strange CEV proposals

Date: May 3, 2005

strange CEV proposals

Date: May 4, 2005

Nice pictures Jaro. You find some good ones!

I don't know about spending months on end cooped up in a Leer Jet cockpit--that would suck.

What I do know is that such a vehicle simply cannot possess adequate radiation shielding to survive solar storms, so presumably this cannot be all there is for the "Mars" vehicle. I would imagine that the "Mars" vehicle version must be the Earth intercept and return module, which would be undocked from a jettisoned habitat making a return journey from Mars to Earth. Presumably the crew enters the small aerospace plane and then uses the propulsion module to perform a final TEI (Trans-Earth Injection) burn to cause the vehicle trajectory to intersect the Earth's atmosphere at the proper angle to assure a safe aerocapture and reetnry.

Of course, this is only an educated guess.

The second one with the solar wings all over the place, certainly looks like it could be capable of an "Around the Moon" flight like Apollo 8, but not a landing. Besides it is horrbily inefficient to drop an aerodynamic lander onto the moon, and then shove it back off for a return to earth. This is why engineers settled on the then-controversial decision to go with Lunar Orbit Rendezvous for Project Apollo. The Apollo LEM was extremely fragile. I've heard that in some places the pressure hull was machined so thin that it was little more than a heavy foil. In fact, as I recall, the astronauts were told to be careful moving around inside the LEM because a wrong move could actually puncture the craft's skin!

Date: May 6, 2005

That sounds quite reasonable.
Its odd though, that even Lockheed's web site doesn't provide any additional hints :
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/wms/findPage.do?dsp=fec&ci=16745&rsbci=13647&fti=0&ti=0&sc=400
The only other possibility, IMO, is that of enabling long-duration (Mars) flight in cramped quarters by the use of suspended animation.....
Shades of Hollywood's "Planet of the Apes" original movie -- anyone remember that one ?
Here's what I mean : http://www.cloudster.com/Sets&Vehicles/ApesShip/CrashSite/CrashSiteHeader.jpg
http://www.cloudster.com/Sets&Vehicles/ApesShip/LarryFiles/WideInt.jpg
http://www.cloudster.com/Sets&Vehicles/ApesShip/Stills/Interiors/apes112.jpg
http://www.cloudster.com/Sets&Vehicles/ApesShip/LarryFiles/Ansa21sm.jpg
http://mateengreenway.com/misc/potaorbit.jpg

....and some recent news on that topic:

http://www.physorg.com/news3831.html

Buying Time Through 'Hibernation on Demand'

April 22, 2005

Scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have, for the first time, induced a state of reversible metabolic hibernation in mice. This achievement, the first demonstration of "hibernation on demand" in a mammal, ultimately could lead to new ways to treat cancer and prevent injury and death from insufficient blood supply to organs and tissues.

"We are, in essence, temporarily converting mice from warm-blooded to cold-blooded creatures, which is exactly the same thing that happens naturally when mammals hibernate," said lead investigator Mark Roth, Ph.D., whose findings will be published in the April 22 issue of Science.

"We think this may be a latent ability that all mammals have - potentially even humans - and we're just harnessing it and turning it on and off, inducing a state of hibernation on demand," said Roth, a member of Fred Hutchinson's Basic Sciences Division.

During a hibernation-like state, cellular activity slows to a near standstill, which reduces dramatically an organism's need for oxygen. If such temporary metabolic inactivity - and subsequent freedom from oxygen dependence - could be replicated in humans, it could help buy time for critically ill patients on organ-transplant lists and in operating rooms, ERs and battlefields, Roth said.

"Manipulating this metabolic mechanism for clinical benefit potentially could revolutionize treatment for a host of human ills related to ischemia, or damage to living tissue from lack of oxygen," said Roth, also an affiliate professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

Collaborators on the research included first author Eric Blackstone, a graduate research assistant in Roth's laboratory and a member of the joint Fred Hutchinson/University of Washington Molecular and Cellular Biology Program; and co-author Mike Morrison, Ph.D., a staff scientist in Roth's lab.

Clinical applications of induced metabolic hibernation could include treating severe blood-loss injury, hypothermia, malignant fever, cardiac arrest and stroke.

The potential medical benefits also include improving cancer treatment by allowing patients to tolerate higher radiation doses without damaging healthy tissue. Cancer cells, Roth explained, aren't dependent on oxygen to grow. As a result, they are more resistant to radiation than surrounding healthy cells, which need oxygen to live. Roth hypothesizes that temporarily eliminating oxygen dependence in healthy cells could make them a less-vulnerable target for radiation and chemotherapy and thus spare normal tissue during high-dose cancer therapy.

"Right now in most forms of cancer treatment we're killing off the normal cells long before we're killing off the tumor cells. By inducing metabolic hibernation in healthy tissue we'd at least level the playing field," he said. The delivery of such treatment could be as simple as an intravenous infusion of saline solution mixed with trace amounts of an agent that would interfere with the body's ability to use oxygen, Roth said.

Using oxygen deprivation to depress metabolic activity also might extend the amount of time that organs and tissues could be preserved outside the body prior to transplantation, Roth said. Yet another potential application of oxygen deprivation would include accelerating wound healing in patients, such as diabetics, whose ability to do so is compromised. This could reduce the number of amputations caused by irreparable tissue damage from wounds that won't heal. A wound to the skin allows the entry of oxygen, which initiates cell death. In healthy people, cell death subsides when a clot forms, which allows the healing process to begin. Exposing a diabetic's clot-resistant wound to an oxygen-free environment would speed the healing process.

