Kistling a Different Tune: Commercial Space in an Alternate Key

So, I wanted to give an update on where both of the COTS competitors stand a year (nominally) out from flight--Kistler actually managing to make hardware progress for the first time since about 1999, and SpaceX as something much less than the juggernaut we know them as today. (It's worth noting that the third launch of Falcon 1 mentioned as upcoming in this post took another six months to occur, and ended in yet another heart-breaking failure.)

From here, there's only one or two other major story beats between now and flight, but I can dig into some of the events to be covered in more detail if people want to see more of the day-by-day (or at least month-by-month) of flight preparations. Are people in just jumping along towards that with a few bigger posts of less total detail, or covering this period of slow butterflies in more detail and more short posts?
 
And here we have the main difference between the Arnie Holmes of the mutiverses and the Chris Bergins (Arnie makes more mistakes than Chris):

Kistler K-1 vehicle fleet of three Launch Assist Platforms (LAPs) and two Orbital Vehicles (OVs)

The shorter turn-around times for the LAPs mean that you only need two to support three OVs.
 
. Mr. Musk has described this as a capability lost since the last Apollo launch in 1976, however, a similar engine-out ability has been demonstrated aboard the Space Shuttle in Challenger’s STS-51-F mission, which lost its center engine at T+3:31 into the mission but was able to continue on to a successful mission (though a lower-than-planned orbit) thanks to quick work by flight controllers in Houston, particularly Booster Systems Engineer Jenny M. Howard [1].
The footnote should be much earlier, like after '1979'

Aside from that minor quibble, great update.
 
Great so far. As for writing style, I prefer skips ahead to major divergences instead of chapters on the workflow that got them to that point. Otherwise, really fun and cool!
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Is this dead? What happened E of Pi? I'm really interested to see where this goes.
It kind of got eaten by my move and some other real life stuff, and since it wasn't getting a lot of response I hadn't worked around to reviving it yet. Is anyone else interested?
 
I only just noticed this.

It's a bit tricky to follow in places, but I think I got the jist of it. Krisler managing to make it if I'm reading this right, should be interesting.

IIRC, until the SpaceX Merlin engines were developed (or got uprated), the NK-33 held the title of greatest TW Ratio of 136/7:1, and were some seriously fantastic rocket engines that sadly never got to see proper use. :frown:

This I'll be keeping an eye out on.
 
I'm also interested. It'll be interesting to see how the presence of Kistler on the launch market will change the SpaceX reusable vehicle development timeline. It really depends on how much of the market Kistler will end up taking from SpaceX - their prices are going to be higher before they work reusability out, just because of where they're sourcing their engines from. Also, if they don't manage to get that pad at the Cape (or that site in Nevada, I suppose) they're going to have a hard time servicing the geostationary launch market in competition with SpaceX. After a certain point a cheaper launch isn't worth it if it means burning precious maneuvering fuel (and reducing satellite lifetime as a result) because of a higher inclination launch.

I'm also wondering how successful Kistler's RLV program will be. It took SpaceX 5 years to get a landing, and 3 more for a truly re-usable first stage. If Kistler is designing for reusability from the get-go they might be more successful, but their up-front R&D costs are going to be higher and their development time is going to be longer, giving SpaceX more time to conduct their own research and eat up the segment of the launch market Kistler might otherwise be serving. IOTL, SpaceX funded its reusability research by selling F9 flights and by using flights for a paying customer as test flights after stage separation. If Kistler chooses to try and fully develop reusability before flying, they're going to be losing money for a long time.

Also... is the NK-33 rated for in-flight restart? I feel like Kistler are setting themselves up for engine reliability issues.
 
Also, if they don't manage to get that pad at the Cape (or that site in Nevada, I suppose) they're going to have a hard time servicing the geostationary launch market in competition with SpaceX. After a certain point a cheaper launch isn't worth it if it means burning precious maneuvering fuel (and reducing satellite lifetime as a result) because of a higher inclination launch.
The K-1 can't touch the GEO market anyway; it was only supposed to be able to lift maybe 5 tonnes to LEO on a good day, which isn't big enough to fit a modern GEO satellite and an upper stage to send it to GTO. It's more of a competitor to the Falcon 1, Delta II, that sort of thing than to the Falcon 9. It might nab the Iridium NEXT contract (it was pretty much designed to launch Iridium birds), but it's not going to be fighting with Falcon 9 otherwise.
 
The K-1 can't touch the GEO market anyway; it was only supposed to be able to lift maybe 5 tonnes to LEO on a good day, which isn't big enough to fit a modern GEO satellite and an upper stage to send it to GTO. It's more of a competitor to the Falcon 1, Delta II, that sort of thing than to the Falcon 9. It might nab the Iridium NEXT contract (it was pretty much designed to launch Iridium birds), but it's not going to be fighting with Falcon 9 otherwise.
To elaborate specifically, the Kistler Payload Planner's Guides call for the use of an expendable upper stage (either something that looks and masses suspiciously like a STAR-48 or a custom liquid biprop unit) to place payloads into GTO. When evaluating the given numbers and diagram, they expected to be able to place a Hughes HS 376, the most common commercial payload the space shuttle lifted, onto a GTO trajectory. Some examples of this satellite bus were ordered as late as 2000, which justifies inclusion in documents which had early versions dating to the late 1990s.
 
