One small launch for a rocket, one giant leap for newspace

My hat goes off to SpaceX for successfully achieving orbit on the fourth launch of Falcon I. I'm sure a lot of observers of this industry, and a lot of space enthusiasts feel the same way. It's been a rocky road to get to this point, and the road will be even bumpier from here out. But with that being said, this is a brief moment for SpaceX to bask in the glory of achieving orbit with a privately-developed vehicle.

The only concern I have from watching the launch video feed is all of the debris that seemed to hang around the second stage nozzle. With that being said, I thought that separation was much cleaner than on the previous flights.

While Falcon I has found success, Falcon IX will be a much tougher challenge. With nine Merlin engines on the first stage and a single Merlin on stage 2, it's a much more complex vehicle than Falcon I and its pairing of one Merlin with one Kestrel.

Another factor worth considering is the long-term profitability of SpaceX. The Pegasus launcher is case-in-point. Also developed with private funds, the Pegasus program was launched with claims of low cost per each kilogram of payload to orbit. Due to a lack of missions and a low launch rate, Pegasus prices skyrocketed beyond what was initially projected. SpaceX hopes that Falcon IX will have a high flight rate thanks to COTS and space tourism missions. But if these goals aren't met, Falcon IX will turn into little more than another fairly-expensive EELV-class rocket like Delta or Atlas.

With all that being said, today is a very encouraging day. The accomplishments of SpaceX leading up to today's launch may be more important than the other government-funded space stunts of this past week, at least in terms of advancing humanity's permanent presence in space.

It Can Happen Here

After reading Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, I am starting to see how his arguments apply to the business of manned spaceflight and space launch. America's space program was born from the Cold War defense establishment, and for the foreseeable future it will remain a "fascist" space program.

Jonah Goldberg points out that most "fascist" societies share common traits: the mobilization of society under "the moral equivalent of war," the "coordination" of government and corporate power, and most importantly, "the religion of the state." All three traits are systemic to America's space program.

The glory days of NASA covered the period from Project Mercury in 1959 through the end of Project Apollo in 1975. As Tom Wolfe wrote in The Right Stuff, every manned spaceflight represented a round of "single combat" with the Soviets. It was the moral equivalent of war. Project Apollo served to mobilize American industry in a way that was surpassed only by the Manhattan Project.

Through Project Apollo, America dealt a severe blow to the Soviet Union in the greater Cold War. But in order to beat the Soviets, America had to become like the Soviet Union and beat them at their own game. Apollo was a crash program with no commercial application or opportunity for private-sector investment. Its goals were largely centered on national pride, or the religion of the state. After appeasing the gods of statolatry, Apollo was allowed to wither and die.

Fascism continues into the shuttle era. In order to justify the enormous expense of the space shuttle borne by the American taxpayers, and to get the flight rate up to levels which would make the vehicle economical, the shuttle was used to launch commercial payloads during its early years. The thought of a government-funded, government-operated vehicle launching commercial payloads should be anathema to freedom-loving Americans. But the shuttle served its need as "the moral equivalent of war." After all, the Russian efforts to duplicate the shuttle capabilities with Energia-Buran helped to bankrupt the Soviet Union. And the shuttle & space station continue to serve as symbols of national pride, promoting the religion of the state.

As the shuttle program winds down, Fascism will survive well into Project Constellation and possibly make its way to the moon again. The Ares-Orion stack is a prime example of "coordination" between the government and an oligarchy of large corporations. Every surviving aerospace giant gets a piece from the pork barrel. The worst offender is ATK, who is being paid hand-over-fist to produce an all-new solid booster that is the cornerstone of a horribly-suboptimized crew launcher. The line separating NASA and ATK grows fuzzier on a daily basis, as figures like Scott Horowitz continue to pass back-and-forth through the revolving door. Even Orbital Sciences gets a big handout in the form of a COTS prize to develop what's supposed to be a commercial launcher, Taurus II. And the official "state religion" within NASA is the dogma of Mike Griffin's "infallible, genius plan" for getting us back to the moon.

