Aviation Week & Space Technology   06/27/2005, page 70

Rocket science isn't just for rocket scientists anymore, at least not just those who are funded by the U.S. government. NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin, himself a "rocket scientist" who has worked both sides of the public/private street, tried to pound that point home last week with a bracing call for private enterprise to carry crew and cargo to the International Space Station. Let's hope he's taken seriously, in and out of the government.

Griffin's remarks to the Space Transportation Assn. continued a commercial-space policy started by his predecessor, Sean O'Keefe, under the umbrella of President Bush's space exploration plan. Griffin called for "non-traditional contractors and contracting" and creating "the kind of economy that made the rest of America great and that has largely been lacking from the aerospace industry."

Basically, the Republican administration wants to buy transportation services to and from the station--for crew as well as cargo--on a true commercial basis. It wouldn't rely on government funds and expertise to develop the necessary hardware, and the emphasis would be on performance, rather than process and specifications (see p. 24).

Painful experience has shown the limb probably will be cut off by someone in the seat of government. In the 1990s, Lockheed Martin invested millions in the X-33 in partnership with NASA in an effort to develop a commercially viable single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane called VentureStar, only to see it canceled. Of course, it didn't help that in selecting Lockheed Martin as its partner, NASA had once again been seduced by the most technically ambitious of proposals, resulting in a program rife with hardware failures and flaws.

His experience as the head of the CIA's venture capital outfit In-Q-Tel and before that in business at Orbital Sciences Corp. lends credibility to his words. He even had a stint at a space startup, American Rocket Co., which went bankrupt but whose propulsion technology is on SpaceShipOne, the vehicle that carried out the first private human spaceflight.

But NASA has cozied up to startups before. In the 1980s, NASA became involved with Space Industries when the Houston company proposed to build the Industrial Space Facility (ISF), an orbital laboratory that would be visited periodically by astronauts.

NASA loved the idea at first, seeing it as a bridge to the permanently manned space station it wanted. It could be built sooner, would cost a tiny fraction of a full-up space station but offer many space station-like capabilities. The trouble began when others started saying if that's the case, why bother building the station at all. So NASA turned on the ISF, and Space Industries became a spurned lover.

There are plenty of technical issues to resolve before NASA starts buying space transportation by the yard, not the least of them how to handle human rating. But it is neither technical risk nor the huge amounts of capital that most space endeavors entail, that scares off investors. It is not even long-time horizons or the obsession with the next quarter's financial results that supposedly afflicts all of American business. If it were, no one would ever build and launch a communications satellite. Rather, what frightens investors is uncertainty.

Griffin's proposal carries a fairly high degree of uncertainty from a business perspective in that the government would maintain its own ability to move crew and cargo to and from the station after the space shuttle is phased out. That means this effort to foster a commercial transportation provider, however laudable, is not on "the critical path," either for the station or the Moon-Mars-and-beyond exploration effort.

Experience has shown that programs that are not essential are vulnerable. That could easily happen here. How? The costs of the government's traditional procurement could go up. Or, Congress or a future President could put a squeeze on NASA's budget. NASA, desperate to save money, would look around for something to cut to preserve the core. Such scenarios lend new meaning to the term expendable launch vehicle.

Griffin thinks he can beat this problem with economics: If the cost of flying a ton of cargo commercially is less than flying a ton on the government's system, axing the commercial agreement would cost money, not save it. He acknowledges that the trouble lies in the opportunity cost of maintaining a government capability, but he fears putting all of NASA's eggs in the non-traditional basket because a startup might fail.

That's a reasonable fear, but the best insurance is not in having a commercial capability and a government capability. It is in letting private enterprise do more. "We've got to get commercial enterprise into the space business," Griffin said. ". . . There's no future for us continuing to build manned spacecraft that cost $200,000 a pound."

He's right there. The way to reach an affordable future is not to proceed down two paths at the same time, maintaining a traditional procurement model while embarking on a new one for the same thing.

Go ahead, Mr. Griffin, throw your hat over the fence. That's probably the only way you and the type of enterprises you would like to nurture will get enough support--financial and political--to climb over to the other side.

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World News & Analysis

Air Launch Tech Test

Aimed at its crew transfer vehicle concept, Transformational Space Corp. has made three drop tests of a technique to properly align space launchers after they are released from an aircraft.

The launcher is carried horizontally, then dropped and tugged to rotate vertically by a lanyard on the nose. The rotation is stopped by a parachute, leaving the rocket in a vertical attitude for a few seconds ready for ignition.