While the notion of putting a human or a human organ into an oxygen-free state of biological limbo and then reversing the process at will with no ill effects may sound like science fiction, dozens of documented cases exist of humans surviving prolonged hibernation-like states with no lingering physical or neurological damage. For example:

-- In May 1999, a female Norwegian skier was rescued after submersion in icy water for more than an hour. When rescued she was clinically dead with no heartbeat, no respiration, and her body temperature had fallen to 57 degrees Fahrenheit (normal is 98.6 F). She was resuscitated and since has made a good physical and mental recovery.

-- More recently, in February 2001, Canadian toddler Erika Nordby made headlines around the world - and a complete recovery - after she wandered outside at night and nearly froze to death. Before she was resuscitated her heart had stopped beating for two hours and her temperature had plunged to 61 F.

"Understanding the connections between random instances of seemingly miraculous, unexplained survival in so-called clinically dead humans and our ability to induce - and reverse - metabolic quiescence in model organisms could have dramatic implications for medical care," Roth said. "In the end I suspect there will be clinical benefits and it will change the way medicine is practiced, because we will, in short, be able to buy patients time."

In the Science paper, Roth and colleagues report inducing a state of clinical torpor in mice for up to six hours before restoring their normal metabolic function and activity.

They achieved this by placing the mice in a chamber filled with normal room air laced with 80 parts per million of hydrogen sulfide, a chemical normally produced in humans and animals that is believed to help regulate body temperature and metabolic activity.

Within minutes of breathing the hydrogen sulfide and room-air cocktail, the mice stopped moving and appeared to lose consciousness, their respiration dropped from the normal 120 breaths per minute to fewer than 10 breaths per minute, and their core temperature dropped from the normal 37 degrees Celsius to as low as 11 C, depending on the controlled ambient temperature within the chamber.

"We have, on demand, reversibly demonstrated the widest range of metabolic flexibility that anyone has ever seen in a non-hibernating animal," Roth said.

"The cool thing about this gas we're using, hydrogen sulfide, is that it isn't something manufactured that we're taking down from a shelf - it isn't 'better living through chemistry' - it's simply an agent that all of us make in our bodies all the time to buffer our metabolic flexibility. It's what allows our core temperature to stay at 98.6 degrees, regardless of whether we're in Alaska or Tahiti," Roth said.

In addition to mice, Roth and colleagues in previously published work have demonstrated the ability to metabolically arrest - and subsequently re-animate - such model organisms as yeast and worms, as well as the embryos of fruit flies and zebrafish.

In each case they achieved metabolic suspension through oxygen deprivation caused by exposure to gases such as hydrogen sulfide and carbon monoxide. Known as oxygen mimetics, these chemicals are very similar to oxygen at the molecular level and so bind to many of the same receptor sites. As a result, they compete for and interfere with the body's ability to use oxygen for energy production - a process within the cell's power-generating machinery called oxidative phosphorylation. The inhibition of this function, in turn, is what the researchers believe causes the organism to shut down metabolically and enter a hibernation-like state. In each case, upon re-exposure to normal room air, the organisms quickly regained normal function and metabolic activity with no long-term negative effects.

If Roth and colleagues are able to replicate these findings in larger animal models, they foresee the first clinical use of this technology in humans could involve treating people suffering from severe fevers of unknown origin. Currently, when a person comes to an ER with such a fever they run the risk of brain-damaging seizures during the crucial time it takes to diagnose the bacterial or viral cause and administer the proper antibiotic.

"Here's a patient group, quite commonly found in emergency rooms around the country, who would do well if they could just have their core body temperature taken down in order to buy them time until the pathology reports come back and they can get on the right course of treatment," Roth said. "Today, physicians have no way of dealing with uncontrolled fever other than literally putting people on ice. Well, we believe we know how to flip the breaker on the patient's furnace; if they have a fever, we believe we know how to stop it on a dime." Roth anticipates that such clinical trials in humans could be under way within about five years.

Date: May 6, 2005

Suspended animation. Interesting. I am also reminded of the "Alien" movies in which the crews are placed in suspended animation chambers onboard the starship to enable them to 'sleep' during most of a lengthy voyage. Also, 2001: A Space Odyssey....

Interesting that Hydrogen Sulfide is the key ingredient--horrible stuff. I've actually been mildy poisoned by it when I was taking a class in General Chemistry with an extensive Qualitative Analysis unit--and I can personally attest to Hydrogen Sulfide's ability to anesthetize the olfactory nerves. After a while, you can't even smell it anymore. And it does mess with your resperation and cardiovascular system. After completing the lab in which our fume hoods were not quite as effective as we thought, I drove home feeling light headed, dizzy, short on breath, and I could actually feel my heart skipping beats. Scary--I went to the hospital for a checkup--and I saw my heart skipping beats on an EKG. As I recall they gave me a shot of something containing Sodium-EDTA (Ethylene Diamine Tetra-Acetic acid) which is used to scavange heavy metals from the blood. Apparently it also has some effect with H2S poisoning.

So other than the horrific smell of rotten eggs, hydrogen sulfide does indeed have mildy anesthetic properties. It is however classified a poison, and it's toxity is very similar to hydrogen cyanide--the same stuff used to execute criminals in the gas chamber.

As much as I like the idea of suspended animation for long duration missions--I think I'll take a pass on that. Especially if it uses hydrogen sulfide. But that's my own personal preference!