I'm not saying that these examples of fascism within the space program are all bad. For instance, the government subsidies of Atlas & Delta, and the eventual merger of their production, were necessary evils for ensuring DoD's continued space access. But unless there is a clear national-defense rationale, it's really hard to justify the continuing fascism within America's space efforts.

The writing is on the wall for the fascist space program. The news coming from Project Constellation is a continuing stream of schedule slips and budget shortfalls. The patience of Congress will not be infinite. At the same time, firms like SpaceX and Bigelow continue to develop not only commercial space vehicles, but commercial applications for said space vehicles. In time, the American space program will transition from fascism to freedom. And while freedom might not get us to the moon in the course of a decade, it can sustain itself much longer than six landings.

Learning the Wrong Lessons

Over the course of this week, America remembers its most visible and most profound space disasters. The sacrifices of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia will not be in vain if we choose to be smart and learn the correct lessons. But the brave astronauts who perished will have done so needlessly if we take the easy way out and embrace the wrong lessons from the tragedies which are seared in our minds.

Apollo 1 was a case where an immature spacecraft was rushed to the launch pad, under poorly-designed test conditions, and after proper quality controls were neglected. While the fire claimed the lives of three prominent astronauts and delayed Project Apollo by approximately 20 months, the result was a dramatically improved spacecraft that brought all of her crews home safely.

The Columbia disaster resulted from a broken safety culture which largely ignored a known defect in the Space Shuttle System: the liberation of ET foam and the risk it posed to the fragile thermal protection system. The reasoning was that because the foam had never caused a problem before, it was not a significant threat to crew safety. Columbia disproved this belief in tragic fashion. Fortunately for the program, NASA management has been judicious in trying to mitigate the shuttle system's inherent design flaw, and even more judicious in assessing damage from the foam strikes that still do occur.

Unfortunately, I think that the correct lessons of Challenger are being buried in the false ones. Challenger demonstrated that the shuttle was a finicky and complex system that could never achieve the fictitious flight rates that were promised at the program's outset.

Moreover, the Challenger disaster was the result of grossly-negligent decisions by middle managers within both NASA and Morton-Thiokol. The flight rules prohibited a launch in the conditions that existed on January 28, 1986. The Thiokol engineers had plenty of evidence to justify the reasoning behind those flight rules. Nevertheless, the launch wasn't stopped by the people who had the power to do the right thing.

When a person's gross negligence results in people getting killed, those people are often sent to jail. When Challenger was lost, nobody went to jail. In fact, NASA was REWARDED for its negligence when Congress funded construction of a replacement orbiter, and when President Reagan and the national leadership supported the continuation of the Space Shuttle Program.

The aftermath of the Challenger disaster is a dramatic example of the difference between the government and the private sector. Government endeavors will continue as long as Congress funds them, regardless of their success or failure. In the private sector, success means generating a profit for the stakeholders. If a private venture fails in that regard, the stakeholders will pull the rug out from under the failing effort. Twenty-two years after Challenger was lost, the American taxpayers still toss roughly $7 billion per year at a manned space program that can't accomplish much more than space station housekeeping and three shuttle flights per year. NASA is still in the business of flying the dangerous and finicky shuttle, and ATK (successor to Morton-Thiokol) is still getting paid hand-over-fist for both the existing SRB's, and for the new solids that will fuel the next generation of big-government pork-launchers.

NASA management's most enduring lesson from Challenger is the flawed mantra of "Crew must be kept separate from cargo." While such flawed logic is enough to trick Congress into funding the development of two very different launchers, it doesn't always hold true. If a launcher can be made safe enough for a human crew, there's no reason why it can't be trusted with carrying a reasonable amount of cargo at the same time.

Additionally, the ESAS architecture could potentially create the same schedule pressures that led to the Challenger launch decision. Because the EDS and lander can only loiter in orbit for 14 days, it creates conditions where NASA management could be tempted to launch the manned Ares I and Orion spacecraft in spite of borderline launch conditions. Managers may be willing to assume more risk if the alternative is throwing away multi-million-dollar hardware that's already in orbit, and missing the launch window for a lunar mission.

