Posted on 12/28/2003 9:39:33 PM PST by anymouse
“We know from history that every medium—air, land and sea—has seen conflict. Reality indicates that space will be no different. Given this virtual certainty, the U.S. must develop the means to both deter and to defend against hostile acts in and from space.” —Rumsfeld Commission Report, January 2001
In the 1980s, the opponents of “Star Wars” often claimed that “the effective protection of a nation against nuclear attack had never been a serious prospect (and in the view of most scientists, is not today).” The naysayers’ argument was more with Isaac Newton and with Earth’s gravity field than it was with Ronald Reagan or Edward Teller and the others who wanted to defend America and its allies against ballistic missiles.
It was evident in March of 1983, after Ronald Reagan’s famous “Star Wars” speech, that an effective missile defense system would have to have elements based in orbit because it is easier to shoot downward, and have gravity working with you, than it is to shoot upwards and have your weapons fighting against it. The advantage of the high ground has been evident throughout human history. A caveman who used gravity to enhance the striking power of his fist by holding a rock in it, was working on the same basic principles as a B-2 bomber pilot uses when he drops a satellite-guided JDAM bomb on a terrorist.
In 1983, there were two major areas that Reagan’s advisors wanted to look into. The first, promoted by Edward Teller, was the x-ray laser. Powered by a nuclear explosion, this would have produced a burst of powerful laser rays that, if aimed properly, could destroy a large number of targets with a single weapon. Initial underground testing proved that this technology was, for the moment, impractical. Teller had been banking on the laser as potentially the prime defensive weapon in the system, but he recognized the more immediate value of kinetic energy devices. These devices were technologically fairly mature and could be built and deployed with few delays.
The most important of these was the “Smart Rock” concept promoted by General Dan Graham and his High Frontier organization as part of a multi-layered defense shield. The basic idea was to use heat-seeking space-based weapons to hit Soviet missiles in their boost phase when they are emitting huge amounts of infrared energy and before they can deploy decoys. Unlike lasers, which would need tons of chemical fuel to operate, or ground-based interceptors, which need vulnerable radar, “Smart Rocks,” based in low Earth orbit (LEO), would be hard to target with conventional antisatellite weapons and could be shielded against the electromagnetic pulse generated by a nuclear explosion in space. They were among the “Star Wars” weapons the Soviets feared most.
Smart Rocks evolved into “Brilliant Peebles” and these were to be the cornerstone of President George H.W. Bush’s planned Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS) system. One of the first acts of the Clinton Administration was to cancel the whole program. As Defense Secretary Les Aspin put it, “we’re taking the stars out of Star Wars.”
During the next eight years, the Clinton Administration spent billions on weapons whose primary purpose was to fight gravity rather than to shoot down missiles. Against tactical missiles, they developed the PAC-3 version of the Patriot and the Lockheed Martin THAAD. They also continued the effort begun under Ronald Reagan to help Israel build the Arrow, which, in conjunction with the PAC-2 version of the Patriot, gives Israel the only multi-layered missile defense system in the Western world.
The Clinton Administration failed to adequately fund any of the space elements of their system. In the late 1990s, they were touting SBIRS (Space Based Infrared System). This was supposed to replace the venerable DSP (Defense Support System) satellites that had been watching out for missile launches since the earliest example was launched in November 1970. Lack of funding and mismanagement has lead to a radical reduction its capabilities. Since the DSPs are coming to the end of their useful lives SBIRS is needed more urgently than ever. The high cost of space access
The DSPs, along with the GPS navigation system, the military communication satellites and the spy satellites, together make up the core of today’s American military spacepower. These are all highly advanced and complex spacecraft that altogether cost billions to build and more billions to launch.
As a rule of thumb, it costs up to $10,000 dollars to put a single pound of payload, be it a satellite or food for the astronauts on the space station or anything else in LEO. The cost of a single launch can be anywhere from $20 million for an Orbital Sciences Corporation Pegasus to upwards of $500 million for a Shuttle launch, depending on how the cost is calculated.
Calculating launch costs and figuring out how much governments and companies actually pay to put payloads into orbit is a swamp full of secrets and misinformation. For example, the first launch of Lockheed Martin’s new Atlas 5 rocket carried a European commercial communications satellite. Rumor had it that they paid less than $25 million. The true cost was more than twice that. The first launch of any new rocket is risky and few companies will want to put their very expensive new spacecraft on an untried launch vehicle.
Even relatively well-proven rockets are often priced below cost. The services of the European Ariane 5 rocket are probably being sold at heavily subsidized prices. European taxpayers were recently asked to cough up more that $1 billion dollars to fix the flaws in the advanced version of this launcher. One was destroyed shortly after launch in December 2002.
The Chinese have been out of the commercial space launch business ever since they were caught taking proprietary information from Loral and Hughes after the 1996 crash of one of their rockets. The information they stole on satellite deployment systems could give them a shortcut to developing MIRVs for their nuclear missiles. While America has a formal ban on launching US-made satellites using Chinese rockets, other nations seem to have imposed their own informal ban on doing business with Beijing.
Countries such as China and France will continue to subsidize their rocket industries because they see independent access to LEO as a vital military capability. They also know that by developing expertise in designing launch vehicles they are also increasing their skills in the long-range nuclear missile area. As any space expert will be glad to explain, a space launch vehicle is nothing but a glorified artillery shell, directly descended from the V-2 which the German Nazis used to attack London and Antwerp in 1944-1945.
