Rutan Faults NASA on Apollo-Style Capsule

Associated Press ^ | 5/4/06 | ALICIA CHANG,

[anymouse]

LOS ANGELES - Maverick aerospace designer Burt Rutan on Thursday criticized NASA's decision to use an Apollo-style capsule to return to the moon, saying it "doesn't make any sense" to build a new generation of space vehicles using old technology.

The designer of SpaceShipOne said NASA's proposed crew exploration vehicle to replace the aging space shuttle fleet doesn't push the technical envelope needed to accomplish more complex future missions that might include manned flights to other planets and moons.

"I don't know what they're doing," said Rutan, referring to NASA. "It doesn't make any sense."

Rutan said there needs to be a technological breakthrough in spacecraft design that would make it affordable and safe to send humans anywhere in the solar system. But he said he doesn't know what that breakthrough will be.

"Usually the wacky people have the breakthrough. The smart people don't," Rutan told an audience at the International Space Development Conference in Los Angeles.

NASA is planning to return astronauts to the moon by 2018 and eventually send them to Mars. Unlike previous lunar missions, the space agency is studying possible areas where it can set up a human outpost.

Two competing contractors, Lockheed Martin and a team of Northrop Grumman and Boeing, each have contracts to develop conceptual designs of the crew exploration vehicle. The vehicle, which will be shaped like an Apollo-era capsule, will launched atop a rocket and return to Earth by parachutes.

NASA is expected to name a winner to build the vehicle by August.

NASA spokesman Dean Acosta said the crew exploration vehicle is a "fiscally responsible" project that achieves the space agency's goal of returning to the moon within its budget constraint.

"If you want sexy, it will cost a lot more money," Acosta said.

Rutan is currently building a commercial version of SpaceShipOne, which made history in 2004 when it became the first privately financed manned rocket to reach space.

Virgin Galactic, a British space tourism company, plans to take tourists on suborbital spaceflights using Rutan-designed rocketplanes launched from a proposed spaceport in New Mexico.

Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn said Thursday the company is looking at possible future spaceports in the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Scotland or Sweden.

Virgin Galactic representatives recently visited Kiruna in northern Sweden to explore the possibility of launching suborbital flights that will allow passengers to see the Northern Lights, Whitehorn said.

Last summer, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson and Rutan, president of Mojave-based Scaled Composites LLC, agreed to form The Spaceship Company to build and market spaceships and launcher planes, licensing technology from a company owned by billionaire Paul G. Allen, who financed SpaceShipOne.

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On the Net:

Virgin Galactic: http://www.virgingalactic.com/en/

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/spacecraft/index.html

Scaled Composites: http:/http://www.scaled.com

[Charles Martel]

If you want to measure Rutan's success ask any pilot that has flown one of his aircraft...

ANY one of 'em, huh?

Hey, John... how 'bout that Long EZ? John? Uhhh... John?

Sorry, that was too easy.

Actually, I have great respect for Rutan's work. However, like NASA's designs, Rutan's will prove to have their flaws. I'll really be impressed when a Rutan-designed spacecraft reaches the altitudes achieved by the Mercury Program. While the engine technology is interesting and may be scalable, right now SpaceShip One is little more than a cool engineering exercise.

[CWOJackson]

"Not that we need to go to Mars either, unless there are commercially viable and exploitable reasons to do so (autobots can do whatever research is necessary)."

This is what the German scientiest in the early space program pushed for. They reasoned that we could land and recover robots on the moon far quicker, easier and cheaper then a man.

It was the Kennedy-Johnson administrations that insisted we had to put men on the moon, so now our space craft had to support life as well. Size and environmental support became an issue.

Then our astronauts rebelled at being "spam in a can" and insisted on having some flight controls and this increased the demands on the program.

The Germans were also opposed to the whole shuttle concept but by then the lines had been drawn and they were being eased out of the program for the most part.

[The Antiyuppie]

There is a WORLD of difference between his suborbital flight and an orbital spacecraft.

I don't think the propellant he uses could ever be used to get to orbit.

The incredible skill of the astronaut on board saved the day on his recordmaking flight. A lesser person would have lost it.

Still, it was an amazing feat for a private company.

[raygun]

Back in 1989 I worked for a company and had the pleasure of serving as a proctor for the Computer Science event in the Science Olympiad.

They were formulating test questions, and one of the things I was tasked to do was figure out speculative problems. These problems could only be figured out using methods and techniques that elementary thru high-school kids would know; they didn't want kids spinning their gears on a timed even that only savants would be able to figure out (how to score gold, silver bronze is the question). This was an outgrowth from the previous year, when at the regionials the proctors had to solve all the problems prior to the events.

Mind you, my assistant and I were employed by the guy who gave us this opportunity in the capacity of programmer/analysts for the sole purpose of deveoloping his medical practice management software. So we knew our stuff.

Anyways, I was given the task to solve the problem of defining how many launches it would take of the space shuttle to break even (compared to Apollo style launches).

You know what? I couldn't do it in 1989. Boss man didn't like that. NO matter what we did, it couldn't be resolved: Shuttle was more expensive than Apollo. Bossman (who was a Ph.D. pathologist with a photographic memory), threw some magic at the problem that at the time I never seen before (solving multiple simultaneous equations of numerous variable utilizing matrixes): and ended up throwing his hands up in the air, looked at me and said: "You know what this is?"

"Uh, the assumptions are wrong?"