As NASA carries out Project Constellation, the agency has no incentives to hold to its schedule, budget, or performance claims as long as Congress funds NASA unconditionally. What the agency really needs is a set of safety and performance benchmarks that must be achieved in order to justify further funding. And if NASA fails to meet those benchmarks, the agency should be thrown under the tires in favor of SpaceX or Scaled Composites (or any other firm with the potential to clear the hurdles of putting humans in orbit.)

While the Challenger disaster fades into becoming a painful memory, its legacy is open to all who choose to seek it. We all have a duty to act in the interests of safety. And when we fail to do so, there should be serious ramifications.

Requiem for a Vision

Dennis Wingo has a somewhat lengthy but very good piece in which he dissects the fall of the Vision for Space Exploration. I'm not going to declare the Vision dead and nail up the coffin, but it's clear that the plan is in serious trouble.

The odds of getting Ares I and Orion operational by 2015 (at the earliest) are so low, that Rep. Dave Weldon is sponsoring legislation to keep the shuttle flying. Let's think about that for a second. In 1986, and again in 2003, there have been calls to ground the space shuttle permanently. It's just too dangerous, many pundits claimed. And if routine space access is your goal, then the shuttle IS too dangerous, not to mention expensive. But for Rep. Weldon and other members of Congress, the shuttle represents emplyment for thousands of people in his home district. For the American astronauts, who are willing to take great risks to fulfill the dream of flying in space, the shuttle is the only ticket in town. For American policymakers, the shuttle's continued existance frees us from being politically beholden to the Russians for manned space access.

I disagree with Mr. Wingo (whom I've met in person, and spoken with briefly) on some of the similarities between the Vision for Space Exploration and the Space Exploration Initiative. In the case of SEI, the plan was dead, for all practical purposes, within a year of its announcement on July 20, 1989. The sticker shock from the $450 bil price tag (an unreliable figure, but one that would be spread over thirty years) was enough ammounition for the plan's political opponents. The SEI was also undercut by a lack of support from NASA's administrator, Richard Truly.

With the Vision for Space Exploration, the plan largely flew under the radar for over a year. Sean O'Keefe's NASA commissioned some promising architecture studies from the contractors, but they were not acted upon. Michael Griffin took over as NASA administrator and decisively rolled out an architecture of his own in Summer 2005. The plan, as originally presented in the media, seemed to have the support of the American people. After all, we were told that it would fit within the current funding wedge reserved for the Shuttle and ISS. Even the questions of national priorities, brought to the fore by Hurricane Katrina, couldn't slow the Vision down initially. In spite of the problems that have arisen since the announcement of the ESAS architecture, Michael Griffin can at least take credit for coming up with a plan that has out-lasted its predecessor.

The problem with the Vision is that it's being run in a business-as-usual fashion by the same agency that gave us the Shuttle and ISS. NASA still hasn't gotten past the fact that it will never see Apollo-era budgets. NASA still hasn't accepted that its business is space exploration, not job creation. The agency is still trapped in the shuttle-era, big-government mindset that the government has to design the spacecraft, and the government has to provide transportation to low earth orbit. NASA needs to shift the paradigm and view space launch as a commercial service that can be provided today by commercial vendors. NASA's finite resources should not be squandered in reinventing the mousetrap and coming up with better earth-to-orbit launchers.

On January 14, 2004, President Bush asked NASA to complete the ISS and retire the shuttle by 2010, fly a new manned spacecraft between 2011 and 2014, return to the moon by 2020, and land humans on Mars during the decade after that. The agency is doing its best to complete the ISS by 2010 (although the recent STS-122 delay casts doubt on that goal.) NASA is planning on retiring the shuttle as scheduled, but members of Congress have other ideas.

The goal the agency is focusing on, and the one for which they are taking the most Congressional criticism, is establishing a manned spaceflight capability between 2011 and 2014. It should be noted that Congress has not given NASA the money that was originally budgeted for this goal. But with that being said, NASA has chosen a wasteful and expensive approach that has little (if any) chance of being completed by the originally scheduled date. There's a perfectly-capable launcher available in the form of Delta IV Heavy, but NASA continues (for now) down the route of Ares I and retention of shuttle-program jobs.

