Boeing's Delta IV Heavy Gets Ready for its Close-Up

www.space.com ^ | Monday, December 6, 2004 | Jason Bates

[Paradox]

Boeing's Delta IV Heavy Gets Ready for its Close-Up

By Jason Bates
Space News Staff Writer

The upcoming demonstration of Boeing’s heavy-lift Delta 4 rocket will feature a booster-separation event soon after liftoff and a long-duration main-engine burn during which the thrust will be throttled up, down and back up again.

Those are the major differences between the flight profile of the heavy-lift Delta 4 and the standard variant, said Dan Collins, vice president of Boeing Expendable Launch Systems of Huntington Beach, Calif. The heavy-lift vehicle, with three core stages in a side-by-side configuration, is designed to loft up to 13,000 kilograms to geosynchronous-transfer orbit, twice the capacity of its single-core cousin.

The demonstration flight, which will carry an instrumented payload to measure vehicle performance, is on track for Dec. 10 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., Collins said. "We are 70 to 80 percent confident” of that date, he said. "There's always the possibility we may find something that wasn't quite what we expected and could give us a little bit of a hiccup, but we're pretty good at working things out."

The Delta 4 rocket family was developed under the U.S. Air Force Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program. Boeing has launched a medium-lift version of it three times, giving engineers good data on the performance of the vehicle’s RS-68 core-stage engine -- the first large, liquid-fueled rocket engine developed in the United States in more than 20 years, Collins said.

"We have a good idea after three launches of how the common booster cores will react," Collins said.

The two strap-on booster cores will be jettisoned about 100 seconds into the mission, Collins said. The engine in the center booster core, which supports the vehicle’s upper stage and payload, will be throttled down for the separation event and then powered back up to fire for another 100 seconds, he said.

The center core’s RS-68 will burn for a total of about 330 seconds, about 70 seconds longer than the engine fired during previous flights, Collins said. The mission also marks the debut of Boeing's 5-meter fairing, he said.

The Air Force and Boeing will review the data gathered by the satellite in preparation for the first Air Force launch, a Defense Support Program missile warning satellite scheduled for fall 2005, Collins said.

"We've given ourselves plenty of time to make the normal types of adjustments you would see after a first flight,” Collins said. "I think with a successful payload separation of [the demonstration satellite], there will not be any issue with launching" the Defense Support Program satellite.

The Air Force is paying Boeing between $140 million and $170 million for the demonstration mission, according to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation. Collins would not confirm the price of the launch.

The heavy-lift Delta 4 was designed primarily for lofting large U.S. military payloads into orbit, but Boeing remains hopeful that other markets will develop.

The commercial market for the EELV rockets as a whole has collapsed, and the heavy-lift vehicles were designed mainly with the Air Force in mind, said Phil McAlister, program manager for the space and telecommunications industry analysis unit at Bethesda, Md.-based Futron Corp.

"On the commercial side, there is no demand for a big launcher right now or in the next five years," McAlister said. "None of the private-equity guys [who have purchased several large commercial satellite operators] are looking at monster satellites, especially if the only ride is on a relatively unproven rocket.

"Collins said the most likely market for the heavy-lift Delta 4 outside the Air Force is NASA's new space exploration initiative, which is targeting manned missions to the moon by 2020 and eventually missions to Mars.

"As NASA looks toward their exploration initiatives, here's a heavy-lift vehicle that will be flight proven," Collins said. "When looking at program as complex as the exploration program is going to be, to know that you're starting from a foundation that isn't a paper rocket, but has flown successfully, just brings a lot of confidence."

"NASA and the moon and Mars missions are the wild card," McAlister said. "Nobody knows how to handicap the market right now, but it's something everybody is looking at."

[Paradox]

Its good to see that things move forward, even when the Shuttles future is up in the air.

[chimera]

Cool, but still a midget compared to the Saturn V. We lost a lot of heavy-lift capability when we cut our own throats closing down that program.

[JATO]

Cool, but still a midget compared to the Saturn V. We lost a lot of heavy-lift capability when we cut our own throats closing down that program.

That's the bitter truth. It would almost be worth giving the plans of the Saturn V to China and let them knock off a couple hundred copies...

[Cincinatus]

"Collins said the most likely market for the heavy-lift Delta 4 outside the Air Force is NASA's new space exploration initiative, which is targeting manned missions to the moon by 2020 and eventually missions to Mars. "As NASA looks toward their exploration initiatives, here's a heavy-lift vehicle that will be flight proven," Collins said

The problem is that the Delta-IV, as cool as it is, only carries 13 metric tonnes to LEO (compare with 15 mT for the Shuttle). For even a simple human lunar mission, we'll need something on the order of 100-150 mT in LEO and we would need up to 500-1000 mT for a human Mars mission. That's a lot of Delta-IV's!

In contrast, the Saturn V could place 120 mT in LEO with one launch. We need to develop a real heavy lift vehicle; a Shuttle-derived heavy lift vehicle could put 50-70 mT in LEO using existing hardware and launch infrastructure.

[Dallas59]

[Barney59]

How about a coat of paint and a few patches on the 3 S5's in Huntsville, Cape C and Houston?

