal wrote October 23, 2000: "...congress last week approved an initial
$290 million to begin an effort that NASA declares will result in the
government funding of one or two human rated subsidized launch systems
within 5 years." Its more than he used for all his real development.
Was that $290M the origine of the Big Stick concept?


## CrossPoint v3.12d R ##

wrote:
I remember a project I read a website in the late 1990s. A private US
company was developing an impressive new aproach for a large low price
expendable rocket. It had pressure feeding, carbon(?)-filament tanks and
the extreme cheap ablative nozle was already tested by the Air Force. A
guidance computer was developed and the whole thing in a year ready to go.
I was unable to find the website again. Thats all from fade memory.
Was it my dream or something for real?

I suspect that you are thinking of Andrew Beal's
Beal Aerospace, which shut itself down on
October 23, 2000. The company did succeed in
test firing one of its powerful liquid propellant
rocket engines, but the commercial sat launch
market collapsed before a launch vehicle could
be assembled.

The remains of Beal's web site is at:

"http://www.bealaerospace.com/"

- Ed Kyle

Yep, thanks, thats it!
Unfortunately I found no way to access the old pages of the site. But
I read about it at "Astronautix". I think it was the most impressive
rocket development project since the end of Saturn V production. And
the logical follow on after the Saturn V.

But its superior concept missed the point. Rocketry was always more to
get most money out of the market. Be a gate guard, not to offer cheap
access to space. So I saw no chance for Beal and expected he got killed
(not literaly) by the Space Alliance. That Beal blamed NASA surprised
me somewhat. NASA and Congress were only the instruments to get him out.

Somehow its a disappointment that it was not much mentioned here,
specially by the next generation discussions.

Beal wrote October 23, 2000: "...congress last week approved an initial
$290 million to begin an effort that NASA declares will result in the
government funding of one or two human rated subsidized launch systems
within 5 years." Its more than he used for all his real development.
Was that $290M the origine of the Big Stick concept?

No. That money was for study contracts for a NASA
vision that was two or three "visions", and NASA
Administrators, ago. This was pre-Columbia failure,
pre-Bush to the Moon plans, etc. If I remember
correctly, this was the beginning of the so-called
"Orbital Space Plane" effort that ended up being
predicted to be so obscenely expensive that nothing
came of it - although it did serve to germinate
ideas that are now part of the CEV (but not
SRB-Stick) effort.

As for Beal, I was always convinced that he used the
NASA announcement to provide some type of warped
validation for what was really a sound business
decision that he had already made. I don't understand
why he didn't simply tell the truth. The commercial
launch market had already crumbled by that time,
and Beal's launcher development effort was approaching
that moment when big bucks were going to be needed to
get it over the hump. Perhaps he wanted to divert
blame from his soon to be ex-employees or something.

- Ed Kyle

On 09 Sep 2005 17:12:00 +0200, wrote:

I suspect that you are thinking of Andrew Beal's
Beal Aerospace,

I think it was the most impressive
rocket development project since the end of Saturn V production. And
the logical follow on after the Saturn V.

Well, no. Beal's rockets were all very large, true, but their payload
performance was firmly in the Ariane 5/EELV-class (13,200 lbs. to
Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit). The BA-2 was to be a very large
low-energy rocket.

Brian

wrote:
The remains of Beal's web site is at:

"http://www.bealaerospace.com/"

- Ed Kyle
Unfortunately I found no way to access the old pages of the site.

Some of the pages are cached at:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/bealaerospace.com/*

for example, a test of the TVC:

http://web.archive.org/web/199910110...1999-03-16.htm

Also, the overpowering Google has a few cached pages:

http://www.google.ca/search?q=site:b...8&start=0&sa=N

but they're mainly colour-supplement blether.

This is a particular bugbear of mine, websites that disappear
into oblivion without being properly recorded.

A few years ago I started caching websites of smaller local
airlines after a one went bust - I managed to save a few sites,
maybe I should start doing that with all these launch companies
that have popped-up recently...

--
Andrew Bunting

Beal wrote October 23, 2000: "...congress last week approved an initial
$290 million to begin an effort that NASA declares will result in the
government funding of one or two human rated subsidized launch systems
within 5 years." Its more than he used for all his real development.
Was that $290M the origine of the Big Stick concept?

No. That money was for study contracts for a NASA
vision that was two or three "visions", and NASA
Administrators, ago. This was pre-Columbia failure,
pre-Bush to the Moon plans, etc. If I remember
correctly, this was the beginning of the so-called
"Orbital Space Plane" effort that ended up being
predicted to be so obscenely expensive that nothing
came of it - although it did serve to germinate
ideas that are now part of the CEV (but not
SRB-Stick) effort.