The Vision for Space Exploration stands as a monument to government largesse in the face of fiscal austerity. As an agency, NASA still hasn't grasped the need to assume a smaller footprint and contract out more of its work. If Ares I should falter, and America go without a manned spaceflight capability, it will be NASA's inability to evolve that will have doomed it.

Downsize This, NASA!

At this juncture in Project Constellation, it's pretty clear that NASA did not pick its current shuttle-heritage architecture because of its performance benefits, and it did not pick it due to low development or operational costs. Instead, the Ares I & V promise to MAXIMIZE operational costs, owing to their inheriting of the "standing army" that was raised to support Apollo and was sustained throughout the Shuttle years.

By the same token, it's clear that the non-use of EELV's (Delta & Atlas) for Project Constellation had nothing to do with performance or economics. Delta and Atlas have already sunk their development costs, and an economy of scale could be achieved if the EELV plant in Decatur AL was cranking out the ~40 cores per year as it was designed to do. The economic case for the EELV's was made on the basis of 1) high flight rates, and 2) low fixed costs with a reduced labor force.

If NASA had adopted an EELV-based architecture, it would represent a shift from a workforce employed by NASA and United Space Alliance, to a workforce employed by United Launch Alliance. And what would become of the Shuttle Standing Army under an EELV-based architecture? While some of them could still work on Project Constellation (particularly the astronaut trainers and the life support technicians,) many of them would likely have to work on another job.

Congress has mandated upon NASA that the agency retain the Shuttle Standing Army to the fullest extent. It would certainly work against the Congressional incumbents, particularly those in Central Florida, if there was an exodus of jobs and the accompanying "brain drain" following the shuttle's retirement.

At the same time, I do not believe that the government has the duty to act as a jobs program, and I do not believe the American taxpayers should fund a standing army when a leaner force can achieve the same result. It may sound heartless, but I could care less if the Shuttle Standing Army was cut loose. The standing army is made up of talented and dedicated individuals who should have no trouble finding other work once the shuttle is finished. Such is the nature of the defense business. Defense contractors and civil servants must always remember that they serve the taxpayer, and there's no obligation for their continued employment after their service is over. The Air Force is letting 40,000 of its own people go during the force-shaping program, but neither Congress nor the American people seem to be concerned over the loss of jobs.

At the same time, an EELV-based architecture need not cut the shuttle workforce loose. While stock EELV's (Atlas V with SRB's, or Delta IV Heavy) are perfectly capable of launching Orion into earth orbit, a growth variant of the EELV's could launch out of LC-39, make use of facilities like the shuttle's Vehicle Assembly Building, and keep the standing army employed. ULA has promoted concepts such as Atlas V Phase 3, which would require a new launch site. One idea is to cluster five Phase 2 cores, while another would use a shuttle-derived core of 27-feet diameter. Doing so would put LC-39 back in business and retain the jobs of most who worked there.

Out of Gas

Every time I log onto Facebook (the popular social network website,) I see that several more of my friends have joined a group stating that they're not buying gas on May 15. The idea is that if people boycott the gas companies for one day, the prices will drop. Ideas like this indicate a poor understanding of economics; if left uncorrected, it will lead people to believe in rubbish like Marxism.

I'm somewhat amazed to see how poorly people understand the concept of supply & demand when it comes to gas. Because our demand is high, relative to the world's petroleum output, gas companies can get away with charging prices that are now reaching $4.00/gallon in some cities.

As Peter Parker says in Spider-Man 3, "we all have a choice." In the case of rising gas prices, we can choose to consume less gas, hence we choose to buy less gas. What effect will the May 15 gas boycott have? A small fraction of the nation's drivers will have an immediate need to fill up on May 15. Most boycotters who would have normally filled their tanks up on May 15 will instead do it on May 14 or May 16. As long as driving habits don't change, consumption will remain the same.