Date: May 8, 2005

A few clues here, finally.....

Contractors Deliver Shuttle Replacement Proposals

Aviation Week & Space Technology, 05/09/2005, page 32

Frank Morring, Jr., Washington

Contractors deliver shuttle replacement proposals prepared before Griffin's call

First Cut

Lockheed Martin and a Northrop Grumman/Boeing team expect the Crew Exploration Vehicle proposals they submitted last week to change, given the new top-down push at NASA to close the gap between space shuttle retirement and launch of the new crew carrier.

Still, delivery of the proposals gives a first glimpse of at least one of the concepts for a space shuttle replacement. Instead of the ballistic capsule approach put forward in some early CEV concept work, Lockheed Martin proposed a lifting body shape with a two-stage thermal protection system, coupled with a cylindrical mission module to give crews of four to six extra room on trips to the Moon, and a trans-Earth injection module (TEIM) for the return powered--at least in the first cut--by a couple of Pratt & Whitney RL10 rocket engines.

NASA WOULD NOT say how many responses it received to the first Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) request for proposals, terming the information confidential because it was in the hands of a formal source evaluation board. One other bidder, the Northrop Grumman/ Boeing team, declined to release data on its proposal, citing uncertainty about NASA requirements based on remarks by incoming Administrator Michael D. Griffin.

http://www.aviationnow.com/media/images/awst_images/large/AW_05_09_2005_1945_L.jpg

Lockheed Martin's CEV would carry 4-6 astronauts, seated two abreast, in a blast-resistant structure surrounded by a lifting body to provide cross range after reentry.Credit: LOCKHEED MARTIN

"There are indications that the new NASA administration may be considering changes to the CEV competition," said a Northrop Grumman spokesman. "As a team, Northrop Grumman and Boeing stand ready to support whatever new requirements NASA believes will best allow the nation to meet its space exploration goals. We would prefer, however, to not publicly discuss our CEV concept until the requirements for this competition become more clear."

Griffin told senators at his confirmation hearing that he considered it possible to shrink the gap in U.S. human access to space between 2010, when the shuttle retires, and 2014, when the CEV would fly under President Bush's original space exploration proposal. The prospect of the four-year hiatus has proved unpopular on Capitol Hill, and Griffin said he also finds it "unacceptable" given the faster pace of the then-cutting-edge Apollo program in the 1960s (AW&ST Apr. 18, p. 28).

Speaking at a meeting of Women in Aerospace last week, the new administrator gave some hints of where his thinking on human space access might impact CEV requirements. The weight should be no less than about 30 metric tons, he said, more weight than could be carried by any vehicle available to launch it today.

"That was the weight of the Apollo command and service module stack, leaving aside the lunar module," Griffin said. "It's not reasonable to suppose that a vehicle that needs to carry maybe twice that many crew on some Earth orbital missions on some occasions--or have space for a certain minor amount of cargo, consumables, and have other missions--will weigh much less than that."

Lockheed Martin's entry would weigh in at about 60 metric tons, sized for assembly in space after three launches on the heavy version of an Atlas V or Delta IV evolved expendable launch vehicle (EELV), in keeping with NASA's original request for proposal. Before he was named administrator, Griffin discounted the EELV approach in favor of a new vehicle based on existing space shuttle hardware (AW&ST Mar. 21, p. 28), and he repeated that argument at the Women in Aerospace meeting.

"As NASA administrator today, I already own a heavy lifter," he said. "That heavy lifter is the space shuttle stack. It currently carries the orbiter, so every time I launch, I launch more than 100 metric tons into low orbit, which of course is what we need for going to the Moon."

NASA decided to receive the CEV proposals for a lunar mission as scheduled May 2, even though changes were considered likely. The RFP called for a vehicle that could return a crew of four or six from lunar orbit, leaving out an unspecified large stage to get to lunar orbit and an unspecified lander to get to the Moon's surface.

Lockheed Martin's team, which includes Orbital Sciences Corp., United Space Alliance, Hamilton Sundstrand, Honeywell and EADS Space Transportation (AW&ST Jan. 31, p. 20), drew on its experience building fighter aircraft and the incomplete X-33 suborbital single-stage-to-orbit prototype in drafting its proposal, according to Cleon Lacefield, vice president and CEV program manager and a former X-33 manager.

The team incorporated lessons from Columbia's reentry failure in designing safety features for the crew vehicle portion of its CEV. An outer thermal protection system (TPS) of reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC) panels holds the superhot gases of reentry away from the fighter-based, blast-resistant titanium crew compartment, which gets some protection from a secondary TPS layer of felt reusable surface insulation (FRSI) in case outer TPS panels are breached.

"The excitement in exploration should be science," said Patrick McKenzie, Lockheed Martin's CEV business development manager. "It shouldn't be just getting back and forth to orbit."

On liftoff and ascent, emergency escape for the crew is provided by an Apollo-style rocket tower mounted atop the stack that would pull the front portion of the crew vehicle up and away from a failing launch vehicle to parachute to safety. Lacefield said the lifting body shape would broaden the rescue envelope across the entire flight profile by eliminating "black zones where we could not recover the crew because of g-loads."

"When we were looking at the reentry profiles from both the Moon and Mars, and . . . at our abort profiles, [we saw] some pretty high gs . . . on the crews," Lacefield said. "For example, the Apollo capsule coming in was around 8gs. With just the little bit of lift that we're talking about, to go from a 0.3 to 1.0 lift-to-drag took the gs from 8 down [to 3 or 4]."

