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Posted on 08/21/2003 8:53:50 AM PDT by RightWhale
Is The Air Force The Enemy Of Space?
by Publius Rex, Los Angeles - Aug 20, 2003
In the Profile section of the July 14, 2003 issue of Space News was the very telling interview with Gen. John P. Jumper ("Space As A Means - Not An End In Itself.")
No wonder our spaceflight prospects are as poor as they are what with Blue-Suits like him running everything. I can't believe this man had the gall to say that his pro-space critics "should worry more about winning wars and less about protecting 'pet' projects."
Isn't that what the Navy said to Billy Mitchell, when he used (then new) air power to sink a battleship?
I guess that $36 billion F-22 couldn't be a pet project too, now could it?
Or how about that $200 billion Joint Strike Fighter or the $10 billion dollar Crusader (a self-propelled howitzer!) Or the OSPrey heliplane/ air-a-copter, helicopter/airplane contraption that only knows how to kill Marine pilots?
Despite Jumper's challenge to debate anyone on his obvious bias against space - his bad attitude is all too apparent. For him to say that space hasn't been neglected is beyond belief. Our space-flight infrastructure is hurting because of both him and the very Air Force he serves under - and I can prove it.
But first, a little history is in order...
Before NASA, NACA and Air Force could build decent rockets, we had the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) that was under the fine leadership of General J.B. Medaris, whose book Countdown For Decision should be required reading for anyone in the military.
I will say more on this in Part Two - A Leader Out of Time Speaks: The Legacy of General J.B. Medaris.
It was the ABMA that gave us the Redstone that launched our first, small satellite and Alan B. Shepard Jr. To space. It and the Jupiter bodies became the propellant tankage of the Saturn IB's first stage cluster (like Proton) while the Navy was blowing up Vanguards and McNamara was trying to kill the Apollo Program.
Outside of the Titans, which have become more expensive to launch than the Shuttle, the Air Force has been no friend to large liquid-fueled rockets. Their penchant for shrinking warheads to ride atop small, easily siloed solids - which give a fast but harsh ride unsuitable for all but the most hardened payloads - has come back to bite us all.
Though the Soviets bankrupted themselves with the development of too many ICBMs - their very largest missiles, though failures in a military sense, have become their bread-and-butter commercially.
Early Soviet warheads were unsophisticated and very large. This allowed their Chief Designer Korolov a chance to make a space-booster from the get-go. Though many howled in his country, finding the R-7 too large even for their heavy nuclear devices, calmer heads prevailed and the R-7 went on to launch Sputnik, Vostok, Voskhod, the Zenit spy-sat (still being built as automated Vostoks), Soyuz (Dennis Tito) and Progress re-supply ships to ISS
(International Space Station) - saving our butts after Columbia's loss.
The future of the R-7 is still bright, as proved by the new plans to build a pad for it in Kourou. It can now carry around seven-to-eight tons to LEO. In 2007, the R-7 turns 50.
The Soviets fielded an even larger rocket called Proton, which started out as a Super-ICBM that was to launch the huge, 25-ton RDS-220 warhead - a 150-megaton bomb-that would have rivalled the 1883 eruption/explosion of Krakatoa in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra. Thankfully, the UR-500 Proton never carried a warhead as far as we know.
But Proton went on to launch 20 metric ton payloads to Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO), like the DOS core-blocks for their Almaz/Salyut, Mir and Zvezda (ISS), and like the equally large TKS ferries/FGB tugs that are service blocks and station modules in their own right. These are plugged into the DOS core blocks (Kvant on Mir, Zarya on ISS, etc.)
Proton is now the workhorse for the Russians who use it commercially (thanks to ILS with Lockheed-Martin as a partner of sorts), while the kerosene strap-on boosters for the Soviet Space Shuttle Energia-Buran are being sold independently as the first stage of the Zenit booster (not the spysat) that is being used in Boeing's SeaLaunch venture. The Zenit’s single, four-nozzle engine is the RD-170, and has more thrust than the single chamber Saturn V F-1 engine. When 'chopped in half,' the RD-170 becomes the RD-180, now the main engine for Lockheed's brand new Atlas V EELV (Evolved Expendable launch Vehicle.)
So now both Boeing and Lockheed-Martin are using Soviet Space Shuttle engines for their commercial satellite business.
Zenit (the booster) is between R-7 and Proton in capability, and the single nozzle RD-191 will be used in the new Russian EELV, Angara, and perhaps in the Baikal and Zvityaz winged boosters.
