well if the suits smell like sweatty intensely used snowboots, anything would improve the smell.
well if the suits smell like sweatty intensely used snowboots, anything would improve the smell.
Just fantastic
Congrats to Nixon on what has to be one of the best updates in this fine timeline.
Nice to see Winchell made into an Alt-History star - at least until we can get him to the Moon in person.
Congrats to Nixon on what has to be one of the best updates in this fine timeline.
Nice to see Winchell made into an Alt-History star - at least until we can get him to the Moon in person.
Good point. I've always kind of wished that the sense of smell came up more in real world space stories. What does an Apollo capsule smell like by the time they return from the Moon? I understand Moon dust smells like fireworks. What does a spacesuit smell like? Imagine having water filling our suit pre-soaked in diaper… Eeewww! Space is hard.
Hi guys,
Glad you enjoyed the post! It was a lot of fun to write, and I'd really like to thank e of pi and Workable Goblin for allowing me to contribute to the timeline. ETS is what got me reading this forum, and I found it via Atomic Rockets, so it was nice to be able to include a link there too!
So, for this week's illustration...
Glad you enjoyed the post! It was a lot of fun to write, and I'd really like to thank e of pi and Workable Goblin for allowing me to contribute to the timeline. ETS is what got me reading this forum, and I found it via Atomic Rockets, so it was nice to be able to include a link there too!
So, for this week's illustration...
I assume that the ALES suits dock to the end of the entrance airlock, giving the astronauts a place to hang out while they decompress and lose nitrogen in preparation for a low pressure pure oxygen suit. Or are the suits pressurized with an oxy-nitro mix at full sea level pressure? Can you do that with a rigid suit?
Yes, you can. It is in fact one of the main advantages of a rigid suit, and comes about because a rigid suit is by definition constant-volume so that movement won't cause local pressure changes and the "starfish effect". You wouldn't actually use sea-level pressure air, because you don't need to for zero-prebreathe EVAs and it makes the engineering challenges more difficult, but you could still get away with more pressure than in a flexible suit.
Visually, I based the ALES on the Mk.III spacesuit, which was designed for zero-prebreathing, though I don't think it included a suitlock interface.
Incidentally, the ALES made a little early cameo appearance in the illustration for Part-IV Post#14. I was wondering if anyone had spotted it
As for exactly where on the Orion hab the suitlocks are located... well, that's something I hope to answer before too long
Incidentally, the ALES made a little early cameo appearance in the illustration for Part-IV Post#14. I was wondering if anyone had spotted it
As for exactly where on the Orion hab the suitlocks are located... well, that's something I hope to answer before too long
Sorry, I forgot to reply to this earlier. We discussed this whilst preparing the post, but in the end decided to leave it ambiguous. Given China's rise, I suspect Beijing was going to be a front runner for the Games around that time, but with almost four decades of butterflies, plus the arcane processes involved in assigning Games, it could be just about anywhere. As long as they're not held in some country the US decides to boycott, I think the post works as written.
Part IV, Post 18: The Planetary Science Community Strikes Back
Hello everyone! Sorry about this being up a bit late tonight, but it's finally that time again. Last week, we were very pleased to bring you Nixonshead's guest post about the crew of the first human outpost on the lunar surface. However, this week, we're turning the attention to the fight on behalf of the US unmanned program in 2005, when the lack of a new Pioneer selection made it seem like the end...
Eyes Turned Skywards, Part IV: Post #18
Although planetary scientists had been moved to depression and anger by NASA’s apparent abandonment of the Pioneer Program at the beginning of 2006, the fact that most were college faculty or students beholden to teaching and class schedules meant that it was not until early June that a group of several dozen of the field’s most eminent scientists were able to heeding the call of Cornell’s chair of astronomy, Jay Lawrence, and descend on Ithaca, New York, for an informal meeting on the future of the field. Although the over four months that had passed since his invitation had allowed tempers and passions to cool, they had also had the effect of allowing the invitees, all of whom had strong reputations for honesty, fair dealing, and scientific rigor, to begin hashing out the beginnings of a plan even before the meeting itself. As expected, all agreed that planetary science deserved better than what it had gotten, but, at least at the beginning of this process, they were unable to agree on much else. Everything from scientific priorities to destinations to individual missions was up in the air. Flurries of emails sallied forth from departments around the country to do battle, attempting to make the case that what project their writers favored was, in fact, the best path forwards for American planetary science.