THE REDUCTION in stress on the crew is even greater coming from Mars, he said, where g loads could reach as high as 16gs. And the lifting body would permit nominal crew recovery on lakebeds in the U.S. or Australia every time, simplifying turnaround activities. Lockheed Martin is assuming the vehicle would be used 5-10 times, although it is continuing to try to locate the point of diminishing returns for restoring the TPS.

Lacefield said the 1.0 lift-to-drag ratio would allow an EELV launch of the lifting body shape, which has only two body flaps for aerodynamic control, without a fairing. However, for the 2008 flight test the RFP requires, the Lockheed Martin team plans to use a fairing for an Atlas V launch of the crew rescue portion of the crew vehicle. That unoccupied test article would use the X-33 reaction control system for a demonstration of stability and control, TPS and the parachute and airbag landing system.

However, it was unclear whether Griffin's new schedule would allow for the 2008 flight test, or for support of at least two competitors through that test, as originally planned. And with Russia's commitment to supply its three-seat Soyuz vehicles as rescue vehicles for the International Space Station (ISS) set to expire next year, final requirements for the CEV are likely to include crew delivery and recovery from the ISS.

Lacefield said the Lockheed CEV concept was created with the expectation that an early mission to the ISS could be added to the requirements. The full-scale CEV scheduled for a 2010 flight test could be human-rated with additional testing, he said.

"But that would be a vehicle that could resupply the station in 2010, and we would use those resupply missions as part of the certification flights for flying the crew," he stated.

Lacefield said his vehicle would be able to deliver about 5,000 lb. of cargo to the ISS and return a like amount back to Earth, easing the down-mass crunch that will develop once the shuttle stops flying.

Date: May 15, 2005

"clear as mud...."

http://www.aviationnow.com/publication/awst/loggedin/AvnowStoryDisplay.do?pubKey=awst&issueDate=2005-05-16&story=xml/awst_xml/2005/05/16/AW_05_16_2005_p43-44-02.xml&headline=NASA+rethinking+lunar+orbit+rendezvous

World News & Analysis

NASA rethinking lunar orbit rendezvous

Aviation Week & Space Technology 05/16/2005, page 43

Frank Morring, Jr. , Washington

NASA rethinking lunar orbit rendezvous for accelerated crew vehicle procurement

Another Look

NASA managers trying to speed development of a space shuttle replacement may shift away from the lunar landing concept used in the Apollo program to one that would send a single crew vehicle all the way from Earth to the Moon's surface.

A small headquarters team has until mid-July to refine top-level Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) requirements to include crew transport to the International Space Station (ISS) as soon as possible after the shuttle fleet is retired. By then, the agency expects to have awarded one or two CEV contracts, with the understanding that they will be modified by a "call for improvements" incorporating the results of the new "Exploration Systems Architecture Study" ordered by Administrator Michael D. Griffin.

Under Griffin's plan, a sole CEV contractor would be selected early next year to begin developing a vehicle that can handle the ISS mission and later proceed to the Moon and Mars in keeping with President Bush's exploration directive. That contract will grow out of the proposals NASA received on May 2 in response to a request for proposals (RFPs) issued before Griffin was named administrator.

IN TESTIMONY before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA, Griffin restated his view that the gap between shuttle retirement at the end of 2010 and the original plan to begin CEV operations in 2014 was too long. The new architecture study is aimed at closing it with a relatively simple vehicle to deliver astronauts to the ISS that might later be upgraded for a human return to the Moon as early as 2015.

"It's not my goal to have that be the technologically challenging part," Griffin said in a post-hearing press conference. "My goal is not to be doing something which pushes the state of the art. The CEV needs to be safe; it needs to be simple, it needs to be soon."

To that end, the 2008 flight-test opportunity in the original RFP probably will be scrapped. A small team headed by Douglas Stanley, a longtime Griffin associate from Orbital Sciences Corp., was already at work last week completing an assessment of requirements for the CEV and its launch vehicle, developing a lunar exploration architecture for both humans and robots, and identifying technologies needed to carry them out.

Stanley was developing a tool to set technology-development investment priorities for NASA's exploration effort before he was tapped to lead the architecture study. Given the short fuse, that study is also likely to be guided by exploration-concept work done at the Draper Laboratory of Cambridge, Mass. Under contract to NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate last year, the independent research and development organization developed computer tools that analyzed some 1,200 exploration architectures.

"We have a set of tools that can essentially enumerate or lay out all of the possible ways you could do this exploration job," said Darryl G. Sargent, Draper's director, space systems, and project manager for the concept study.

The Draper analysis found the lunar-orbit rendezvous approach taken in Apollo isn't the best way to use today's technology to meet the needs of Bush's program. Instead, to get a crew of four to the lunar poles where they can search for water ice that may lie in the permanent shade of deep craters, the Draper team recommended a bi-conic CEV capsule with a lift-to-drag ratio of 0.6 that would attach to a descent/ascent stage. A separate habitat would house the crew on the surface.

The Draper study is in the hands of Stanley's study group, and Sargent said he "wouldn't be surprised to see them modify their requirements or at least broaden the trade space to include CEV to surface." Other concept studies delivered last year included both lunar orbit rendezvous and use of the Earth-Moon L1 libration point as a staging area for lunar landings.

LOCKHEED MARTIN, a Northrop Grumman/Boeing team and perhaps other bidders handed in proposals May 2 based on the CEV docking with an unspecified lander in lunar orbit and remaining behind untended while the crew explored on the surface (AW&ST May 9, p. 32).

