Alt.space debacle (GCNRevenger 's gonna love this)

Rxke · 2006-04-27 00:53:34

I've got this from a discussion with somebody who went to visit various alt.space outfits, who went to the XPrize Cup, who used to read a lot of discussions here... Who got disgusted by what he saw.

Have fun:

New Mars? Its pretty representative of alt.space: first you have Zubrin and his disciples, and the AntiZubrin, who has yet to be revealed (probably works for NASA) but we know he's out there because his evil disciples of reality (GNCRevenger, etc.) are out to desecrate the church of Zubrin (you will know the AntiZubrinistas by their mantra: delta u = Veq ln [mf / me].)
My experience with this whole crowd tells me they are all full of shit. Kistler spent 1.2 billion developing a conventional rocket with no new technology and still never launched anything. Gary Hudson is a total huckster who has yet to launch anything but has fleeced unbelievable amounts of money from innocents for at least two decades, and looks like he's about to take NASA to the cleaners. Rutan is using hybrid rockets and no pressure suits? He is going to get somebody killed and put a end to space tourism before it gets out of the cradle. New Mexico is setting up a "Spaceport" on the west side of White Sands Missile Range. Do you know how much it costs to get a permit to launch over a government missile range? Over half a million dollars per launch. Sorry, no orbital flights from there.
Elon Musk is going to produce a new version of the Pegasus rocket (same payload, etc.) which has made less than 40 flights in 15 years because there is no market for its payload range, unless he somehow goes ALL the way and produces the Falcon V, essentially a new version of the Delta, at maybe ten percent savings. We ain't flying to Mars on that, and it won't make any money because there is no market for comsats because half of the fiberoptic cable laid down in the 90s is still dark. Nobody needs to use it yet -- much less launch satellites.
Zubrin's partners at Pioneer Rocketplane ripped him off and forced him out of his own company (now just Rocketplane, the guys who plan to shoot an old Lear jet into the heavens. No thanks, but I'll watch.) Bigalow seems to have a good product, which is no surprise since it was designed in the 60s at taxpayer expense and then abandoned like every other space technology we had that worked, and anyway he is going to have to wait years for each launch, decades if he waits for the Falcon V.
The Millirons are just gas, everyone I've met in Mojave is a backstabbing user, Bezos is trying to reinvent the DCX (which would have never made it to space), Carmack is blowing his fortune on a rocket which, when it works, stands perfectly still (and which the DCX can already do.) Joe Latrel isn't really building that much: he is going to buy his engines from Xcore, and his payload will be measured in grams! Xcore, for all their hype today, is made up of the same people who designed the rotary rocket -- a friggin space helicopter that in the original design specs was supposed to be captured on reentry by a jet powered flying carpet! (I will never read Clancey again.)
Xcore only got anything flying by copying others: their EZRocket engine is gas pressurized 1940s tech and they don't plan on ever using turbos, and now it turns out even the lousy piston pump they have been developing has serious problems. They were supposed to have ten planes ready for the X Prize Cup in october and they just got started on the first one.
Everybody is still using He3 as a reason to go to the Moon, when deuterium is an order of magnitude easier, and even deuterium is still twenty to forty years away. NASA is promising to go to the Moon AGAIN . . . sometime this century (only 94 years to go!) Then there are NASA's cost-plus contractors, who have no economic interest in producing new launch technologies and have lobbyists in Washington to try to make life hard on anyone -- even universities -- that build or develop their own rockets or technologies.
Even the Pacific Rocket Society, a club that was supposed to launch the first amateur rocket into space back in '94 (with a $10,000 grant) destroyed their own hopes of launching the first amateur rocket to space because of petty infighting, and then the Millirons took the club over and today are using its website for free advertising, when its a tax exempt organization! Have you ever seen the discovery channel's show about the amateur rocket enthusiasts? They spent a good part of their time bickering, sniping, and accusing each other of imaginary crap -- and the current version of New Mars is a fairly accurate microcosm of the whole scene.

EuroLauncher · 2006-04-27 02:30:46

So you think they are going nowhere Rxke ?

Rxke · 2006-04-27 03:41:56

disclaimer: this is not *my* writing, but after initial enthousiasm, I have to largely agree with this "op. ed."

Lots of alt.spacers are paper tigers, the few that build anything, often are in the ballpark of early V2 tech... A lot of them hoping their "spare change" setup will attract big investors, but until today, none have popped up. And no, Rutan does *not* count, suborbital is not where one wants to go...