Commercially speaking, the Russians are still winning the space-race, even if they lost their biggest battle to go for the moon.
Practical Army men knew that it was better to build bigger rockets than to over-shrink payloads which would be far more costly and complicated. Some Navy men knew this too, like Bob Truax.
Where Russian army men, who were deferential to their chief designers, made big, capable rockets from the start, we had to play catch-up - fighting Air Force antagonism toward liquid-fueled rocket development coming from the top down.
By the time brave EELV-backer General Moorman dragged the rest of the Air Force (kicking and screaming I might add) to build the first big non-ICBM rocket launcher in our history (save for our Shuttle and the Saturns), it was too late. The market fell out, and demand for com-sat rides diminished, due in part to a glut of big Russian launchers already saturating the market. They and the Europeans dominate 2/3 of all launches now.
You can thank the Air Force for this sorry state of affairs.
Because of them, our aerospace giants are doing poorly and are wasting money fighting each other with lawyers over a vanishing com-sat market, while both still have to use Russian Space Shuttle engines to service it.
For the Air Force to blame the 'space people' as Gen. Jumper calls us for their failures of foresight - when it was their obstructionism that kept us from having big rockets all along, is beyond gall. By the time the EELVs were brought to market it was already too late. With the growing gigantism of space assets, the EELVs are already on the verge of being obsolete.
Only China, passing us while standing still, has a medium-heavy lift system in development large enough - and capable of growth—that will compete with Proton upgrades. We wouldn't even have a threat from their Long March to space were it not for the ugly way their chief designer Tsien Hsue-Shen was treated in this country, even after meeting Von Braun and helping our Army .
Even Ariane 5, first thought too large (made primarily to launch Hermes) has, as a reason for its most recent failure, an upgrade program to keep it competitive.
The reason behind ever-growing space assets may shock you. It is the miniaturization of electronics.
Thinking money could be saved, the Air Force (and others) neglected rocket development in favor of over-complicated electronic gadgetry. Early on, this worked well enough, what with older, but larger and more numerous computers on the ground sizing up evenly with newer, faster tech aboard spacecraft. But things worsened with time, when computers were put in the hands of consumers.
Russians placed whatever electronics were available inside simple, rugged spacecraft with an internally pressurized climate-controlled environment safe for any electronics at hand. This allowed cheap but rugged design. The (R-7 launched) Vostok/Voskhod type spacecraft became a spy-sat for many years.
Our solids were rather rough on craft, and our liquid-fueled launch capability was behind the Russian R-7 from the start. We could not encase our assets in heavy pressurized spheres for our launchers had no margin. So we had to shrink, toughen and space-rate our satellites - make them rad-hardened and vacuum-proof and heat resistant and...
After many years of work, the latest computer we have in space is a.....486 - now already obsolete by the throngs of much newer, much faster and much more numerous computers and Tvs, and Satellite Dishes and On*Stars that all want to communicate with that poor, little 486 now.
This scenario can only get worse. The only thing for it is to launch larger spacecraft with more power and more antennas and...
The shrinking of computers made our assets ever larger, like the monster MILSTAR. The poor old Atlas' and Deltas and even Titans were stretched beyond sense...the Delta III being an abortion from the start. By the time the EELVs came on the horizon, they were already in danger of being maxed out with Project Prometheus.
What is needed now is true heavy lift (80-100 tons to LEO) that can serve both NASA and Military interests for years to come - with plenty of growing room seeing as we ask more and more of space on a daily basis.
Liquid-fueled rockets have had the Air Force for an enemy for far too long. When launch vehicle developments are delayed the space people are unfairly blamed when Air Force obstructionists like Gen. John Jumper are the true cause of our problems and continue to make things worse.
When General Jumper was asked by Space News " Does the Pentagon need a separate space force?" He said that he saw "no reason for it."
Naturally he would say that, because the Air Force would no longer have space under its massive heel as has been the case ever since the blue-suiters and their buddies robbed the ABMA. This way, they can neglect space and indulge their fighter-jock fantasies at taxpayer expense. MIGs are not the enemy now. As of 9/11 our new enemy is the 757, 767, 727, etc.
Jumper said "'space people' just like fighter people and bomber people and ground people and naval people need to worry first about winning the war."
It is very easy for him to say that, seeing how Navy and Air Force people already enjoy huge defense budgets they don't need to fight for every day of their lives - with some weapons programs larger than NASA's yearly budget!