Griffin said the choice of a launch vehicle for the CEV and for heavier elements would be based primarily on cost, with vehicles derived from space shuttle propulsion elements offering attractive options for both. To pay near-term costs for accelerating CEV development, Griffin said some research on the ISS probably will be deferred, and the Project Prometheus space nuclear power effort will be slowed to an initial emphasis on a fission reactor for surface operations.

"Where we are going to get the money is from some place that attracts less interest and attention," he said. ". . . We're not going to be asking for extra money, so we will find what we believe to be the lowest priority activity."

Date: May 22, 2005

CEV update

Date: May 24, 2005

RE: strange CEV proposals

Date: May 25, 2005

I couldn't agree more !

Not only that, I would like to point to additional arguments against an SBR-based CEV launch -- see articles below.

The first compares ground-launch versus air-launch in the context of suborbital tourism flights (building on the success of SpaceShip One), while the second suggests that a Rutan-style airlaunched CEV might actually be a realistic (and economical ! ) alternative to a ground-launched CEV, including one using an SRB.

Its been quite a few days since the publication of that second article, and I fail to understand why that alternative solution is getting so little attention (this is the only instance I'm aware of).

http://www.space.com/adastra/050523_virgin_nss.html

Virgin Galactic and the Future of Commercial Spaceflight

By Jeff Foust

posted: 23 May 2005

<SNIP>

Safety first

One of the major concerns of suborbital vehicle developers has been impressing upon potential passengers, as well as the general public, the inherently risky nature of spaceflight. Companies have talked about educating prospective passengers about the dangers of spaceflight and screening customers to find the ones most willing to accept those risks. Virgin Galactic, on the other hand, is trying to make it clear to customers how safe their SpaceShipTwo flights will be.

"The north star of this project is safety," said Whitehorn. "Safety is really at the top of people’s lists as to why they think they’re interested in flying a suborbital spaceflight."

Whitehorn noted that when Virgin decided to get into the aviation business more than two decades ago, having already established its brand in the music business, the company made a conscious effort to emphasize safety, patterning itself after Qantas, the Australian airline known for its excellent safety record. "We now have the best safety record of any airline in the world," he said, noting that none of Virgin’s three airlines has ever had a fatal accident. That unblemished safety record has transferred to Virgin’s passenger rail business in the UK, with no fatal accidents during a period in recent years when the British rail industry overall had a "horrendous" safety record. "For us, safety is at the core of our business, it is part of the brand itself."

It was that commitment to safety, Whitehorn explained, that led Virgin to back an air-launched system instead of a ground-launched system. "If you’re going to commercialize this business, you’ve got to be able to take thousands of people into space safely," he said. "Any system which is groundbased has intrinsic issues with safety which an air-launched system does not have. It is intrinsically not very safe to sit a human being above a bomb of tons and tons and tons of liquid oxygen or liquid hydrogen or whatever liquid propellant you’re using." [....and an SRB is probably even worse - Jaro]

Whitehorn said that back in 1999, when Virgin was considering investing in Rotary Rocket Company, a venture developing a ground-launched orbital RLV, he and his colleagues sketched out what their ideal space tourism vehicle would look like. "We actually drew on a napkin, at the Voyager restaurant in Mojave Airport, a B-52 and something that actually looked remarkably similar to what Burt eventually designed in SpaceShipOne. That’s the way to do suborbital, because we can take out so much of the risk, and manage the rest of the risk very well." It wasn’t until a separate trip to Mojave in 2002, when Virgin was working with Scaled on the Global Flyer aircraft, that Whitehorn found out about SpaceShipOne, at which point he alerted Branson and set the wheels in motion for last year’s agreement.

Whitehorn’s opinion of competitors developing ground-launched systems contained a mix of disdain and concern. The former comes from the pronouncements of some companies who claim to start offering flights as soon as next year. "It’s very difficult to criticize people," he said, "but there are some other people out there who say that they’re going to be launching suborbital spaceflights next year and they’re taking people’s money, but they can’t tell you how they’re going to do it, or where their financing is coming from. And that I regard as immoral."

The concern stems from worries of what might happen if one of those ventures does manage to start launching paying passengers, but has an accident. "One of the biggest risks we face is if someone in the next three years decides to put somebody into space using ground-based rocketry and they have an accident," he said. "Because the most likely thing that would result in is AST [the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation] being forced by Congress to shut down the whole program. If that happens, I think we have a real problem on our hands."

<SNIP>

=============================

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/spacetravel-05zg.html

Son of Shuttle

by Irene Mona Klotz, Cape Canaveral (UPI) May 10, 2005

<SNIP>

Late last week, NASA notified Congress it intends to choose a single contractor to build the CEV early next year. The intention is to have the vehicle ready for service as early as 2010, when the shuttle stops flying.

While aerospace prime contractors Lockheed Martin and a partnership of Northrop Grumman and Boeing are eyeing the lion's share of CEV work, a consortium of entrepreneurs, which includes Rutan's Scaled Composites, is offering to build and operate a complementary system.

The team, headed by Reston, Va.-based Transformational Space Corp., or t/Space, claims its Earth-to-orbit transit system can be ready to fly by 2008.

The company, which already has received $6 million for study contracts from NASA, wants $400 million more to build what it calls the Crew Transfer Vehicle, which would travel only to and from low-Earth orbit.