Musk being the best out there, if all goes incredibly well, there *still* won't be a cheap rocket, heck the russians can still launch cheaper, so nothing changes.

Rxke · 2006-04-27 03:47:41

I think the Millirons are a good example: a PR-woman at the helm, lots of biiiig plans straight out of a straightjacket (hypergolic launcher for people, yeah, right, that'll be really simple and cheap, if you launch somewhere where there are no safety/environmental protection rules at all...)
Posing in papers, grinning wide, witht their first customer sitting in a friggin cardboard and styrofoam box, representing a launchseat, as the ultimate in cost-reduction, I nearly shat my pants when I read about it.

Again: Elon is the only serious builder out there, and he's proving it is Hard, Hard, Hard.

GCNRevenger · 2006-04-27 05:11:17

Yeah, this is pretty much what I've been saying, only it seems like its even worse then I thought it was. Bezos, Carmak, and so on... they're just playing, model rocket builders with budgets.

His analysis of Kistler, X-Cor, Rocketplane, and Scaled Composites seems pretty accurate too. Nobody seems to want to talk about the fact that SpaceShipOne was nearly lost on its maiden flight because of control issues, and I had forgotten that the crew doesn't wear pressure suits.

Burt might be able to pull off a practical suborbital tourist hopper, but he's really the only one most likely.

Elon Musk at SpaceX really is the AltSpace's only hope. Nobody else has actually produced flight hardware capable of orbital launch and talked customers into investing (USAF). He will still have to work a miracle to go from the half-tonne Falcon-I to the ten-tonne Falcon-V without driving his company into the ground.

If he does suceed, I think his prospects are slightly less dark then the above "op ed" person thinks, because the military will love it if it works. Boeing would like to exit the not-very-profitable Delta-II program in favor of Delta-IV, so then Elon would have a rocket with a definate price edge and no competitors in its class. But if he doesn't, preferably on his next shot, the USAF will just put up with the cost of EELV.

Spaceflight with rockets is hard, and there are no prizes for "close" to space, and even then the prize is not that big... So yes, not a single AltSpace company except SpaceX, which is unique because they aren't doing anything outlandish and are doing something that actually has a market big enough to repay development, is the only game in town.
___________________________________________

Nobody should be surprised if NewMars is this "microcosm" thing, we have people here like Bezos or Carmack that would build their own rockets too, only perhaps much less lucid then them, if only they had the money like they do. And they like to talk, so talk they do, especially when confronted with the cold truth about the most implacable enemy they fight: gravity.

Seer · 2006-04-27 07:04:51

Who is the AntiZubrin?

GCNRevenger · 2006-04-27 07:53:04

Someone (like me) who opposes people like Robert "Space Bob" Zubrin, and people like him, who fervently believe that space travel can be done while severely cutting corners beyond all reason and expecting new technology, unrealistic engineering, and people willing to sacrifice "for the cause" to make up the difference.

People who also believe that the current price for space travel is unjustified by multiple times, and that the "True Believers" can "do it better," particularly with some hyper-simplified technology (piston driven LOX pump, hybrid rockets, etc).

They also believe in "doing more with almost nothing," like Bob's beliefe that a few worn out MarsDirect HABs with spent reactors somehow constitute a "base" or something, and how the MarsDirect explorers will find plenty to do for 500 days with very little surface science payload (only 1500kg for the rover!), particularly the lack of a drill. Or, the average AltSpacers' fervent hope that people will line up to launch microsatelites to LEO (not GEO) in number despite real comm sats getting bigger and heavier.

"AntiZubrin" is most anybody with a realistic view of whats possible and whats needed.

cIclops · 2006-04-28 02:59:21

Who is the AntiZubrin?

Given the absence of NASA criticism in that rant, I'd say the author was

SpaceNut · 2006-04-28 04:30:40

What I find interesting about the alternate x group is the wanted desire to invest there own money to gain the basics of rocket flight while doing this all from fresh approaches and design efforts with no returns on investment.

Since the Falcon is geared at the markets of many discontinnued rockets, why not just buy the plans (delta 2 or Titan's) for any of those to start from for learning the more advanced concepts needed to get to orbit. Even going to the extent of buying a complete unit would allow for a hands on look at all engineering that would be needed.
One could then take a basic design and make moderate changes to begin space flight more easily and if the largest cost is the high priced engineering you have side stepped most of it.