Fortunately, Lawrence and his friend and co-conspirator Jonathan Mills, a senior faculty member within Columbia University’s planetary science group, were able to soothe tempers and keep the focus of the invitees firmly on the external challenges faced by planetary science, without adding internal conflict to the agenda. While it might seem of vital importance to decide whether to venture towards the ice giants, Venus, Mars, or Jupiter, they emphasized that to an outsider--a Congressional representative, say, or a member of the press--such disputes would seem arcane and technical, and reduce their willingness to support any planetary program. Matters were no doubt simplified by the fact that the invitees had specifically been chosen based on their reputation for supporting the best missions, not just the best for them, and perhaps assisted by Lawrence’s constant references to astronomers, who had been far more successful in obtaining a steady, active space program than planetary scientists despite facing similar questions of utility and cost.
By the time the entire group was sitting down face-to-face in a hired conference room in Ithaca (pointedly not Cornell, to avoid the appearance of university support), the broad outlines of what would become known as the “Cornell Plan” had already been laid. Something of a masterpiece at being all things to all people, the Cornell Plan eschewed specific mission details in favor of outlining a mission-planning process, allowing any planetary scientist to imagine his or her preferred missions getting the nod, and any politician to imagine steady, predictable, and low budgets. Besides finalizing the slim booklet they would publish on the plan, the meeting focused on developing the public-relations operation they would use to sell it, allowing them to develop a strategy for advocacy over a week of dense discussions. While they could publish statements all they wanted, they were, in the end, asking for billions of dollars of money from the government of the United States, and would need to sell the planetary exploration program, not merely politely request that it be expanded. The first salvo in the public relations offensive they were about to embark on was prepared before they left Ithaca, in the form of an open letter they had sent to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Houston Chronicle, and several other national or particularly space-interested newspapers.
Drafted largely by Lawrence and Mills, the letter began by acknowledging that the astronauts of the Artemis missions had greatly advanced the state of the art of lunar science, but then quickly pivoted to point out
As with the Cornell Plan (which the letter was an even further simplified version of), however, Lawrence and Mills knew that one letter, even if it was widely published, would not suddenly spur Congress to allocate hundreds of millions more dollars for planetary exploration. For their second salvo, therefore, they turned towards a more potent lever by visiting the Washington offices of the National Space Organization. While the Organization’s break-up with Carl Sagan in the late 1980s had not been entirely amicable, it still retained substantial imprints from his directorship, particularly a (theoretically) strong commitment towards promoting robotic spaceflight. More importantly, it also had the largest membership of any space advocacy organization, with over 50,000 dues-paying members--less than half its peak in the early 1980s, but still a potentially formidable force if mobilized properly. By forcefully arguing the value of the planetary exploration program to space exploration and development more generally, they were able to persuade the Organization’s leadership to back their campaign to revive it. Soon enough, emails began landing in the inboxes of the Organization’s membership, urging them to call or write their Congressional membership. Many did, and though the Organization’s membership was too scattered to make a dent in the Congressional mail system, it certainly had effects on members from more space-interested districts like those containing NASA centers.
To wrap up their public relations offensive, the scientists turned at last towards their main target, Congress itself. As ever, the main enemy space advocates had to confront was indifference, not outright dislike. Most members of Congress, as with most Americans, liked robotic explorers when they turned up on the news; they appreciated the images sent home by probes such as Galileo or Cassini, or the drama which had surrounded the landing of the Mars Traverse Rovers and the inability to free the trapped “Liberty” rover. They even wondered at the scientific results from these spacecraft. And they felt that the United States should continue doing such things, as much out of a vague sense of wanting to push the frontier as anything else. What they did not think about, or perhaps know about in some cases, was what was being spent on those spacecraft, nor what was needed to keep the American planetary exploration program, nor, even, where that money was being spent. Most members of Congress, after all, did not have NASA field centers in their districts, and even with NASA’s mastery of contract distribution to all corners of the nation, few of them would obviously be affected by a further contraction of the planetary science program.