These titans already have too much their own way. When space advocates proposed their own branch, naturally the other services, who agreed on little else, ganged up on them - or else they might not have another super-carrier this, or a $200 billion Joint-Strike-Fighter that.
Space people NEED a much bigger budget, but get the least money and are railed at for failures that come from under-funding.
When Billy Mitchell shocked the old Navy brass with his "stunt," he got in trouble instead. I wonder how many admirals told him:
"You up-start airplane people need to quit being parochial in begging for funding. We need to worry about 'winning the war!' So we will be putting our finest battleships out in Pearl Harbor. Enough with your airplane projects!"
Imagine if the 'plane people' had to answer to folks like Jumper in the early 1900s. We wouldn't be flying at all now.
We do have good people in the Air Force, but they are not in power.
So shouldn't we listen to rocket and space enthusiasts now?
Not if Air Force men like Gen. Jumper have their way. Not when the man currently inhabiting the White House wants to play President of the World instead of the U.S. - blowing money here and there-while saying there is no money for space.
Even after Columbia, all NASA got was a $470 million boost (small compared to most expenditures) that was to have come anyway - though it was almost cut. NASA's real buying power has in fact been on the decrease.
If I told the President to only spend 470 million more dollars than what the military already gets for the War in Iraq, I'm sure he would ask;
"How do you expect us to win a war with $470 million?"
How does he and the blue-suiters expect us to have a good space program for that same paltry sum?
It is not his job to blow my hard-earned taxpayer dollar on $10 billion AIDS programs overseas when wealthy, knowledgeable people in this country still contract it with risky behavior themselves.
While money is needed for equipment and uncommon genius, it doesn't help with common sense. No wonder our space program is, quite literally crumbling! Visit some of out facilities for proof of that.
It is not in fact, the primary job of Congress, the President, or the Air Force to waste my tax-money dropping munitions among other things atop someone else's buildings.
Their job is to make sure that no threats from the sky come down on any of our buildings.
So far, they have done a poor job of that, what with skyscraper, airliner, and Shuttle debris having rained down upon us the Nation over.
If anything, Congress is now considering a cut-back on anti-asteroid research spending, which is foolish, seeing that it is nature's ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction.
It is also the only disaster we can avoid - with space spending.
The way things are going now, we can't blow them up, shoot rogue airliners down, or destroy incoming missiles - not when we have SAC-happy B-52 "Buff"-drivers and fighter jocks running the show doing what they do best - being elitist snobs all the while soaking up Defense dollars better spent elsewhere.
We in the Space Advocacy movement should no longer have to ask "Mother, may I?"
It is time for us 'space people' to demand our leaders in Washington and have them give the Air Force a 'Jump-off.'
Fire General Jumper!
Neither General Jumper, nor this Administration, is a friend of space.
So what to do? I will answer that question in Part Two...
No: what is needed is true heavy lift - 1000 tons plus to LEO.
Skip the wimpy stuff and build the real big dumb booster - Orion.
In order to reach the necessary velocity an object would have to fall for approximatly 5 hours, not 10 minutes. It would have to be maneuvered into position first, which can take 5 to 10 hours. This requires fuel that costs several thousand dollars a gallon to get into space.
THOR is a concept proposed by people pushing the space program. It doesn't currently exist and would have very limited application if it ever was developed. You can't hit a moving target with it. The penetration depth is approximately three times the length of the projectile. The cost of building and orbiting the platform makes aircraft carriers look cheap. Each projectile can only be used once and costs millions just to get into orbit. The "steel rod" has to have a guidance and maneuvering system that will stand up to re-entry heat and velocities of 21,000 mph. That means it has to have some kind of ceramic coating.
Carriers aren't a mile long.
THOR would require ground operations centers with support facilities, too.
THOR wouldn't be used to attack tanks unless you could get one to sit still for 15 hours while you maneuvered the launch platform in place and waited for the steel rods to fall. The same thing for attacking Naval targets. If it depends on a "simple GPS" guidance system like you suggested it can be programmed to hit a point on the ground, not find and track a moving target.
Rocks dropped from castles didn't have to survive re-entry.
This is just the SOS. The space agency is trying to grab money from the defense department.
The concept isn't simple. It's not currently technologically feasible or cost effective. It's a pipe dream.
I have been asking the same question for many years. Once we have established air supremacy, a modified Boing 747 dropping conventional bombs upon the target, would be something almost beyond comprehension.
Why, in this day and age of small scale conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan, do we not have modified 747s acting as bombers?