GCNRevenger · 2006-04-28 06:23:58

Why don't they buy the plans for discontinued rockets? Simple, Lockheed and Boeing wouldn't sell them for a price that any small-time outfit could afford.

publiusr · 2006-04-28 14:23:22

I wonder if Musk (if he could get some others to help) could obtain plans for the Saturn IB. It used a cluster of Redstones of about the same size as the current Falson, and would actually be tiny compared to the Stick and carry about as much. But the rumor has it he is already rolling metal on Falcoln V/IX.

As for the article--no...I didn't write it. But I agree with it 99%.

SpaceNut · 2006-05-03 22:14:59

Then again you have the Nasa bashers out there writing...

NASA Announces Plan To Launch $700 Million Into Space

Have never heard of the Denarius IV spacecraft or of its unmanned monetary-ejection program to study the effect of a hard-vacuum, zero-gravity environment on $50 and $100 bills.

flashgordon · 2006-05-04 10:01:31

maybe I was right all along, we need to make a scientific culture - bare minimum, a science cultured corporation, if not a whole country; this is the only way to get space colonization funded.

publiusr · 2006-05-04 14:34:01

Then again you have the Nasa bashers out there writing...
NASA Announces Plan To Launch $700 Million Into Space
Have never heard of the Denarius IV spacecraft or of its unmanned monetary-ejection program to study the effect of a hard-vacuum, zero-gravity environment on $50 and $100 bills.

Whoever wrote that deserves a Buzz Aldrin punch to the jaw.

cIclops · 2006-05-04 14:37:56

Have never heard of the Denarius IV spacecraft or of its unmanned monetary-ejection program to study the effect of a hard-vacuum, zero-gravity environment on $50 and $100 bills.

It was a follow on program to the successful use of $10 bills as propellant additives for the STS propulsion system.

Martian Republic · 2006-05-04 17:58:56

maybe I was right all along, we need to make a scientific culture - bare minimum, a science cultured corporation, if not a whole country; this is the only way to get space colonization funded.

That wouldn't work either. A corporation that deal's only in a science culture, can't make money so it would go out of business. Any such science culture would have to be government funded so it wouldn't have to make money. Then it might be possible to have something like that.

Larry,

flashgordon · 2006-05-05 11:31:20

wow, did I say the earth is round? That space and time are flexible?

Austin Stanley · 2006-05-05 17:57:08

maybe I was right all along, we need to make a scientific culture - bare minimum, a science cultured corporation, if not a whole country; this is the only way to get space colonization funded.
That wouldn't work either. A corporation that deal's only in a science culture, can't make money so it would go out of business. Any such science culture would have to be government funded so it wouldn't have to make money. Then it might be possible to have something like that.
Larry,

Not true, there a still a number of coporations in America with strong intrest in plain old research and development, some of it quite basic. Obviously both the pharmisutical industry (Pfizer, Merc, ect..) and the Chemical industry (Dupont, 3M, ect..) maintain very strong research base. They are not alone though, a number of techology companies (if not most) still maintain large research departments, especial IBM, but those of Intel, Texas Instruments, Sony, and Toshiba should not be discounted. In fact, you would be supprised at the number of companies that employ signifigant research departments, all the major oil companies do, as do a number of the eletric companies for example.

Where flashgorden is espeicaly right is that the large succesfull aerospace companies do not tend to spend as much money on R&D, especialy for the space part of aerospace. They have research departments to be sure, but not a research oriented culture like you see in parts of IBM or 3M, for example. Our space-program could certianly use a company that was so focused. There is a market for fresh, well devloped ideas and concepts, like the Trans-hab for example. Hopefull Boeing and the like will eventualy relise that. The problem, however, is that aerospace research tends to be very expensive, and not as profitable as other types.

As for what you specifical recomend, a primarily goverment funded private research coporation, or haven't you heard of the JPL (Jet Propulsion Labratories). They do good work, but their reliance upon the goverment for funding is a weakness in many senses. They certianly don't have the resources that a company like Boeing could turn to research if they wanted.

I guess in the end what I am trying to say is that yes, there is quite a lot of coporate funded science research. However not so much in the aerospace field (especialy on the space side). I think we could all agree that more aerospace research (or whatever type) is certianly needed.

SpaceNut · 2006-05-05 21:06:53

Here is what is being said by an altern-xer in Rutan Takes Aim at NASA's CEV Plans, Likens it to 'Archeology'

Rutan Faults NASA on Apollo-Style Capsule

Maverick aerospace designer Burt Rutan on Thursday criticized NASA's decision to use an Apollo-style capsule to return to the moon, saying it "doesn't make any sense" to build a new generation of space vehicles using old technology.