The bigger companies would take on the role of flying people from low-Earth orbit to the moon aboard a reusable CEV that would stay in space, according to t/Space's newly hired vice president of government relations, Brett Alexander, a former White House official in the Science and Technology Policy office.

The plan would free the primes from having to design a craft that could withstand re-entry to Earth's atmosphere. NASA also would not have to go through the time and expense to modify and certify that the country's two existing expendable heavy-lift rockets are safe enough to launch people.

Rutan's company would build the four-person capsule, which would be mounted on top of a booster rocket and air-launched after being dropped from a jet carrier. Upon release, the capsule's rocket motor would fire, propelling the craft to space.

Rutan used a similar system for SpaceShipOne, the first privately built spaceship, which last year won the Ansari X Prize for two sub-orbital flights within less than a week. Though only a single pilot was aboard for both flights, the ship carried the equivalent weight of two more passengers.

Upon return, the capsule would splash down in the water, which is how NASA landed all its vehicles prior to the shuttle. Unlike the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules, however, the new capsule would be reusable.

The capsule's booster would be a beefed up version of a vehicle being developed by Nevada-based AirLaunch for the military's Falcon program, which is intended to demonstrate quick and inexpensive small launch systems.

In addition to Scaled Composites and AirLaunch, t/Space partners include: Constellation Services Inc. of Woodland Hills, Calif.; noted mathematician and aerospace engineer Edward Belbruno, with Princeton University; former astronaut James Voss; robotics expert Red Whittaker, with Carnegie Mellon University; Universal Space Lines of Newport Beach, Calif.; Delta Velocity Corp. of Purcellville, Va., and Spaceport Associates of Washington, D.C.

NASA has $753 million in its budget to spend on the CEV program through Sept. 30, 2006.

Date: May 27, 2005

Interesting ideas. I hope they pan out.

I am not entirely opposed to the idea of using Space Shuttle SRB's as a booster for CEVs. Quite the contrary.

I'm just a little concerned about sending up manned CEV's using the SRB's as the launch vehicle.

I think it would be better to send up crews using liquid fueled boosters because of abort control issues.

The SRB CEV concept would be better served, I think, by utilizing them in a hot launch configuration: an emergecny space access tool for performing emergency rescue opporations. Such a vehicle could save lives should the need arive, and if we continue to operate manned spacecraft, the need will eventually be there!

SRB CEV's could be used to boost unmanned components too, for final assemby by a crew at a later time. In this way, deep space craft could be assembled in a straightforward manner.

Date: May 27, 2005

BTW, I guess I got my acronyms mixed up -- there's the CEV, and, according to the plan involving Rutan, the CTV (Crew Transfer Vehicle). In that plan, the CEV is an in-space only moon shuttle. When I read that, it reminded me right away of Stan Borowski's nuclear moon shuttle.

The important point though is that the Rutan plan doesn't appear to be getting serious consideration.

Date: Jun 1, 2005

Too bad.
Mr. Rutan deserves to be taken seriously--he has a phenomenal success rate in advanced projects on a 'shoestring' budget. I have great respect for what he has accomplished.

I would also pay close attention to SpaceX's Falcon I vehicle. It is a completely indeginously devloped booster and engine combination. The engine is called the Merlin 1 and burns liquid oxygen and rocket grade kerosene (RP-1.) Recently SpaceX recieved a $100M "open ended" contract from the US Air Force to further develop the vehicle.

Their future Falcon V vehicle is just about right in the neighborhood for enough lift capacity to boost a small Crew Transfer Vehicle--whether this is their ultimate aim or not, I am not sure. But SpaceX is a contender.

More information is available from their website: www.SpaceX.com

I think Boeing's Delta 4 Heavy will probably be the ultimate booster for the CEV's, although the Atlas 5 Heavy should be in a similar position.

Date: Jun 19, 2005

Still nothing abot the t/Space-Rutan CXV proposal (and tests !) in this coming week's AW&ST

Fast-Paced Shuttle-Replacement Procurement Advances

Aviation Week & Space Technology 06/20/2005, page 46

Frank Morring, Jr. Washington

Michael A. Taverna, Paris

Northrop Grumman/Boeing, Lockheed Martin to compete for 2006 shuttle replacement deal

Fast Pace

Two teams headed by three U.S. aerospace giants will prepare bids for the planned Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) that will replace the space shuttle and eventually carry humans to the Moon and Mars.

First, however, the Northrop Grumman/Boeing and Lockheed Martin teams NASA selected last week--apparently the only ones in the running--must concentrate on getting crews to and from the International Space Station as soon as possible after the shuttle retires. Thus, work on the propulsion, landing and habitation modules needed to get a CEV crew to the Moon's surface will likely be deferred.

"What we're thinking is that a near-term focus of this vehicle will be low Earth orbit and the ability to service the space station, because the country won't have a capability to do that after the shuttle," says Larry Price, deputy CEV program manager at Lockheed Martin. "So the change in the proposal probably will be, because of budget and funding issues, to defer those elements a little bit and be able to use some of that funding for an earlier capability of CEV."

On June 13, NASA said it had chosen the two teams to compete "in the design and production process for the space shuttle's replacement," with one of them to be tapped next year. Both teams submitted CEV bids last month based on a procurement schedule that called for competing component-level flight tests in 2008 and a first flight of an unpiloted vehicle in 2010 (AW&ST May 9, p. 32).