Here's a modest proposal: why don't we have a day where, instead of boycotting the oft-villainized oil companies, we decide to boycott the consumption of gas? Even better yet, why can't every American make a commitment to burning 20% less gasoline than they used to? After all, 20% of our petroleum resources come from the middle east. Isn't it a sad irony that American petrodollars flow to the oil sheiks, who give the petrodollars to terrorists, who turn around and kill Americans? Hopefully the asshole who leisurely cruises around in his Ford Excursion thinks about the blood of American service personnel next time he looks in the mirror.

All Americans need to examine their driving habits to determine how they can contribute to our energy independence. I get burned up every time I see some dickhead driving to work alone in a truck or minivan or SUV. These vehicles have their purpose, but they should be left in the driveway when they're not absolutely necessary for hauling people or cargo. Virtually every household should have at least one four-cylinder compact car that's used as a "daily driver" for the commute to work and back.

Adopting "daily drivers" is a good start towards a future free of middle eastern oil, but it's not the only simple thing we can do. Short trips can be accomplished on foot or on bike. Errands that aren't time critical can be pushed aside until they can be combined with another trip in the same direction. It's not going to take ethanol or hydrogen to alleviate the short-term energy crisis. It takes a little bit of critical thinking and discipline, so we can make a conscious effort to reduce the amount of gasoline we use.

Spaceplanes of Gossamer Wings?

About a month ago, beloved space-pundit Jeff Bell predicted disastrous safety problems for upcoming space tourist craft like SpaceShipTwo and Rocketplane XP. I will be the first to admit that rocket powered aircraft traveling into the exosphere will almost certainly be more dangerous than conventional aircraft. That being said, I also think that Jeff Bell overestimates the dangers of suborbital spaceplanes.

Most of the problems noted in Dr. Bell's analysis of the data show that engine problems accounted for a vast majority of catastrophic rocketplane incidents. Four of these were attributed to the use of ullmer leather, incompatible with liquid oxygen. The second X-15 had an in-flight engine failure, and the third X-15 had an engine explode on the ground. While this is a problem inherent in all rocketplane projects, it must be noted that the X-15 program was conducted at a time when large liquid rockets, especially complex ones like the XLR-99, were in their infancy. As time has progressed, rocket engines have become more reliable. Spaceplane engines need not be any different.

It should also be noted that all of the projects cited by Dr. Bell were research programs that "pushed the leading edge" of flight research. The X-15A-2 suffered structural damage during a high-speed run, the X-2 was lost due to inertial coupling, and the third X-15A spun out of control during re-entry. Flights of commercial spaceplanes will avoid these problems by flying well within the type's flight envelope instead of shooting for extreme speeds and maneuvers that are the norm in a flight research program. I especially think highly of SpaceShipTwo's "feather" maneuver, which takes much of the risk out of reentry.

Dr. Bell mentions the grounding of three X-1 series aircraft due to fatigue in the tankage. This is a problem that cannot be dismissed, but it's not a show-stopper either. Propellant tanks have to be designed to withstand a certain number of pressurization cycles, and they have to be inspected thoroughly between flights. Fortunately, our ability to inspect for microcracks in these tanks is much better today than it was in the 1950's.

I share Dr. Bell's concern with the SpaceShipTwo propulsion system. I studied hybrids for a lengthy period in college. In my mind, the supposed safety benefits never seemed that great, and they never seemed to outweigh their poor performance when compared with liquid systems (or even all-solid rockets, which usually have better specific impulse than N2O-HTPB hybrids.)

Noticeably absent from Jeff Bell's data is any mention of the Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket. This research aircraft flew 313 times using three airframes. None of the aircraft were lost during the highly-successful program. The program even racked up a remarkable aviation achievement: the first Mach 2 flight in history was achieved by Scott Crossfield in the D-558-II on November 20, 1953.