Making such rockets efficient and cost-effective is like trying to make a Ferrari cost-effective. They are intricate and delicate machines that are thrown away after a single use. The Shuttle, which NASA described as a first-generation reusable launch vehicle (RLV), has to be practically rebuilt from scratch after each mission. No dramatic reduction in launch costs is possible as long as cargo and passengers have to ride into space on what one expert called “disintegrating totem poles.”
A short history of the RLV
Back in the mid 1980s, many of the supporters of missile defense realized this and began to look for ways to escape this dilemma. One of the driving factors was the so-called Nitze criterion. This laid out the principle that for any missile defense system to be cost effective each increment of defense had to cost less than each increment of offense. The arguments over this quickly degenerated into a debate over how to properly estimate the cost of Soviet military systems. (One Russian writer suggested that the US measure the cost of the Red Army’s tanks in pairs of blue jeans per vehicle.)
General Graham realized that the best way to confront this was to drastically cut the costs of putting the missile defense sensors and weapons into orbit. In February 1989 Graham, along with Jerry Pournelle, the science fiction writer, and Max Hunter, a legendary rocket engineer, met in the White House with Vice President Dan Quayle. They proposed that the US build an experimental single stage to orbit (SSTO) RLV technology demonstrator that would lead to airliner-like operations: the whole thing would go up, the whole thing would come back and it could be given a quick inspection, refueled and flown again.
If successful, such a vehicle could be flown far more often than the Shuttle. A future version could even be flown several times a week. Every professional study, notably the recent Futron ASCENT study, shows that cost of access to orbit is related to flight rate. A fleet of RLVs flying thousands of missions a year could reduce the cost of getting to LEO to as little as $300 a pound, which would mean that a human being weighing 180 lbs. with a 120 lbs. baggage allowance could be flown into space for $90,000. More to the point, it would cost about the same to send a Brilliant Pebble missile interceptor.
Quayle was convinced. In turn, he sold the rest of the administration on the potential of such an effort. Instead of handing it to NASA, which was obsessed with the Shuttle, the project was instead handed to what was then called the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO).
In those days, SDIO was still full of imaginative thinkers who were ready to pursue radical new ideas and were also merciless about dropping projects that failed to meet their initial promise. After a nasty political and bureaucratic struggle in which the Vice President played a critical part, money for a precursor SSTO project was included in the defense budget. When McDonnell Douglas won the contract, the vehicle became known as the DC-X. While it would never reach orbit, it would demonstrate a “build a little, test a little” approach to launch vehicle development. It would also show what could be done if all the usual expensive rules for large aerospace programs are thrown out the window. The management of the program was assumed by Pete Conrad, the former astronaut, Air Force Col. (now General) Pete Worden and Maj. Jess Sponable.
The DC-X rolled out of the hangar where it had been built, in Huntington Beach, California, in April 1993. To the small segment of the American public that followed such things, it was a momentous event. In spite of all the many bureaucratic efforts to kill it, and the utter indifference of the new Clinton administration, a new space age was conceived.
On August 18, 1993, the vehicle flew for the first time, at White Sands, New Mexico. This was the first time in history that a rocket had landed vertically with the engine still running, just like in the old science fiction movies. Proving vertical landing was an important part of that program. More important was proving that a launch system could be run by a couple of technicians out of a trailer. As long as each launch is regarded as a “campaign” needing thousands of highly-paid experts to check and recheck every element of the vehicle, any serious reduction in the cost of getting into space is impossible. The DC-X and its successors have proven that, given current materials and propulsion, the SSTO dream is impossible, but a two stage to orbit (TSTO) system is within the state of the art. Current military RLV work
The Air Force has published a concept call for transformational delivery vehicles, both to replace the Minuteman III ICBMs and to accomplish the Prompt Global Strike and Operationally Responsive Spacelift missions. While it is hard to imagine an RLV replacing ICBMs as America’s land based nuclear deterrent, the latter job, also called FALCON, for Force Application and Launch from the Continental United States, would be within the capabilities of such a vehicle. Being able to hit any target on earth within 90 minutes or less without having to fly through any other nations’ airspace is something America is going to need to be able to do.
Indeed, the DoD had been working on a Military Space Plane concept in the early 1990s, but it was canceled by Bill Clinton in 1997, when he used the line-item veto for the first and last time. The idea has never really died and today Boeing is working on the X-37, which could be part of such a system as well as a technology demonstrator for NASA’s Orbital Space Plane (OSP). This spaceplane shares many of the requirements of the Air Force’s ongoing Space Maneuver Vehicle studies.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is currently working on the RASCAL project. This would be an aircraft capable of at least Mach 3 that would zoom up to 200,000 feet, where it would release a smaller rocket that would propel its payload into space. The goal is to produce a vehicle that can put a 130-kg payload into orbit for operating costs of about $750,000 dollars per mission. By a happy coincidence, this is about the weight of an evolved version of a Brilliant Pebble.
Assuming 100% cost overruns, the marginal cost of building and deploying a single evolved version of the Brilliant Pebble would be 6 million dollars. A constellation of 2000 of these would cost 12 billion dollars to build and deploy—about the same as a single aircraft carrier and its aircraft. RASCAL, or something similar, might also fulfill the Pentagon’s need for Prompt Global Strike.
Today, neither the DoD nor NASA has any clear idea of how to fix America’s access to space problem. There are a number of promising alternatives. Without high level attention, America’s space warriors will continue to depend on glorified versions of von Braun’s V-2 on the 60th anniversary of the attack on London. We can—and should—do better.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.