Under the accelerated procurement plan, in mid-September the agency will issue a "call for improvements" to those original bids based on the results of several reviews initiated by Administrator Michael D. Griffin after he took office two months ago. The teams will have two months to update their proposals, and the agency will name a winner in late February or early March 2006. At that point the contract amount and other details will be set.

Analysts in the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters believe eliminating the extended competition and flight tests could free as much as $1.1 billion more to speed development of a CEV. Overall, NASA wants to spend $9.124 billion on exploration vehicles through Fiscal 2010, including $753 million for CEV in Fiscal 2006.

Speaking to reporters at the Paris air show on June 13, Griffin said it was too soon to say just how much faster the development can go. "I cannot guarantee when the CEV will be deployed because that will be a budget-driven process," Griffin said. "It will be deployed as soon after the shuttle retirement as we can make it, whether that is in 2010 or 2011 or whatever, as soon as possible after the shuttle retirement as we can do so."

Much of Griffin's time in Paris was consumed by talks with NASA's international partners on the space station, who are worried that ISS elements they have built and, in many cases, delivered to Florida for launch will be bumped from the shuttle manifest to meet the firm 2010 retirement date (AW&ST June 6, p. 21). At his press conference there, Griffin said the Bush administration was still working out its latest positions on the details of station completion, stressing that the U.S. is committed to delivering the international elements to orbit one way or another.

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An upcoming "call for improvements" in the bids submitted for NASA's planned Crew Exploration Vehicle will shift focus to the crew compartment itself, shown with wings in this Lockheed Martin concept atop mission and propulsion modules for lunar excursions.Credit: LOCKHEED MARTIN

In addition to that work, NASA has at least three Griffin-ordered studies underway that probably will feed the call for improvements to the CEV bids. A small team headed by longtime Griffin associate Douglas Stanley of Orbital Sciences Corp. is reviewing the overall requirements for getting humans to the Moon, including the launcher and other elements of the architecture (AW&ST May 16, p. 43). Griffin staffer Chris Shank is working on details of speeding the CEV development, while staffer Pat Ladner is assessing how to retire the shuttle and transition to the new vehicle.

After last week's contract announcement, the Northrop Grumman/Boeing team maintained its silence over details of its CEV proposal. In contrast to Lockheed Martin, which has released artist's conceptions of its CEV and related modules, Northrop Grumman's lead CEV executive, Doug Young, says his team wants to see Griffin's procurement refinements before it shows its hand.

"We're in the midst of a competition that's very important to us, and the customer is deliberating on some pretty significant aspects of what they're going to want us to do," Young said in Paris. "We don't like to get ahead of our customer."

Lockheed Martin's Price says his company is staying with the lifting body shape for the crew compartment that it advanced in its original CEV proposal, which also included a cylindrical mission module and a trans-Earth injection stage with propulsion for the trip back from the Moon. The lifting body can be readily adapted to rendezvous and docking with the ISS, says Price. The Lockheed Martin team had anticipated a faster development cycle that could see a first human flight as early as 2010.

The Lockheed Martin lifting body approach belied early speculation that the bidders would go with a ballistic capsule for simplicity and speed of development. In keeping with his no-details policy, Northrop Grumman's Young declined to characterize his team's approach as a capsule--or anything else.

"Certainly the country's had a heritage of capsule-like vehicles, but in every case, and in most of the studies that have been done over the last 20 years, all of them have had various degrees of cross-range and performance characteristics that were more than ballistic," he says. "So that's why we tend to stay away from using that term."

UNDER ITS ARRANGEMENT with Boeing, Northrop Grumman will lead the early development phases and Boeing will take over later. Chuck Allen, Boeing vice president for space exploration systems, hinted that like Lockheed Martin, his team is prepared to mount its CEV atop any of the launch vehicles likely to be available to carry it. Although Griffin has repeatedly signaled a potential preference for a launcher based on space shuttle components, the Atlas V and Delta IV Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles remain on the table.

"I assure you that Boeing did not submit a CEV that is not compatible with launching on a Delta rocket," Allen says.

In his January 2004 call for exploration beyond low Earth orbit, President Bush ordered a human return to the Moon by 2020. In Paris, Griffin repeated earlier statements that the landing could come as early as 2015 with currently planned funding levels. Beyond that, he cited the international bases in Antarctica as a model for future human activity on the Moon. "We've been doing that in Antarctica for the last 50 years. I would see a similar activity developing on the Moon--not all at once, but in stages. That is my vision."

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Space Technology

Lockheed Martin's Atlas V Could Evolve to Saturn V-Class Performance

Aviation Week & Space Technology 06/20/2005, page 62

William B. Scott Denver

Could step-by-step evolution of the Atlas V family be NASA's route to the Moon and Mars?

Morphing Rockets

Lockheed Martin is planning a three-phase evolution of its Atlas V/Centaur space-launch system aimed at gradually increasing performance to ultimately exceed that of the Saturn V booster, a cornerstone of NASA's Apollo program.

Designed to meet the incremental lift requirements of NASA's Vision for Space Exploration program, the plan retains the performance and cost points of today's low-end Atlas V-401 system. Consequently, the evolving system would always be cost-competitive and meet the performance criteria for both Defense Dept. and commercial launches, according to company officials.

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Lockheed Martin's growth strategy for the Atlas V family makes minimum changes at each step to mitigate risks. Larger versions can support NASA Exploration missions. Credit: LOCKHEED MARTIN

It is unclear how Atlas V evolvement might be affected by the recently unveiled Lockheed Martin/Boeing United Launch Alliance joint venture, which is structured to cut costs of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program. The agreement calls for Lockheed Martin to move Atlas V production to Alabama, but its engineering cadre is to remain here (AW&ST May 9, p. 23).