Therefore, the goal of the scientists was, primarily, to educate Congress, to make them aware of what the new budget meant and what planetary science meant for their districts, in both financial and non-financial senses. Many recruited their graduate students, staff, colleagues, and contractors to call, mail, or email their local Congressional representative to explain the amount of money that NASA’s programs brought to their district, often sums in the millions of dollars, and how many people they employed, both directly and indirectly, while also pointing out that the current planetary science program and its great successes had only been created by investments in the 1980s and 1990s, which were now on the verge of drying up. Others reached out to their local communities, whether via the media or through appearances at museums, planetariums, or simple community events, spreading knowledge about the planets and about how more funding was needed to continue the series of planetary probes that had been running since the 1970s, especially to new, exciting destinations like the undersea oceans of Europa or Enceladus, or to old destinations that had shown signs of needing a second look, like the curiously methanated plains of Mars.
All of these measures, naturally, had more influence in districts where the planetary science program and space exploration more generally were already important. In Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Orlando, and Baltimore, politicians were already primed to consider space exploration an important issue worthy of action. Many of the areas where the academic programs were largest, however, had never thought of themselves as having much direct connection to the space program, something these scientists were beginning to disprove. A more vigorous planetary science program, their representatives were learning, could bring federal dollars to their area--always an attraction--and, moreover, do so without any appearance of logrolling, favors trading, or, in short, pork at all, if they adopted the Cornell Plan’s recommendations. Thus, these representatives slowly began moving to investigate planetary exploration as a subject for Congressional action, as the Cornell Plan’s authors were only too happy to help them do. Their most immediate goal was to ensure that the Pioneer Program, at least, continued, something that could be done easily enough and which promised quick and easy action. As summer began to draw to a close, a series of hearings on the issue were begun on Capitol Hill to investigate just why NASA had chosen to stop the apparently successful Pioneer program.
The entire affair, it turned out several months later, had ultimately boiled down to apathy compounded with poor communication by NASA administration. The Woods budget had trimmed funding for the planetary science program, including the Pioneer budget line, something no one in Congress had caught, and Headquarters staff had determined that a Pioneer selection that fiscal year would not be feasible. However, a slight delay, to the next fiscal year, could permit work to carry on almost as usual, so they had decided to push back the selection announcement until September. Unfortunately, they had also decided to remain quiet until the new selection announcement could be made instead of mentioning this fact, exploiting ambiguities in the rules set up for the Pioneer program to avoid embarrassment for the agency and the President. Of course, this had now backfired, and the offending staff were reassigned or dismissed, while Congress ordered the agency to make a selection as soon as possible. Even before they did so, pro-space representatives had managed to insert increased Pioneer funding into the FY 2008 budget and added language requiring the agency to make a selection every other year, “beginning with the next normal selection in FY 2010.”
While Congress was investigating the Pioneer program, the scientists who had pushed it into doing so in the first place were still working, this time to convince Congress to institute a larger overhaul of how NASA selected planetary science missions, especially ones beyond the capacity of the Pioneer program. After all, as they had been saying from the beginning, there were plenty of missions that were simply beyond the budget and schedule guidelines of Pioneer, but at the same time the haphazard, arbitrary, and politically-driven mission selection process that had operated since the 1960s had clearly fallen apart in the face of greater budgetary challenges and diminishing top-level attention. While simply copying the Pioneer process was untenable due to the sheer expense of Cornerstone-class planetary science missions, a more science-driven approach, similar to the Pioneer process, or to project selection processes in many other fields of science, such as astronomy, nuclear physics, or particle physics, was greatly tempting. A similar planetary science process would separate the debate about which missions were most scientifically viable from the question of which missions would be launched. At the same time, doing so would provide Congress with a tool to check any wasteful spending, ensuring that NASA would always be carrying out the most scientifically valuable missions instead of the best at, say, lining the pockets of the President’s friends. Although it took longer than rectifying the Pioneer situation, this, too, became enshrined in law in early 2008. After another year of organizing, the newly establish Planetary Science Prioritization Panel, or PSP^2, began meeting in early 2009 to begin drawing up an outline of the next decade of American planetary science missions, eager to return NASA to the forefront of planetary exploration.
