(2) I am profoundly disappointed in Shelby and the earmarks fiasco. He may even understand the extent to which his politics have set back space exploration. I recognize that his place in Alabama regional politics may call for that and that anyone in his position may do the same.

Nevertheless, as a 30 year old rocket scientist, I will have to live with the consequences long after Shelby is gone, and so will many like me. PLEASE will the congressional committees concerned find a less damaging means of control for NASA. Now that Apollo is gone, NASA is still regressing as an institution regardless of VSE and budgets. Episodes like Shelby’s are directly responsible for preventing the necessary change. From where I am sitting, the present system tools of congressional control are not working, and do not allow NASA to move on.

I must admit, though, I am excited about a commercial launch entity that produces their own propulsion, in house. That has possibilities. However, that being said, clearly SpaceX is going to end up with yet another EELV. That isn’t necessarily bad, though. Unified propulsion in a 9 by 1 configuration is yet another launch architecture niche, that hopefully will serve his customers well.

All up cryogenic launch with existing engines happens to be the niche I am pursuing. There is plenty of space out there at the cape, and I can fit my tanks in any number of large volume transport aircraft. You can’t believe the number of hits my Beluga/Dreamlifter page is getting. The problem with the Delta IV is that the very large and heavy RS-68 engine is integrated onto the CBC at the factory, and that requires a barge to move.

My your continuous waving around the mantra of ‘cheap’, all you are doing is alienating the scientific and engineering community. There are numerous ways of reducing infrastructure, component and operational costs without invoking the less than savory adjective of ‘cheap’. If I want cheap, I go to Walmart. If I want quality, I go to Pratt and Whitney. If I want to reduce costs, I increase volume. If I can’t supply demand, I raise prices. If I’m losing money, I stop production. These are really simple concepts.

And the ones that don’t include fundamental elements of physics are right?

There are many opinions, Al Fansome. The common thread is that all of them which include an element of state socialism are wrong.

Lower than what? Your metric is senseless. And even if you choose some particular launch system it’s still senseless because of hidden costs. I think I’ll stick with metrics like “less expensive than my competitor” or, did the mission fail or succeed. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a fan of ‘cheaper access to space’, I will never be a fan of ‘cheaper access to space’ and I believe that mantra ‘cheaper access to space’ has done more damage to the launch industry than the Ares I. How’s that for an insult. If that makes me a maverick and an outcast, so be it. It doesn’t matter one bit to me because I am a physicist, and I am well aware of the magnitudes of the forces involved. Space is a hard radiation, hard vacuum environment exposed to severe thermal stresses and high momenta projectiles, far removed from home. ‘Cheap’ isn’t anywhere close to reality. Feel free to join the real world at your convenience.

What is the “output”

A stable orbit close to the desired orbit.

I never said achieving “Cheap Access to Space” is easy, so I don’t use it as a euphemism. I use it as national goal that is really hard to achieve, but is critical to many other things we want to do in space.

You make a good point here that I to highlight — if an objective becomes popular (and broadly supported) people can steal the objective if it is not well defined, and try to define their own pet project as meeting that objective. That is happening right now with the new hot term “Operationally Responsive Space”.

By “Cheap Access to Space”, I mean at least an order of magnitude lower costs per pound. In no scenario do I think of the Ares 1 as being “cheap”, nor do people I talk to at NASA believe it will really be cheap. Of course, the primary advocates of the Ares 1 would certainly be tempted to argue this by saying the are “cheaper”. An EELV is “cheaper” than a Titan IV, but that does not mean it provides “Cheap Access to Space”.

– Al

PS — BTW, propulsion is an input to the real objective. What is the “output” that you want?

And what you end up with is the stick, something that doesn’t quite make it to orbit, a cheap solution that doesn’t work. I work in SI units. Things like time (for science and technology to advance) and volume (to reduce costs).

Cheap is an oxymoron. We need ever more advanced propulsion (measured in Newtons and meters per second), and creative ways to return those advanced propulsion units to Earth (currently priceless). Rather than throwing around the very unbecoming term of ‘cheap’, and invoking new physics. I feel that creative ways are easily accessible for returning propulsion to Earth, particularly with the fantastic infrastructure we have in place right now, without necessarily TPSing up the tank, pressurization, attitude control and guidance systems and flying them back to Earth, particularly when just such system are required on orbit, and low and behold, there they are. Once we can deliver large structures and residual fuel to orbit, and return the engines safely to Earth, time and volume will steadily reduce costs. But there is no way I can promote an idea that entails leaving Earth orbit to orbits where currently no rescue infrastructure exists, in hardware that is classified as ‘cheap’.

This scenario requires multiple redundant pads. We’re covered. The Stick doesn’t make it, and doesn’t fit into the model with multiple redundant pads of multiple vehicles servicing various aspects of our space infrastructure. Returning high performance reusable engines from low Earth orbit does. If the CEV were much lighter, as the astute Mr. Young suggests, and were only going to the ISS, then it ‘just might’ have a place in the scheme of things, since presumably we’ll need the five segment SRB for the Mars ship anyways. An SRB could sit on the pad for a long time as an ISS rescue ship. But other than that, it’s a non-starter, and it’s precisely the kind of thing we are trying to replace with high performance cryogenic turbomachinery. That wouldn’t be ‘cheap’ turbomachinery. Even a Williams International turbine isn’t ‘cheap’.

So please, spare me the ‘cheap’ euphemisms. Launch has a physical basis, but we are far from the technological point where ‘dollars’ is an unbiased metric for performance. I prefer flight success rate for the time being.

My apologies for just assuming that you supported the objective of “Cheap Access to Space” (CATS). I admit I am surprised to discover that you are, what must be, one of the few people who is actually opposed to setting a national goal of “Cheap Access to Space”, and then working to make progress towards that goal. There are a huge number of opinions on “how” to achieve CATS, but the end goal is pretty non-offensive.

I know there is no such thing as 100% consensus on any issue. But I do believe to think that >90% of the people in the space community agree that achieving CATS is important. Of the remaining people (

Of course not, the Ares I will fall on its own lack of merit. The Lunar Robitic Mission is just another of a long string of casualties of Bush’s Vision and Michael Griffin’s incompetent execution of the pointless details. The fact that we might actually get a 10 meter tank out of this mess someday is the only thing that keeps me going.

one of the things that bothers me the most about Space enthusiasts is that they will propose missions, spacecraft, equipment, and orbital transfers that demonstrate they have no idea what they are talking about.

Michael Griffin is one of those people. A very competent space simulator is in the hands of the masses now, they can’t possibly fool anyone anymore.

With heavy lift, it either has to be all or nothing. Having to share the pads with an Albatross won’t help at all, when there are numerous other pads and vehicles available out there. Besides, you always need a rescue pad.

They should have just said up front they were going to do this thing the biggest way possible, with SSMEs carrying the first stage all the way to orbit, and the upper stage for going to the moon and beyond. It would have save a lot of heartache, and there would have been plenty of money left over for everybody.

I hope the Stick goes down, and I hope it goes down hard. This is a fundamental physics lesson for a group of people that should be humbled by their gross errors, but for some reason are not. We desperately need to get these people out of there, and start over, the message is the same no matter how dim the messenger. And actually, it’s not starting over, it’s just starting.