If that is all there is Burt.., get over it an build something for Nasa to show that you can do it...

GCNRevenger · 2006-05-05 21:41:13

"Doesn't make any sense"

Russia worship (oh mighty Soyuz, fell those idiots at NASA, etc etc), good NASA-bash sound bite for the media (they hate NASA), and ignorance of real spacecraft design (Burt wouldn't know anything about that).

"Rutan said there needs to be a technological breakthrough in spacecraft design that would make it affordable and safe to send humans anywhere in the solar system. But he said he doesn't know what that breakthrough will be."

Sorry Burt, but until somebody comes up with stable monoatomic hydrogen or cycloozone or something, no breakthrough is going to happen. No design cleverness or "work smarter not harder" will fix the cold, hard numbers set down by Tiokovski and Newton.

Martian Republic · 2006-05-06 12:28:46

maybe I was right all along, we need to make a scientific culture - bare minimum, a science cultured corporation, if not a whole country; this is the only way to get space colonization funded.
That wouldn't work either. A corporation that deal's only in a science culture, can't make money so it would go out of business. Any such science culture would have to be government funded so it wouldn't have to make money. Then it might be possible to have something like that.
Larry,
Not true, there a still a number of coporations in America with strong intrest in plain old research and development, some of it quite basic. Obviously both the pharmisutical industry (Pfizer, Merc, ect..) and the Chemical industry (Dupont, 3M, ect..) maintain very strong research base. They are not alone though, a number of techology companies (if not most) still maintain large research departments, especial IBM, but those of Intel, Texas Instruments, Sony, and Toshiba should not be discounted. In fact, you would be supprised at the number of companies that employ signifigant research departments, all the major oil companies do, as do a number of the eletric companies for example.
Where flashgorden is espeicaly right is that the large succesfull aerospace companies do not tend to spend as much money on R&D, especialy for the space part of aerospace. They have research departments to be sure, but not a research oriented culture like you see in parts of IBM or 3M, for example. Our space-program could certianly use a company that was so focused. There is a market for fresh, well devloped ideas and concepts, like the Trans-hab for example. Hopefull Boeing and the like will eventualy relise that. The problem, however, is that aerospace research tends to be very expensive, and not as profitable as other types.
As for what you specifical recomend, a primarily goverment funded private research coporation, or haven't you heard of the JPL (Jet Propulsion Labratories). They do good work, but their reliance upon the goverment for funding is a weakness in many senses. They certianly don't have the resources that a company like Boeing could turn to research if they wanted.
I guess in the end what I am trying to say is that yes, there is quite a lot of coporate funded science research. However not so much in the aerospace field (especialy on the space side). I think we could all agree that more aerospace research (or whatever type) is certianly needed.

Private Industries can do spot technology development for a pacific purpose or market that there tying to hit. There they can calculate a rough idea of what it might cost to develop new technologies and what those pay backs might be if they can develop those technologies. Even then, not everything that they developed was 100% there money. Some of that stuff they developed was paid for by government for something that they wanted developed, so the government did partial payment for development of some of that technology. Texas Instruments is a very high military supplier of new electronic technologies, which will sometimes fund there development of new technologies. But, even assuming that we discount things like that, Private Industries still can't fund an open end development of new technologies with no particular use or benefit to the company do it on a multiple bases with virtually unlimited cost for a virtually unlimited time frame. Which is exactly what you would have to do if you wanted colonize some place in space. Compare John F. Kennedy NASA Moon mission project and compare that to anything that the Private Sector ever has done or could possibly do in a fifty year span if they didn't have government breaking the trail for them. You still don't see private enterprise going to the moon even thirty years after NASA did it and showed that it could done and the reason that they don't do it is because it too for private enterprise to go it alone. So they don't do it.

No, I stand by my original statement, Private Enterprise or companies can't develop that technology.

Larry,

GCNRevenger · 2006-05-06 12:57:15

Say, didn't Burt at T/Space propose a rocket based loosely off an overgrown sounding rocket, an engine copied from the V-2 except burning Methane, and a manned capsule modeld on the antique Corona spy sat film return capsule? What was that about "new technology" again?

SpaceNut · 2006-05-06 19:20:03

Spaceship guru roasts his rivals

"I believe that program, as taxpayer-funded research, makes absolutely no sense," he said. "And the reason I believe that is that they're forcing the program to be done with technology that we already know works, and are not creating an environment where it is possible to make a breakthrough."

I think you are right this time GCNRevenger about Burt being a lot off the mark.

