Posted on 09/24/2004 3:04:28 PM PDT by tricky_k_1972
OPINION SPACE Heavy Lift Is Needed
In the good old days... by Jeff Wright Pinson AL (SPX) Sep 24, 2004
I was disturbed by the anti-Heavy Lift sentiment expressed by Don Robertson in the Sept. 20 issue ("No Need for New Launchers Now "). He could not be more wrong. The key to lower launch costs is not launch frequency, but delivery in bulk. We do not see motorboats crossing the Atlantic with goods, but very large containerships plying the waves.
The EELVs cannot in fact lift over one-fifth of the Saturn V's 130-140 tons to LEO. The EELV is an albatross- no better than the near-extinct Titan IV it replaces. The critics of ISS forget that the big reason behind the constant delay of ISS is the fact that it is assembled 20 tons at a time.
A modular HLLV, like Energiya, that had the hydrogen engines under the External Tank (ET), could carry a simple Buran-type orbiter, or swap it out with 100 ton payload pods. Five of those and ISS would have been finished years ago.
The critics of HLLVs also don't seem to understand the term 'margin.' It would take five three-core Delta IV 'heavies'- with one RS-68 hydrogen engine per core- to place 100 tons to LEO in five launches of 20 tons each.
This means you would have to throw 15 RS-68 engines away. I can place 100 tons into orbit, expending only three or four RS-68s mounted under our External Tank in an Energiya type system, that has engine-out capability- unlike the EELVs.
If one of an HLLV's hydrogen engines go out, I can burn the others longer. This cannot be done with the Delta IV. The RS-68- a good engine- now has had trouble with turbopumps before, so some engine-out capability should be mandatory.
The Delta IV has been taken out of the commercial launch market, and Boeing's largest commercial rocket is now the Sea Launch booster, Zenit - which started life as the Energiya HLLV liquid-fueled strap-on booster. The two-nozzle version of the four nozzle Zenit (RD-170) engines is the RD-180, used by Lockheed-Martin's Atlas V EELV.
Both Boeing and Lockheed-Martin now must rely on technology that was developed for Heavy Lift in the first place, which makes their attempt to fight Heavy-Lift development all the more sickening to those of us who watched as these two companies put off rocket development in favor of Stealth systems and $200 billion Joint Strike Fighters - neither of which can deflect asteroids, or disable ICBMs.
If it wasn't for Heavy-Lift, Boeing and Lockheed-Martin would not now have their two biggest commercial launchers.
Now the two companies rely on Russian equipment. They still don't get it. What we really need is all-American technology with Russian philosophy. All American RS-68s from Boeing can be placed under Lockheed-Martin's External Tank giving us Heavy Lifters with engine out capability and no reliance on other countries.
The Russian philosophy is what we must adapt - they understood that 'too much truck is better than not enough.' Remember, their R-7 Sputnik launcher was considered overlarge, and yet it and the bigger Proton have become their best sellers.
By the time we completed our EELVs they could carry no more than these other Russian launch vehicles which had glutted the market, leaving the EELVs too little - too late. Now the Aerospace companies are left the EELV Albatross they now wish to hang on our necks.
The EELVs would continue the failed 'build it twenty-tons-at-a-time-and-they-will-come' mindset that left us with the ISS. This philosophy is even worse when it comes to exploration since hydrogen boil off will be even more of a problem when you adopt the pieces/parts.
If we want large production runs, then get the most bang for your buck. Using the Delta IV approach, you must expend 15 RS-68s to get 100 tons to orbit.
By launching five HLLVs with only three RS-68s apiece, you sell your 15 RS-68s but you have 500 tons in orbit in the same amount of time. Real Space commerce will only be successful if done in large scale - not by dropping ME-163 Komets out from under Learjets.
The Titan IV often cost a billion dollars a shot. An HLLV should be no more than this. But remember, that equates to $200 million for every 20 tons of HLLV payload - putting it at least even with EELV costs, that are likely to exceed $250 million for every 20 tons or so- with no engine out capability.
But the real cost of medium lift is higher, since you will need five upper stages for every 100 tons placed into orbit, by five EELVs, as opposed to having just one engine-equipped External Tank delivering the entire load to space- retaining a large empty shuttle External Tank that, like Skylab, gives industry real floor space.
Gene Meyers of Space Island Group understands that much at least, and sees the industrial potential only large scale can bring.
The money saved by ending JSF and the Discovery Programs could field an HLLV in only a few years with much more capability.
Or we can continue to send puny bomb-disposal robots to Mars and risk the lives of EELV-riding astronauts docking and refueling fifty-eleven times just to get to the moon, while the Russians continue to make money off us, because they had the good sense to build rockets big in the first place.
I also think that heavy lift is the way to go on a dollar cost average, but i think i see the US companies point of view also. Will the market provide for the constant need of HLLV? I can see that they don't want to expend the developmental cost for a HLLV that won't have any other customer other than the Government.
Is the US still in space ?
Seems the shuttle fleet has mostly crashed - how many of that 30 year old technology vehicles are left.
We've let the Russians do all the ISS support.
We just want to launch cellular phone satellites these days.
The cold war is over.
Space Ping!
Some would argue outsource heavy lift to Russia or in the future China. But they are dead wrong. Such a strategic capability cannot be outsourced unless we are suicidal.
