“Good article, thanks for the link …”

Thanks for reading it. Unfortunately, we had limited space, and my original manuscript had to be trimmed a bit. The editor decided to cut my section on the Tupolev Tu-104 which followed the Comet into service and preceded the 707. Although it didn’t operate with any Western carriers, it did give yeoman service with Aeroflot (and CSA) for many years. Removing my single paragraph describing the Tu-104 was the easiest way to make the article fit the printed page. Remarkably, no one ever said anything to me or my editor about the omission, although I’m sure some readers must have asked themselves, “Where’s the Tu-104?”

“Wernher von Braun once observed: ‘Our two greatest problems are gravity and paperwork. We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.'”

Yes, I love that quote, too!

As an aside, I attended a luncheon in Washington at which von Braun was a speaker. He began his remarks, as he sometimes liked to do, with this line:

“Some of you might have noticed that I have an accent. That’s because I lived in Alabama for twenty years and picked up a Southern d-r-a-w-l.”

That sort of self-effacing humor was part of his charisma. But so were his insightful comments about the future … AND paperwork!

I’m glad you went to that Mechanical Engineering link. It was an excellent issue marking the 100th Anniversary of Flight. The Wright brothers were pretty sharp fellows … followed by many other pretty sharp people during the past century.

“Wernher von Braun once observed: “Our two greatest problems are gravity and paperwork. We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.” “

Regarding the Comet and its successors, please see my article in the 100th Anniversary of Flight supplement t Mechanical Engineering magazine (December 2003). If you go to the index at the bottom of the story, you will find several other excellent articles regarding the past and future of aerospace:

http://www.memagazine.org/supparch/flight03/transrev/transrev.html

I might also note that the Comet is still flying as the RAF’s Nimrod .. and in its new, highly-modified form, it will be doing so for many years to come. Not bad for a design that first flew more than 60 years ago.

I had the privilege of welcoming the last Comet into the United States some years back — an RAF aircraft assigned to RAE Farnborough for test purposes. It was completing a final round-the-world flight. Sadly, that aircraft was scrapped upon its return to the UK. But one last Comet 4C (the RAF’s “Canopus”) remains in airworthy condition, although it hasn’t flown in quite some time. About 30 years ago, I was contacted by a group hat wanted to restore a Comet 4C (ex-Mexicana) to flight. It had been abandoned at O’Hare Iternational Airport by its last owner — a fellow who owned a nudist resort in Indiana. Getting that aircraft flightworthy proved to be impossible. But I enjoyed spending some time inside of the old Comet, going through its various systems. Despite the sad fate of the Comet 1, the Comet 4 did fly the first trans-Atlantic jet service.

An even sadder story is that of the Avro Canada C102 “Jetliner” which I also describe in the above article, and which I have had a close connection with myself through its designer, Jim Floyd. It should have taken the world by storm. But politics killed the project in the cradle.

“Yes, but is the market big enough to sustain multiple providers?”

At this point, with only the ISS providing demand for crew services, that question can only be answered by the ISS partners. For them, they have to decide if they want two or more alternatives for supporting their crew on the ISS.

If the ISS partners want more than Soyuz and one American provider, then they will have to be willing to pay for it. Call it insurance. Or call it an investment in the future. I see it as both.

“Air travel is a mass market”

Airlines have been around for over 100 years, so you’re analogy doesn’t work.

“It’ll be a l-o-n-g time before commercial space establishes that sort of record [current airlines] for safety and reliability.”

Again, you’re trying to compare the maturity of a 100 year old market to a new one. At this point, we can only compare the proposed commercial crew services with the current and past services – will they be better than what we have, or have had? You’ll have to check back in 100 years to find out if you’re right…

“The Comet had to be withdrawn and extensively tested to discover the cause; the first incident had been incorrectly identified as having been caused by an onboard fire. Several contributory factors, such as window installation methodology, were also identified as exacerbating the problem. The Comet was extensively redesigned to eliminate this design flaw. Rival manufacturers meanwhile developed their own aircraft and heeded the lessons learnt from the Comet.

Although sales never fully recovered, the redesigned Comet 4 series subsequently enjoyed a long and productive career of over 30 years.”

ONLY the comet was redesigned and started flying again the nation’s total airline system did not grind to a halt because one plane of one company had an accident. Competitors learned from the mistakes. That will NEVER happen with a NASA monopoly.

I said did ALL the airplanes get destoryed, meaning did airtravel for the entire nation stop? When something happens at NASA the entire nations space access stops and it ALWAYS WILL as long as NASA holds a monopoly on space access.

“You make a fair point, but just as with aviation, one of the biggest strengths of commercial cargo/crew is redundancy. If one commercial launch system has an accident, even with crew loss, that launcher might be grounded, several failures might even put that company out of business, but the overall launch capability is preserved.”

Yes, but is the market big enough to sustain multiple providers? Air travel is a mass market, which is why multiple carriers can thrive and survive. Space travel is not a mass market. And, as I’ve repeatedly said before, there are no cattle ranges, wheat fields or coal mines in LEO to create a mass market. The key to the viability of air travel is the size of the market and the very large demand for transportation from Point A to Point B (‘A’ and ‘B’ being hundreds of city pairs worldwide).

“A space program that relies purely on its own launchers cannot do that, because you can only afford one at a time and something is wrong with it, everything grinds to a halt.”

That’s a fair point, too … and one that troubles me. We saw not only what happened following the Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia accidents, but we’ve also seen what happened following the Soyuz-1 and Soyuz-11 accidents. The Soviet program ground to a halt, as well. Which is why I’ve repeatedly said that I wish ESA had gone ahead with Hermes to provide an alternative to the Space Shuttle for sending crews to he ISS. (I believe Hermes/Ariane V would have become the primary means of shuttling crews to the ISS if they had.) Of course, Hermes would have been an ESA spacecraft — not commercial. And I still wonder if the private sector can sustain itself with multiple providers given the limited market?

“Plane crashes can have severe consequences for airlines and aircraft makers, it may even put them out of business… but air travel itself goes on. People choose an airline with a better safety record or a different type of plane and just keep on flying.”

Very true. But, again, that’s because of the mass market … which does not exist AT THIS TIME for space travel. It’s also true because of the overall safety record of the airline industry over many millions of hours flown and passengers carried each year. It’ll be a l-o-n-g time before commercial space establishes that sort of record for safety and reliability.

But space travel is not as routine as air travel, and it won’t be for a very long time. Of course, I do like the idea of having back-up capability. But is the market large enough to keep multiple space operators viable? Again, there is no mass market for human spaceflight.”

Unmanned spaceflight is very much routine these days, the launch market sustains a lot of competitors and will sustain a lot more, especially if they’re able to offer lower prices than the Russians.

You really need to let go of the idea that human spaceflight is somehow special, mutually exclusive or incompatible to unmanned spaceflight. Decades of government HSF have reinforced that notion, but in a commercial environment it’s no longer valid. Companies can’t afford to treat HSF as anything special precisely because the market for HSF is very small at the moment. They need maximum commonality between manned and unmanned systems to keep the costs down.
The Russians have been doing it for years with Soyuz, so successfully that Arianespace is now buying rockets from them.

“If an airline gets done in, what happens then? Do all the airplanes get destroyed and never fly again?”

In the case of the Comet 1, yes. The surviving aircraft never flew again (with the exception of two aircraft owned by the RCAF which were put out of service for several years while undergoing extensive and expensive modifications.

But space travel is not as routine as air travel, and it won’t be for a very long time. Of course, I do like the idea of having back-up capability. But is the market large enough to keep multiple space operators viable? Again, there is no mass market for human spaceflight.