To elaborate specifically, the Kistler Payload Planner's Guides call for the use of an expendable upper stage (either something that looks and masses suspiciously like a STAR-48 or a custom liquid biprop unit) to place payloads into GTO. When evaluating the given numbers and diagram, they expected to be able to place a Hughes HS 376, the most common commercial payload the space shuttle lifted, onto a GTO trajectory. Some examples of this satellite bus were ordered as late as 2000, which justifies inclusion in documents which had early versions dating to the late 1990s.
Hmm... Given a cheap, but weight limited ride to LEO, could we see an earlier use of all electric propulsion sats?
 
Hmm... Given a cheap, but weight limited ride to LEO, could we see an earlier use of all electric propulsion sats?
Not really. Even getting to GTO from LEO requires a fair bit of energy, and pushing there on electric drives is going to take months. Furthermore, the stock K-1 vehicle is not only mass limited, but significantly volume limited - remember there is no payload fairing as we think of it for SpaceX or ULA, but instead a payload bay that opens on one end as you can see here:
Kistler_K-1_Flight_Profile.gif


The nose cap, which is also your heat shield swings out of the way, and the payload is ejected forward. The nose then swings back in, and the vehicle reenters nose first.
 
I'm also interested. It'll be interesting to see how the presence of Kistler on the launch market will change the SpaceX reusable vehicle development timeline. It really depends on how much of the market Kistler will end up taking from SpaceX - their prices are going to be higher before they work reusability out, just because of where they're sourcing their engines from. Also, if they don't manage to get that pad at the Cape (or that site in Nevada, I suppose) they're going to have a hard time servicing the geostationary launch market in competition with SpaceX. After a certain point a cheaper launch isn't worth it if it means burning precious maneuvering fuel (and reducing satellite lifetime as a result) because of a higher inclination launch.

I'm thinking it already had 'butterfly's' since OTL SpaceX was planning the Falcon-5, not 9 for the LEO contracts. It was only after they were into it and the first couple of Falcon-1 failures they discussed upgrading from the 5 to the 9. The Falcon-5 had about the same payload as the K1 but had more growth options. They switched to the 9 when it became obvious that not only was it about as difficult to do as the 5 but it would have MUCH greater growth options available to it.

I'm also wondering how successful Kistler's RLV program will be. It took SpaceX 5 years to get a landing, and 3 more for a truly re-usable first stage. If Kistler is designing for reusability from the get-go they might be more successful, but their up-front R&D costs are going to be higher and their development time is going to be longer, giving SpaceX more time to conduct their own research and eat up the segment of the launch market Kistler might otherwise be serving. IOTL, SpaceX funded its reusability research by selling F9 flights and by using flights for a paying customer as test flights after stage separation. If Kistler chooses to try and fully develop reusability before flying, they're going to be losing money for a long time.

Actually due to being fully reusable from the start the K1 was expected to cost more up-front initially but far less down the line. The key issue was Kistler had a very conservative (and standard) research, design and operations plan which meant it was always going to cost nearer a 'normal' launch vehicle whether it was reusable or not. Even being an expendable launcher SpaceX had a more streamlined and cost-effective operation so it was going to cost less unless Musk decides to charge way more for services. And keep in mind that at this point Musk fully assumes that 're-usability' is going to mean parachutes and ocean recovery NOT fly-back and powered landing. (In fact he got the boost-back idea from Kistler who got it from early NASA studies so...)

Kistlers biggest problem is they were very much a "NASA-and-large-Aerospace-contractor-legacy" company that didn't even really try to cut manufacturing and operations costs OTHER than assuming re-usability would be where the majority of savings came from. Kistler is very much a LEO design as it was proposed and designed at a time when LEO satellite constellations were supposed to be THE next big thing in space. Therefore the design limitations only become limitations when you ask it to do things beyond its initial design parameters. (Such as going to GTO)

Also... is the NK-33 rated for in-flight restart? I feel like Kistler are setting themselves up for engine reliability issues.

I believe it was actually and Russian certification and test data showing it could. I have not doubt they will encounter engine reliability issues and have to deal with them :)

Randy
 
Crickets...
ARN Forums: Other American Vehicles: Rocketplane Kistler Updates/Discussion: Page ....(6)...

PressToLaunch (06/15/08) said:
So...quiet around here? Has anyone heard anything new? Are they starting assembly yet? Falcon’s been doing multiple engine firings, and I haven’t heard a peep out of Kistler. Weren’t they supposed to have their funding announcement, too?
Downton (06/17/08) said:
There’s some pictures up on Stage Two, looks like they’re finally starting to put things together at Michoud. On money...I hadn’t heard anything.
Excelsior99 (06/18/08) said:
They’re supposed to have some major event happening here at Michoud next week relating to that, their team have had to stop work to prepare for it. Probably announcing they’re going bankrupt given their record to date, not anything less than what I’d expect.
 
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