According to Transformational Space (t/Space), safety is improved by having ignition occur behind the carrier aircraft, instead of the rocket shooting forward horizontally then climbing in front, as done by Orbital Sciences' Pegasus and Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne.

The tests were part of t/Space's work on a four-man crew transfer vehicle for orbital and space station access that would be boosted by its Quick Reach II launcher concept. The work is being done under a $6-million Crew Exploration Vehicle and space architecture contract from NASA. Quick Reach II is to be air-launched and the 20.8-ft.-long, 37.4-in.-dia. drop test articles (DTAs) were one-quarter scale.

The trials were made from Scaled's Proteus research aircraft on May 24, June 7 and June 14. Also involved is AirLaunch, which is working on a Quick Reach I dropped from Boeing C-17s under a contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Falcon program (AW&ST Sept. 27, 2004, p. 26). There is some staff overlap between AirLaunch and t/Space.

An advantage of air launch is that it makes pressure-fed liquid rockets more feasible, according to a study by the participants. Pressure-fed rockets may have a cost and safety advantage over the standard engine that uses complex and expensive turbopumps to force propellants into the combustion chamber at high pressure. The disadvantage is that the rocket becomes heavy because the entire propellant tanks must withstand pressures higher than the combustion chamber.

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But that pressure, and weight, can be reduced with air launch. Engines are most efficient with a high-expansion ratio nozzle. To avoid overexpanding the exhaust at sea level and causing potentially disastrous flow separation in the nozzle, engines run at high pressure--or use a low-expansion nozzle that is not efficient at high altitude. Starting the engine at roughly 25,000 ft. or above allows the chamber pressure to be reduced considerably to about 150 psi., and tank pressure to 200 psi., while maintaining good efficiency, according to the engineering study.

These low pressures also make self-pressurizing propellants more feasible, eliminating the need for a separate tank pressurization system. This was used on SpaceShipOne, where nitrous oxide oxidizer self-pressurized to provide 300-700-psi. chamber pressure.

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Time lapse shows lanyard spinning rocket to vertical, chute halting rotation and then cutting free at end.Credit: DALE SHELL

THE DROP SYSTEM is called trapeze-lanyard air drop, or t/LAD. The DTAs' initial motion away from Proteus was guided by a trapeze for about 0.3 sec., as well as a drogue chute pulling about 350 lbf. at the tail. Then the lanyard tied to the nose came into play until it released at about 1.0 sec. after drop. As it reeled out it exerted 200-350 lbf. of tension to overcome the drogue chute and impart a nose-up pitch rate.

When a maximum pitch angle of 65-80 deg. was achieved about 2.5 sec. after drop, the chute was cut free at a rocket angle of attack of about 90 deg. Strakes on the DTA both prevented rolling and made it stable at this angle. Pitch attitude fell to 45 deg. 2 sec. later, then climbed back to 70 deg. in another 1 sec.

The drops were done at 110-120 KTAS at 7,000-12,000-ft. MSL. The 2,018-lb. DTAs have very low inertia compared to a real rocket. Officials believe that good results under these conditions will mean an even more stable full-scale drop.

NASA has decided to build two new launch systems - both of which will draw upon existing Space Shuttle hardware. One vehicle will be a cargo-only heavy lifter, the other will be used to launch the Crew Exploration Vehicle.

The Plan

NASA has essentially completed its Exploration Systems Architecture Study - also known as the "60 day study". Briefings of the study’s conclusions and recommendations will be conducted by Doug Stanley. Stanley led this study team and will begin his briefings next Tuesday on Capitol Hill and with representatives from industry. While the final report will be released in mid-July, its conclusions are already making the rounds in Washington.

According to an internal memo, the study team focused on four primary areas:

Something Old, Something New

According to sources familiar with the study's final recommendations, the heavy lifter will be a "stacked" or "in line" configuration (one stage atop another) and not a "side-mounted" configuration as is currently used to launch the space shuttle. The first stage will be a modified shuttle external tank with rocket engines mounted underneath. The first configuration will use 6 existing shuttle (SSME Block II) engines. [whoa ! ...that's an awful lot of SSMEs to throw away !!]

A growth version for lifting heavier cargos will use three RS-68 engines. The RS-68 engines, manufactured by Boeing, are currently used in its Delta IV family of launch vehicles. Additional engines would be clustered for launching heavier loads such as those needed for Mars missions.

The second stage will have a liquid engine capable of restarting multiple times. The payload will sit atop this second stage inside a large aerodynamic payload shroud.