The Atlas V evolvement strategy is rooted in a process of step-by-step booster and upper-stage growth and improvements. That low-risk, high-reliability philosophy has yielded 76 successful Atlas launches in a row--an industry record, the company says. Eight Atlas versions have been fielded since the last failure of an Atlas I occurred in 1993, and all had successful first flights. That compares with a launch industry tally of about 60% first-flight successes.

Three Atlas I failures in the early days of then-General Dynamics' commercial Atlas program forced painful introspection and process changes. "There are two ways to go out of business in the commercial [launcher] world--being too expensive or failing. You have to find a formula that [balances] efficiency with success, and that's a tough spot to find," says George F. Sowers, director of advanced programs and strategic development for Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co.'s space transportation unit. "The characteristic of this [Atlas] progression is . . . making changes one step at a time. We think that approach is key to being successful as we go forward. It's [been] a crucial element of our past success."

Three phases of Atlas evolution are designed to meet NASA's requirements for ferrying cargo to the International Space Station, returning humans to the Moon and conducting Mars exploration missions. In the near term, Sowers says a medium-class Atlas V system could deliver 30,000-40,000 lb. of cargo to the ISS, carrying either the Japanese or European transfer vehicles. Assuming the space shuttle is retired in 2010, "there's a requirement [through 2017] that will have to be filled somehow. And we think a combination of Atlas and the transfer vehicles [now being developed] is a very easy, quick and low-risk way of doing that," he says.

However, there are many potential competitors for projected ISS-servicing cargo business, including a host of new launch-vehicle developers, a Boeing family of Delta IV-based EELVs and several shuttle-derivative designs that appear to be viewed favorably by NASA. Boeing has already flown its Delta IV Heavy, giving it an experiential edge over Lockheed Martin (AW&ST Feb. 21, p. 48). Further, the outlook for a commercial heavy-lift market remains uncertain.

Lockheed Martin's strategy for growing the Atlas V EELV is based on a family of launch vehicles, a modular design and common elements that serve as building blocks throughout a three-phase program. "Each phase basically changes one element of the launch system in a preplanned, logical way that transforms performance into the larger and larger capabilities that NASA needs," Sowers explains. All three phases are anchored by a cheap-to-build, low-end vehicle with two stages--a booster with a single Russian RD-180 engine and a cryogenic-fueled upper stage with one RL-10 powerplant.

COMMONALITY OF ELEMENTS among Atlas V versions is one way the company intends to control costs. However, that demands adhering to strict requirements and carrying some extra weight on each vehicle. "There's a performance penalty you pay for commonality, [but] the factory [can] build the same thing over and over. That's how you get the costs down," Sowers says. "The performance of the RD-180 [engine] had a lot to do with our being able to take the penalty [necessary to achieve] commonality."

The Russian RD-180 engine is a consistent cornerstone of Lockheed Martin's three-phase Atlas-evolution plan, despite residual government skepticism about its long-term use. In Phase 1, the first-stage booster will remain unchanged from today's Atlas V. The Centaur upper stage's volume would be expanded by increasing the tank's diameter to 5.4 meters (17.7 ft.). Depending on the amount of fuel needed for a mission, tank length would vary.

Today's stainless steel Centaur tank probably will be replaced by a friction-stir-welded, thin-wall aluminum tank design. The extra weight of upper-stage fuel will warrant "clustering" of up to six RL-10 engines in a three-body configuration, enabling the delivery of up to 36 metric tons to low Earth orbit (LEO), the company claims.

In Phase 2, the first-stage booster also would be expanded to a 5.4-meter diameter that mates with a same-diameter Centaur upper stage configured with up to four RL-10 engines. Two RD-180s would power the larger versions, but a single-engine booster and single-RL-10 Centaur model would be retained to serve the commercial marketplace.

Longer-tank variants would provide about 1.7 times the fuel volume of today's Atlas V booster. A three-body version with dual RD-180s in each liquid-rocket booster (LRB) could yield a 68-metric-ton-to-LEO lift capability. Phase-2 configurations "can be available in 2010, when NASA needs them for a crew launch vehicle," Sowers notes. Two three-body vehicles and one single-body crew vehicle system would have the combined payload lift necessary to "get NASA to the Moon" and back in Phase 2, the company projects.

By 2015, the company's Phase 3 Atlas V plans call for a vehicle comprising a cluster of five LRBs, each powered by two RD-180 engines, that would have to deliver about 140 metric tons of payload to LEO. That would exceed a Saturn V's lift capability, according to Sowers. Another option would be building a new booster tank of about the same diameter as today's space shuttle external tank. Either Phase 3 version could meet the lift requirements for Moon and Mars missions, he says.

To service NASA's projected exploration needs, Lockheed Martin is stressing the safety, reliability and low cost of its evolutionary approach. These are key points the company is hammering home in its pitches to NASA and Congress. Spinoff benefits--such as lower-cost Defense Dept. EELV launches, thanks to higher Atlas family production rates--are central to the company's arguments for sticking with a proven launch system instead of developing a new one.

"This is about as low-risk as you can get," Sowers claims. "Is this an exploration program, or a technology program?" he asks rhetorically. "If you want an exploration program, don't put your risk in the first step. Make the launch part as low-risk as possible and go for the end result. Let's get back to the Moon and [on] to Mars."