A little LOx anyone?

I hear they were Moon ready when they pulled the plug on Apollo 18...

[chimera]

The one lawn ornament at JSC is (was) a flight-ready vehicle. The one at KSC is a test article. I don't know about the other.

If we're serious about getting really heavy-lift capability back, then we need to start where the Saturn V left off. The Delta 4, and even the shuttle, are just wannabes compared to the Saturn.

[hopespringseternal]

The problem is that the Delta-IV, as cool as it is, only carries 13 metric tonnes to LEO (compare with 15 mT for the Shuttle). For even a simple human lunar mission, we'll need something on the order of 100-150 mT in LEO and we would need up to 500-1000 mT for a human Mars mission. That's a lot of Delta-IV's!

For any meaningful activity in space, expendables are a dead end. Besides that, expendables are just plain stupid, an example of continuing to do things wrong simply because you didn't have time to do it right the first time.

But the aerospace companies love expendables because they get to sell a whole new rocket for every mission. For that reason alone, letting them develop anything reusable is the fox guarding the henhouse.

[MediaMole]

Of course, after 30 years of open storage they aren't much more than interesting piles of metal fatigue and corrosion.

[Paradox]

I suppose we could go to the Russians for a "boost".

Here is an article I found, which I dont agree with neccessarily, which says we DONT need a super heavy lift vehicle..The Myth of Heavy Lift.

[GarySpFc]

That's the bitter truth. It would almost be worth giving the plans of the Saturn V to China and let them knock off a couple hundred copies...
,br> It's my understanding the Russian rockets are larger than the Saturn 5

[Cincinatus]

For any meaningful activity in space, expendables are a dead end. Besides that, expendables are just plain stupid, an example of continuing to do things wrong simply because you didn't have time to do it right the first time.

No, what's stupid is continuing to drag up everything we need in space from the Earth's surface. We need to start using the resources of near-Earth space to enable space flight. I advocate expendables only to get us started toward that end -- emplace the elements of a resource extraction base on the Moon and start manufacturing propellant from lunar materials. When you break the logistical bonds of Earth, then you have true space-faring capability.

[chimera]

An interesting alternate view. I know there are various sides to the issue. But this article seems to have as its central focus mainly bean-counting. Bucks, bucks, bucks. The danger is, you think small, you end up being small. A truly robust and active program will have a good mix of lifting capability. No question that it will cost, as most things that are worth doing will. But boxing ourselves into itty bitty launch vehicles puts a lot of things out of reach. I'm not sure at this point if that is the wisest course.

[Paleo Conservative]

The problem is that the Delta-IV, as cool as it is, only carries 13 metric tonnes to LEO (compare with 15 mT for the Shuttle). For even a simple human lunar mission, we'll need something on the order of 100-150 mT in LEO and we would need up to 500-1000 mT for a human Mars mission. That's a lot of Delta-IV's!

There have been lots of proposals to build an unmanned cargo version of the space shuttle launch system. It could carry a mass equivalent to a loaded space shuttle and leave it in orbit. Such a system would be pretty cheap to develop, because it would used hardware that already exists.

A full-scale mock up of a Shuttle C concept sits at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama in this 1989 image.

Boeing artist's concept for the Shuttle C, an unmanned cargo-only launch vehicle studied during the 1980s.

An artist's concept from the early 1980s shows a Shuttle-C cargo element in Earth orbit carrying the Galileo probe to Jupiter.

Cargo-Only Shuttle Still Possible in NASA's Future

[Cincinatus]

The problem with using existing EELVs, like Delta-IV, is that you still have to launch 150 mT to LEO for a manned lunar mission. That means about 10 Delta-IV heavys, just to get the stuff into space. Then you have to assemble your vehicle in orbit.

One thing that Station has taught us that while it's possible to do on-orbit assembly, it's not desirable. It increases risk and cost. It creates numerous problems of its own. The real lesson of ISS is to minimize on-orbit assembly. Developing a real Heavy Lift vehicle does just that.

[hopespringseternal]

When you break the logistical bonds of Earth, then you have true space-faring capability.

That's true, but I think that is a huge jump to make on expendables. If we are going to make that jump on expendables, we are definitely going to need some serious heavy lift capability.

Probably the most important thing we can move off planet is fuel production. The payload fraction is just too ruinous for that to ever be economical.

[Cincinatus]

Yes, I know -- I mentioned that at the end of my post #5, above. A Shuttle-C could deliver anywhere from 50 to 70 metric tonnes to LEO, depending on the design.

[Cincinatus]

I agree -- fuel is the obvious commodity to do first. The Moon has copious oxygen (it's 40% oxygen by weight) and this can be extracted by any number of common, industrial methods. Even if there were no hydrogen there (although there is), oxygen is 4/5 of the mass of a hydrogen-oxygen rocket fuel load. The payback comes very quickly.

[hosepipe]

WOnder if Clinton SOLD... The chinese all of NASA's expertise too, like he did our military secrets, or NASA's TAXPAYER FUNDED abilities are just FREE STUFF from a RICH country to all the non RICH countrys in "some kind of" world re-distribute the wealth program.. by Washington D.C. Democrats and RINOs..