As for Beal, I was always convinced that he used the
NASA announcement to provide some type of warped
validation for what was really a sound business
decision that he had already made.

Yea, those "Orbital Space Plans" are the usual NASA Power Point
burners. For civil spaceflight nothing serious ever to expect
from. And even build - such a plane had no chance to compete with
Beals Big Dumb Boosters. So it realy looks like an excuse by
him.

I don't understand
why he didn't simply tell the truth. The commercial
launch market had already crumbled by that time,
and Beal's launcher development effort was approaching
that moment when big bucks were going to be needed to
get it over the hump. Perhaps he wanted to divert
blame from his soon to be ex-employees or something.

- Ed Kyle

Hm, there may be some other reason too. Why is his website gone?
Why is so less known about this project, no grassroots movement
and continous public protest to get it up again? Why no pressure
at NASA to adopt Beals concept? It could be that he got paid out
by Space Alliance to shut up. The goverments (USA, EU, Russia)
and all launcher companies against him he had no much other chance
than to quit.


## CrossPoint v3.12d R ##

I think it was the most impressive
rocket development project since the end of Saturn V production. And
the logical follow on after the Saturn V.

Well, no. Beal's rockets were all very large, true, but their payload
performance was firmly in the Ariane 5/EELV-class (13,200 lbs. to
Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit). The BA-2 was to be a very large
low-energy rocket.

Brian

Yes, it was in the Ariane class because he targeted the same satellite
market. My follow on thinking was from an engineering design point
of view. Saturn V like all other important rockets today are
basicaly an obsolet old technology approach. They have to much
parts and are mostly handcrafted. Beals BDBs had much less parts
and were from an automated filament processing machine. I think
I read he had the largest machine of this type.

Beals BDB was not only much cheaper but had the chance to be more
reliable than any other approach. Because the Shuttle SRBs are man-rated
Beals BDBs could well be too. Further keep in mind it was a cluster
concept. For a Saturn V like moon shoot one would use larger elements
than he had. But there is no limit to the size of an element or
to the whole cluster. A Beal Saturn V would be larger then the
original one and in some performance figures be rather poor.

But what you want is reliability and low price. The usual rockets
had some (rather esoteric) performance figures as main argument
for "good". As Henry Spencer pointed out here several times thats
because the military origine of this launchers. There low price
was never an issue.

Now imagine you have a launcher with 1/100th the cost of the Shuttle.
Scalable to Saturn V payload size and well beyond. You no longer
have to worry about unexpected size increase of you payload during
development. You can shorten the engineering time on every payload
because weight is no longer a big issue. Because of this you will use
larger margines of safety and more redundancy on your payload.

Around 1980 the SU seriously thought about a cluster concept too.
But they had no way to pressure feed (no sufficient acess to high
tension aramid or carbon filaments). The USA had aramid since
the 1970s. Why was a BDB like Beals never an issue at NASA?
Or was it, but not in the open?



## CrossPoint v3.12d R ##

The remains of Beal's web site is at:

"http://www.bealaerospace.com/"

- Ed Kyle
Unfortunately I found no way to access the old pages of the site.

Some of the pages are cached at:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/bealaerospace.com/*

for example, a test of the TVC:

http://web.archive.org/web/199910110....com/1999-03-1
6.htm

Thanks! Its hard to get those sub pages and still no pictures. But
some of the text is worth it:

The mechanism - known within the industry as Liquid Injection Thrust
Vector Control, or LITVC - is a well-proven means to reliably control
the flight of a rocket.
...
"The mechanism steers by using dozens of computer-controlled jets to
modify the flow of propellants within the thrust chamber. Generally
speaking, when you open a jet on one side of the chamber, the exhaust
plume is deflected. The deflected exhaust is used to steer the rocket.
It's well-proven and very reliable."

For me that sound more interesting than Space Plane, Roton and the other
jokes!

Also, the overpowering Google has a few cached pages:

http://www.google.ca/search?q=site:b...&ie=UTF-8&star
t=0&sa=N

but they're mainly colour-supplement blether.

This is a particular bugbear of mine, websites that disappear
into oblivion without being properly recorded.

Perhaps someone could send you a copy of Beals site. You could
publish it somewhere and keep the name of the informer confidential?


A few years ago I started caching websites of smaller local
airlines after a one went bust - I managed to save a few sites,
maybe I should start doing that with all these launch companies
that have popped-up recently...

--
Andrew Bunting


## CrossPoint v3.12d R ##