"No. This is just another example of a government boondoggle that's going to cost us billions (if not trillions)."

That's a no-defacator.

Nevertheless, and the foregoing notwithstanding, I've always had a penchant for the Shuttle (even knowing what I did). I've always thought it was a cool concept: reusable space-craft.

[raygun]

I seen the Discovery Channel special on that. It was pretty cool. It displayed the tenacity, temerity, and doggedness of an American entrepenreuer.

I say: there's gold in them thar asteroids (go get it). WHILE YOUR'RE AT IT, build us a smelter in orbit, build us a metal fabricating factory that can work with and fashion precision parts titanium, make us stuff we need in orbit and you'll be rich.

I don't ever see that happening within the next 500 years.

[Moonman62]

Indeed, he has made some very significant firsts that are on a far lesser level then that NASA did with Apollo.

How much money did he spend, and man hours used versus NASA?

[MarineBrat]

Rutan said there needs to be a technological breakthrough in spacecraft design that would make it affordable and safe to send humans anywhere in the solar system. But he said he doesn't know what that breakthrough will be.

Lets put life on hold while Burt finds the perfect inspirational buzz and designs something.

I have tremendous respect for the man, but comments like this make me suspect that he's out of his league.

[anymouse]

Mercury funding was not that great and the government had not yet fully committed to the project.

I guess 10+ years and Billions of dollars spent on military missile development didn't give the Mercury guys much of a head start?

SS1 was multiples of factors of safety better than Mercury. NASA calculated that Al Shepard had about a 50/50 chance of surviving the launch. Rutan built in many more graceful failure modes into SS1 than any NASA vehicles have ever had.

[CWOJackson]

Again, Rutan had the luxury of technology and composites that already exist...much of it from the efforts within NASA. In a way, NASA paid for much of his work.

[Ichneumon]

"Usually the wacky people have the breakthrough. The smart people don't," Rutan told an audience at the International Space Development Conference in Los Angeles.

He's only half right. It's the wacky smart people who have the breakthroughs. The wacky non-smart people don't -- they just run for office as Democrats.

[anymouse]

I'm less worried about waiting to come up with some grand new idea.

I'm more interested in getting moving on getting back to the moon.

Well we're all familiar with what happens when we get impatient and demand that the government just do something and hand them a blank check. We learned the wrong lesson with the Apollo program. Remember it was in the age of President Johnson's "Great Society" where big government programs were supposed to solve all of societies ills.

Had we turned the engines of capitalism loose on space in the 1970s (or even later in the 1980s or even the 1090s), we would be routinely be flying back and forth into space at a fraction of the current cost doing things we can't even imagine, just because it was much more accessible to more varied players.

The shuttle was only one in many missteps in space development over the last 30 or so years.

[anymouse]

Well back then the space program was really another front in the Cold War. There was no option to just flake out. We were in a "duck and cover" world, where beating the Soviets to the Moon was infinitely more acceptable (at the personal and national level) to a real threat of a thermonuclear war of Mutual Assured Destruction. Then there was no higher honor than to be part of the race to the Moon.

Now politics is more important than engineering a way to get back to the Moon. It is a fight over how to spend tax dollars.

With the end of the Cold War, we missed the opportunity to shift the space paradigm to a commercial industry (like every other postwar period had resulted in a commercial boom as technology and skilled workers were readily available.) Instead Clinton and Gore turned it into a global socialist program with the Russians. The irony is that the Russians had fought to shed socialism only to be forced back into it with NASA. There was a brief window where commercial joint US-Russian efforts were starting to get off the ground, but NASA worked hard to extinguish that spark of freedom in space every time it started to take hold.

[anymouse]

Thanks for setting the record straight.

It is sad that the Starships are gone. It was a beautiful bird.

[anymouse]

Pilot error. Don't toke and fly.

[anymouse]

The capsule is not the problem per se. It's the recycled shuttle crap they stack under it that is the problem. Of course piling on the extraneous requirements doesn't make it any better or cheaper.

Kelly Johnson would kick these bozos' @$$es off the premises. Burt is a student of Johnson's Skunk Works approach (the real Skunk Works, not the current pale excuse for an organization that LockMart brags about.)

[Thebaddog]

I'm starting with what worked and going from there. Remember the Mars missions that failed under Goldin's program of reinventing NASA to do it better and cheaper? One satellite failed when they told it feet were meters.

Now granted NASA is a shell of what it was forty years ago, but Burt has a learning curve too. And I would rather start from a known basis rather than a revolutionary basis.

[TalonDJ]

Ahhhh... I think they were all built by contractors.. its called the National Aeronautics and Space ADMINISTRATION.. they administer the programs, not construct the vehicles.

Not only that but most of those were GIVEN to NASA after they had been built either on a contract from the Air Force or Navy or just for kicks by the contractors themselves. Most of the coolest stuff NASA has ever gotten it's hands on was that type of second hand hardware.

[Little Ray]

They should recruit Rutan...

[TKDietz]

"And his safety record is a lot better than NASA's."

Yeah, just ask John Denver.



Okay, I know. Burt Rutan didn't build the Long-Ez John Denver died in and the builder did deviate from the design specs, and John Denver did not familiarize himself with the plane enough before he flew it. If he had, he'd probably still be alive today. Anyway, those Long-Ez's are cool. I sat in one a while back but haven't flown in one. I see a couple flying around where I live all the time though. Very cool, very efficient aircraft. Burt Rutan is ahead of his time.