During the study several shuttle-derived heavy launch vehicle options were considered. An old favorite, based on so-called Shuttle-C NASA designed in the late 1980's would have replaced the shuttle orbiter with a payload canister which would more or less replicate the existing orbiter's payload interfaces - sans the orbiter. Existing launch infrastructure would stay mostly the same. This configuration has its limitations in terms of the size of payload that could be launched and was rejected in favor of the in-line design, which has greater capacity for growth and performance.

The in-line option resembles the "Magnum booster" that was designed by NASA JSC in the mid-1990s. This will be a rather immense vehicle more on the scale of a Saturn-V. It will require substantial modifications to the existing launch pads and payload handling facilities at the VAB.

The second vehicle to be pursued is based on a 5 segment Solid Rocket Booster (SRB). Atop the SRB will be a new liquid-fueled upper stage and the CEV. While this vehicle is being developed for CEV launching, Mike Griffin has spoken of a cargo version of the CEV as well - one on a scale somewhat greater than Russia's Progress cargo carrier and more in line with that offered by Europe's ATV and Japan's HTV. See this website sponsored by Alliant Techsystems for more information on how SRBs might be used in shuttle-derived launch systems for heavy lift, cargo, and CEV launching.

Looming Consequences

The long-term implications from this decision are not insignificant. The heavy lifter will be designed so as to streamline payload processing. As such, while much of what is done by the existing infrastructure and workforce at KSC will be similar to what is done for the Space Shuttle system, it will likely require a much smaller workforce. While members of Congress from the space states will be happy to hear of a new launch system - one that retains some existing infrastructure - they will not be happy to hear that jobs will be lost.

Early after the announcement of the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) by President Bush in early 2004, much speculation centered on the possible use of EELV (Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles) such as the Boeing Delta IV and the Lockheed Martin Atlas V to loft the CEV and perhaps other payload associated with the VSE. With potential business shrinking for the two EELV launch systems, both Boeing and Lockheed-Martin formed a joint marketing endeavor, the United Launch Alliance which would "combine the production, engineering, test and launch operations associated with U.S. government launches of Boeing Delta and Lockheed Martin Atlas rockets". With the decision to go with a shuttle-derived launch system, it would seem that a substantial market for EELVs has disappeared.

Of course, once this study is formally released, the next task facing NASA will be to demonstrate how it is going to pay for these new systems and accelerate the delivery of the CEV. Existing plans called for its availability no earlier than 2014 - 4 years after the Space Shuttle fleet is due to be retired. And he has never spoken of any significant overlap between CEV and Shuttle operations. To do so he has streamline the so-called 'spiral development process" that had been in place. But it will take more than streamlining to bring these new launch systems into operation.

Griffin has also found himself facing a Congressional constraint - from the Senate - who wants Griffin to keep the Shuttle fleet operational until the CEV is online and flying. The concern is that the U.S. not have any gap in its independent ability to launch humans into space. Griffin is working toward a very firm date - 30 September 2010 - after which the space shuttle system will not longer be flying. Griffin has stated his intention to narrow that gap between CEV availability and shuttle retirement considerably. However, he has yet to claim that he will eliminate that gap. Whether his accelerated plans can result in an operational vehicle a scant 5 years away so as to placate Congress remains to be seen.

Being smart about how NASA does things will only get Griffin so far. He is going to have to find more money to make all of this happen sooner than was the case when the plan was initially presented to the White House and then to Congress.

To make all the books balance, there will be considerable pressure to reprogram funds from other NASA programs. Griffin made it clear that he saw the development of these new launch systems as being more important than the science that NASA had promised to do aboard the International Space Station for the past decade. In hearings earlier this week before the House Science Committee Griffin said "I cannot put microbiology and fundamental life sciences higher than the need for a new launch vehicle for astronauts." Sen. Hutchison, who chairs the subcommittee on Space And Science has a somewhat different view and has introduced legislation that would bar Griffin from such large cuts.

Griffin is also faced with congressional demands that he not cut aeronautics (as planned) and pledges he has made that he is not going to lay people off (as had been planned).

The only other option is for Griffin is to go back to the White House with a request for additional funds. Given that NASA's increases in the past several years have been rather unprecedented, its is rather unlikely that any such request would result in additional funds - at least from this White House.

With the announcement of this new space architecture, no one can ever say that Mike Griffin is not serious about conceiving and building the systems needed to get humans back to the Moon and on to Mars ASAP. What remains to be seen is if everyone else in the approval chain agrees with the difficult choices that must be made in order for Griffin's plans to work.