Build simple boosters with a similar philosophy to the way they built Liberty Ships. Not elegant, but they'll work. You're throwing them away anyway. Since you're building them big (to make it possible to carry their own non-elegant weight) just make them big enough to loft a useful payload (60,000 plus) into orbit, without an elegant (and finicky) upper stage.
Big Honking Single Stage To Orbit!
Space Ping!
That was my thought exactly. My only problem is will private industry take the chance of spending the developmental cost, although negligible with today’s tech, without a built in or at least perceived market place beyond the government.
Why not just build the Saturn V again? It's proven (worked every time it was flown - zero failures), uses low cost fuel (liquid oxygen and high grade kerosene) and can put 200,000 pounds plus into low earth orbit. Yet I never see this option discussed. What am I missing?
I think the world will change after someone, probably Burt Rutan, wins the X Prize. Venture capital will be looking for more practical areas to flow into. BHSSTO may just get it's share.
I'd turn the whole project over the Jerry Pournelle. He'd get it done right and make a profit on it. Unless his workers lynched him first. He can be a bit abrasive. ;^>
The important issue here, is that the US taxpayer wants
to be out of this business.
Perhaps France, or Paraguay, wants to pay for this.
But is the US taxpayer well enough informed to decide the issue? I'm no talking about the US taxpayer footing the entire bill here, the argument is whether we should be directing NASA into supplementing an industry built on medium launcher development into a "Man Ratable" launcher or should be looking at expending our efforts in Heavy Lift? The private sector is going to pay a partial part of this and so are the tax payers.
A good friend of mine at Lockheed Missiles and Space made this very case to NASA/ISS ("Space Station Freedom" back then) people in 1989. The proposal was to use the Energiya LV to orbit the elements of the space station.
Of course, in 1989, he was turned down flat. But, Lockheed decided to take him up on the basic idea, and so International Launch Systems was born: ILS
And they've been rather successful ever since.
The two remaining Energiya's were destroyed a year and a half ago in the collapse of the roof of their storage building, but I'm told they were rust queens by then anyway. It's too bad. The BDB concept that they represented IS the way to go for expendables to LEO.
...from the title, I thought this was about arranging transportation for Michael Moore to his his Stockton College appearance.
We are going to spend this money, the only question is what we will get for it.
I can see the corporations view, "Why should we develop a launch system that no one else will use, except the government, and then only for limited launches?", but we will get no farther than we are now with the systems we have.
True, we will continue to get more efficient and safer, but we are essentially developing a Ford Escort to its ultimate extreme and no mater how good you make the Escort it's not a semi truck and will never be one.
I don't think even NASA has that much lift capacity.
"watched as these two companies put off rocket development in favor of Stealth systems and $200 billion Joint Strike Fighters"
Does he really think that the two companies spent $200 billion of their own money for JSF development?
I can't consider any of his other comments credible.
Several reasons, actually. The most important is that the Saturn V was not exactly designed to be a production rocket. It was an extreme piece of experimental equipment from the days before we started pissing money needed for space development into the welfare rathole. It was not designed to be mass produced (even for limited production runs).
If we really want to get mass to orbit prices down, we need to develop a reliable reusable huge modular engine which can be strapped onto whatever tank / payload combination desired. We should stop thinking of building single design rockets, and instead concentrate on developing OEM style mix and match components. This is where the industry will eventually go. The cargo container ship is a valid anology for the eventual future.
However the cargo container ship idea breaks down for modern economics. Currently, the only traffic into space is up, and then the only economic traffic is relatively small satelites. A super-heavy lifter would help the International Space Station a lot, but the ISS only consumes money (sounds a lot like the U.N.). Until there is a profit source for sending up huge payloads, there won't be much real heavy lifter development. The only current possible market is the ISS (not profitable) and possible space based weaponry (which also hardly profitable when you think about it).
There will be moon colonies before we ever come up with a mass produced cheap heavy lifter, and we will never have moon colonies so long as there are hungry welfare mouths down here demanding the development dollars got into them instead.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
I've been a rocket guy all my life; I have a 29-year career as a "rocket scientist".
I finally realized that we cannot become a space-faring nation if we rely on rockets. So I became a big advocate of a space elevator ("skyhook","beanstalk"). We keep the boosters we have but stop developing new ones. Rockets will never get the cost of a pound of payload down to where it needs to be. A pound of stuff landed FOB Luna is $10,000. Somewhat cheaper in LEO. Want to put a colony on the Moon? Say, ten million pounds of colony? The cost is insane. So:
* Stop building new rockets; use the ones we have but don't bother to develop any new ones.
* Spend 50 years and $500 billion developing a space elevator. Bingo. Now rockets are important and valuable again, and you can basically put a city on the Moon or Mars economically.
Alas, not in my lifetime.
--Boris
The problem with SSTO is lambda-P. If you don't know what lambda-P is, then you are unqualified to make such statements. A Big Dumb Booster--by definition--has a LOUSY lambda-P. It therefore cannot perform an SSTO mission and achieve orbit with a positive (non-zero) payload. End of discussion. If you don't know what you are talking about it is best to keep silent.
--Boris
Energiya was in no way a BDB; it was a copy of the Space Shuttle with the flaws removed. The RD-0120 engines were basically clones of the SSME; they replaced the solids with kerosene-fuelled liquids (much safer, much more reliable). The orbiter "Buran" was a flat-out copy of the Orbiter.
--Boris
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