Of the 313 flights, three different propulsion schemes were employed: turbojet-only, turbojet + rocket, and rocket-only with launch from a B-29 mothership. Admittedly, the turbojet-only flights should be tossed out of this safety record, because they're no different from conventional aircraft. Nonetheless, the Skyrocket demonstrated that there's nothing inherently unsafe about mounting a rocket engine with a winged airframe.

As space tourism reaches the suborbital frontier, rocket-powered aircraft will lead the way. Flying in such craft will undoubtedly carry risks, but safe practices and smart engineering can bring risks down to acceptable levels. The passengers of such spaceplanes should go into their adventures with full awareness of those risks, and a belief that their space experience will outweigh any potential hazards.

Getting out of the Business

Does NASA still need to participate in the manned spaceflight business?

NASA was formed in 1958, a unique child of the cold war. The United States had been caught unprepared by the October 1957 launch of Sputnik. While the US had the potential to co-opt the Soviets for first satellite in space, the US space program was divided and flailing. The Army, Navy and Air Force had maintained separate space programs. The nation was frightened by the implications of Sputnik, and the government believed that only a unified space effort (NASA) could ensure American technical dominance on "the high frontier" of space.

In those earlier years, the Soviets clearly had an edge in the field of launch vehicles (the story was completely reversed in the field of ballistic missiles, but that truth was suppressed in the political climate of 1960.) NASA's primary success came from establishing American dominace in the fields of manned spaceflight (arguably beginning with the Gemini 4 mission) and launch vehicles. One could argue that NASA had fulfilled its mission and reason for existence with the first moon landing in 1969.

In the post-Apollo era, NASA struggled to find direction. The shuttle program was conceived for political reasons that make little sense, even today. The space station, as proposed by President Reagan in 1984, was primarily motivated by a desire to achieve parity with the Soviet space station program and bolster unity with America's cold war allies. When the cold war ended, NASA's human spaceflight program was re-cast as a bridge between former enemies; hence, we got the shuttle-Mir program and the ISS.

Are the taxpayers being well-served by their government-administered, socialist space program? A majority of people probably don't think that the $7B spent on human spaceflight by NASA every year isn't being well-spent on a dangerous shuttle and a space station that doesn't do enough science to justify the investment.

What if there was another way to access space? What if some real-life Dagny Taggart came up with a "John Galt Spaceline" to open the space frontier to the common man? The way ahead might not be too far off. Sir Richard Branson and others are temptingly close to offering suborbital spaceflights. Some enterprising figure like Elon Musk or George French might launch a manned, orbital mission by the end of this decade. Robert Bigelow is pushing ahead with a realistic plan to build a space hotel, and even has the audacity to talk of building a lunar base.

"Space for all" used to be a fantasy. Now it's more like a waking dream, and it will shortly be a reality. Between 2010 and 2014 there will be a gap where NASA has no manned spaceflight capability and a space station of questionable value; at the same time, the private sector might have an orbital manned spacecraft and a space hotel. If the private sector has the ability to surpass NASA, why do we even bother paying NASA to launch men into space? With each passing day, it appears that the money being spent on NASA's lunar return plans would be better spent on COTS and other programs which encourage private-sector spaceflight.

A socialist space program like NASA sometimes buys us faster schedules (like getting to the moon by 1969,) at the cost of great expenditures. NASA was a necessity during the cold war, when it became necessary to match the Soviets in a "war by other means." Now that the cold war is over, NASA has been reduced to a doddering relic. Even with a new and exciting mission like returning to the moon, there's little hope that NASA will be able to meet its budget and schedule targets. The private sector will take even longer than NASA to reach the moon, but it will be assured of reaching the moon once there is a market for the moon.

The launch of the first private orbital spacecraft will be the first nail in the coffin for NASA's manned spaceflight program, as it should be. Socialist space programs should be a thing of the past. NASA will have to focus on basic aeronautical research (as it did in the old NACA days) and space sciences, including unmanned planetary probes. Spaceflight will no longer be the realm of government-appointed demigods (including the occasional homicidal astronaut.) It will be open to an ever-expanding mass of people who want to go into space not for some lofty ideal of science, but to pursue the self-interests ingrained in the human spirit.