$4,000 dollars per pound just to orbit the sucker is NOT cheap. The rods are useless useless useless unless they are in orbit.
Yup, all you need is technology that doesn't exist yet.
The idea is that one pound coming in from orbit has about the same energy as 10 pounds of HE.
Even at $40 a pound, which isn't going to happen any time soon, those rods aren't cheap--you're talking $8,000 just to orbit the equivalent of a GBU-27, and a GBU-28 would cost $20,000. These are the costs of the lethality component alone, and do not take into account any other costs (RD&A, O&M, et cetera).
Kindly note that these weapons are purely kinetic, without blast effects--which means that you'd need more than the indicated number of weapons to get the desired effect on anything larger than a single point.
And when you start calculating in the numbers needed for responsiveness...you're talking about a LOT of money, just for the space launch infrastructure needed to orbit these things. Then you're talking about a lot of money to orbit that many of the things. Then you're talking about a lot of money to maintain these things in ready-to-use condition. Remember, if something breaks on an F-15 on the flight line, you send a guy in a pickup truck to fix it. If something breaks on a THOR satellite, the cost of sending the guy out to fix it will be (literally) out of this world.
Finally, if you think C4ISR is expensive now, just wait until you get the bill for the THOR system C4ISR backplane.
Of COURSE at current solid gold NASA tinker toy rates it's not an option. Remember the original point is how the AF (and NASA) have basically ignored that route to space.
You keep blathering about how NASA has "ignored" this technology.
So you're telling me it's available and off the shelf, ready to be built.
So, tell me...how do you propose to lower space access costs by 3-4 orders of magnitude, with today's technology?
Of course, if it could be done today, someone would be doing it now...
The heavy lift capacity is also a major "spin off" finally making space a practical place to access. Mark my words, THOR or something very similar to it WILL BE BUILT before long.
Yup, as soon as we find a convenient way to get around the law of gravity.
Nothing says it has to have "made in the USA" on it.
True. That's because nothing says it will actually be built, either.
Then a lot of our expensive toys are going to look like the Polish Cavalry charging into Panzers.
Yup, anything fixed on the Earth's surface will be just as vulnerable as it is today, just at a much higher price tag.
Wrest control of the civilian space program from NASA. When space becomes an eduational program, it'll be funded by the universities of the world and the clarion call to sudents would be
"How would you like to live and study in space at MacAuliff A&M?"
Space exploitation will occur because the space entrepreneurs will want to begin our march Ad Astra! We can see the fruition of Burt Rutan's efforts when he is delivering tourists to the college town that'll spring up next to MacAuliff A&M. I don't know about football but 3D soccer might be a gas! Arts and Science? Cameron gets to make his spaceage titanic film and how about "Ballet Dancers in Space?" {check out the article at the above web site on ballet!}
Just off the top of my head . . .
Given a launch cost of 10,000 per pound to LEO and each THOR projectile being 5000 pounds, makes the price for *each* THOR projectile 50 Million dollars.
LEO (Low Earth Orbit) is interesting because it overflys very little of what we need to shoot at, so you would need a "constellation" (think GPS) of perhaps 20 sats each with 6 THOR projectiles, you're talking about 6 Billion dollars just to deploy the system.
The Air Forces preferred way in to space has always been to “fly” to and back (I.E.. and aircraft) ... The original x15 project was going to be part of a larger project to fly in to orbit... with the moon race.. that was all canned to get there as fast as possible, money was no object.... with the moon race won is was back to the original concept(I.E.. and aircraft aka the shuttle)
I truly think that the Air force has both sub orbital and orbital aircraft in the classified “black” world right now .... Maybe more
Back in the mid 90’s I worked with a guy in telecom network control he was ex Air Force Satellite tracking and other classified stuff in Co. Springs ... we got be good friends as we work the graveyard shift together... (Fri night to Sat. morning monitoring a global telecom backbone is about as dull as it get... people talk on the weirdest stuff)
Well got on the subject of the space program ... and after a while.. I comment about the Moon .. and how sad it was we hadn’t gone back after Apollo
Well he starts acting funny and gets quite ... then said” what make you say that.. it might not necessarily be true..
So I asked him what he meant.. and he said “Well the moon a natural spy satellite fo the earth best there is you not going to shoot it down
So I ask “ What you trying to tell me”
And he said” Not telling you anything but we spent alot of money on military projects in the 80’s with Reagan ... ... and it might not necessarily be true we haven’t gone back to the moon.
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