He should have said now that we know we can do it why not make it cheaper so that more can be done with it for the funding that we now have.

GCNRevenger · 2006-05-06 20:16:21

How about "faux space guru whines that NASA won't pour buckets of money into his pet wannabe rocket outfit"

Look, unless Burt has some magical rocket fuel or uber-light fuel tank material, this babbling about "breakthrough technology" is just useless chatter.

The T/Space solution, just like all the other AltSpace outfits, is of course to break the mission down into little chunks their puny rockets can accomodate. This is a bad idea if for no other reason then reliability and the time required to send a payload/etc to the Moon. NASA needs a plan that works, and their plan is unproven and risky at best.

Austin Stanley · 2006-05-06 23:02:16

Not true, there a still a number of coporations in America with strong intrest in plain old research and development, some of it quite basic. Obviously both the pharmisutical industry (Pfizer, Merc, ect..) and the Chemical industry (Dupont, 3M, ect..) maintain very strong research base. They are not alone though, a number of techology companies (if not most) still maintain large research departments, especial IBM, but those of Intel, Texas Instruments, Sony, and Toshiba should not be discounted. In fact, you would be supprised at the number of companies that employ signifigant research departments, all the major oil companies do, as do a number of the eletric companies for example.
Where flashgorden is espeicaly right is that the large succesfull aerospace companies do not tend to spend as much money on R&D, especialy for the space part of aerospace. They have research departments to be sure, but not a research oriented culture like you see in parts of IBM or 3M, for example. Our space-program could certianly use a company that was so focused. There is a market for fresh, well devloped ideas and concepts, like the Trans-hab for example. Hopefull Boeing and the like will eventualy relise that. The problem, however, is that aerospace research tends to be very expensive, and not as profitable as other types.
As for what you specifical recomend, a primarily goverment funded private research coporation, or haven't you heard of the JPL (Jet Propulsion Labratories). They do good work, but their reliance upon the goverment for funding is a weakness in many senses. They certianly don't have the resources that a company like Boeing could turn to research if they wanted.
I guess in the end what I am trying to say is that yes, there is quite a lot of coporate funded science research. However not so much in the aerospace field (especialy on the space side). I think we could all agree that more aerospace research (or whatever type) is certianly needed.
Private Industries can do spot technology development for a pacific purpose or market that there tying to hit. There they can calculate a rough idea of what it might cost to develop new technologies and what those pay backs might be if they can develop those technologies. Even then, not everything that they developed was 100% there money. Some of that stuff they developed was paid for by government for something that they wanted developed, so the government did partial payment for development of some of that technology. Texas Instruments is a very high military supplier of new electronic technologies, which will sometimes fund there development of new technologies. But, even assuming that we discount things like that, Private Industries still can't fund an open end development of new technologies with no particular use or benefit to the company do it on a multiple bases with virtually unlimited cost for a virtually unlimited time frame. Which is exactly what you would have to do if you wanted colonize some place in space. Compare John F. Kennedy NASA Moon mission project and compare that to anything that the Private Sector ever has done or could possibly do in a fifty year span if they didn't have government breaking the trail for them. You still don't see private enterprise going to the moon even thirty years after NASA did it and showed that it could done and the reason that they don't do it is because it too for private enterprise to go it alone. So they don't do it.
No, I stand by my original statement, Private Enterprise or companies can't develop that technology.
Larry,

I agree with you in part. The aerospace industry does face more challanges in doing private R&D then many other industries do. Primarily of course since the goverment is the primary/solitary customer for most of the R&D products it makes sense for coporations to try and get the goverment to fund any research they do on these projects. However, as the number of private customers for aerospace technology continues to rise, these sorts of R&D projects will have more potential profit. For example if Lockheed Martin was to develope a new highly efficent ion type station keeping drive they might find a signifigant private and goverment satilite market to sell it to.

Indeed I think private R&D reasearch of this type probably allready occurs quite a bit. We just aren't as aware of it as better gyroscopes, batteries, antenas or whatever are not as sexy as new launch systems. But these are the programs it makes the most sense to spend private R&D money on. The costs (and thus the risk) are lower, and the products often have a wider market.

But I do agree with you that I do not think we will be seeing any of the major aerospace companies sinking big bucks into major reasearch projects like SSTO spacecraft, NTR engines, or whatever. At least not without a goverment contract to do it. They may have the funds, but they are unwilling to take the risk to do so.

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Re: Alt.space debacle (GCNRevenger 's gonna love this)

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