Eyes Turned Skywards, Part IV: Post #18
Although planetary scientists had been moved to depression and anger by NASA’s apparent abandonment of the Pioneer Program at the beginning of 2006, the fact that most were college faculty or students beholden to teaching and class schedules meant that it was not until early June that a group of several dozen of the field’s most eminent scientists were able to heeding the call of Cornell’s chair of astronomy, Jay Lawrence, and descend on Ithaca, New York, for an informal meeting on the future of the field. Although the over four months that had passed since his invitation had allowed tempers and passions to cool, they had also had the effect of allowing the invitees, all of whom had strong reputations for honesty, fair dealing, and scientific rigor, to begin hashing out the beginnings of a plan even before the meeting itself. As expected, all agreed that planetary science deserved better than what it had gotten, but, at least at the beginning of this process, they were unable to agree on much else. Everything from scientific priorities to destinations to individual missions was up in the air. Flurries of emails sallied forth from departments around the country to do battle, attempting to make the case that what project their writers favored was, in fact, the best path forwards for American planetary science.
Fortunately, Lawrence and his friend and co-conspirator Jonathan Mills, a senior faculty member within Columbia University’s planetary science group, were able to soothe tempers and keep the focus of the invitees firmly on the external challenges faced by planetary science, without adding internal conflict to the agenda. While it might seem of vital importance to decide whether to venture towards the ice giants, Venus, Mars, or Jupiter, they emphasized that to an outsider--a Congressional representative, say, or a member of the press--such disputes would seem arcane and technical, and reduce their willingness to support any planetary program. Matters were no doubt simplified by the fact that the invitees had specifically been chosen based on their reputation for supporting the best missions, not just the best for them, and perhaps assisted by Lawrence’s constant references to astronomers, who had been far more successful in obtaining a steady, active space program than planetary scientists despite facing similar questions of utility and cost.
By the time the entire group was sitting down face-to-face in a hired conference room in Ithaca (pointedly not Cornell, to avoid the appearance of university support), the broad outlines of what would become known as the “Cornell Plan” had already been laid. Something of a masterpiece at being all things to all people, the Cornell Plan eschewed specific mission details in favor of outlining a mission-planning process, allowing any planetary scientist to imagine his or her preferred missions getting the nod, and any politician to imagine steady, predictable, and low budgets. Besides finalizing the slim booklet they would publish on the plan, the meeting focused on developing the public-relations operation they would use to sell it, allowing them to develop a strategy for advocacy over a week of dense discussions. While they could publish statements all they wanted, they were, in the end, asking for billions of dollars of money from the government of the United States, and would need to sell the planetary exploration program, not merely politely request that it be expanded. The first salvo in the public relations offensive they were about to embark on was prepared before they left Ithaca, in the form of an open letter they had sent to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Houston Chronicle, and several other national or particularly space-interested newspapers.
Drafted largely by Lawrence and Mills, the letter began by acknowledging that the astronauts of the Artemis missions had greatly advanced the state of the art of lunar science, but then quickly pivoted to point out
no astronaut will step out of a capsule to stir the sands of Venus, nor dare Jupiter’s might to swim Europa’ seas, not in this century. To search out, explore, and discover these other places, these realms beyond human touch, we must send machines, robots, in our stead, to brave the dangers we cannot risk.
The letter then continued with a lengthy justification of the value of robotic explorers and planetary exploration in general, both through practical examples such as Venus’ role in climate change research on Earth and through more soaring rhetoric claiming a need and desire to explore the solar system. However, it noted, aside from the Pioneer program and Artemis missions, there had not been a single major planetary probe approved for development in the nearly twenty years since Cassini. Worse, with the recent cancellation of the 2006 Pioneer selection it appeared that far from continuing this highly successful scientific program the Administration was on the verge of completely abandoning robotic space exploration, leaving it to Europe, Japan, and other nations to carry human eyes and ears beyond the orbit of the Moon. Only action now, it concluded, could hope to maintain America’s place at the forefront of planetary exploration.As with the Cornell Plan (which the letter was an even further simplified version of), however, Lawrence and Mills knew that one letter, even if it was widely published, would not suddenly spur Congress to allocate hundreds of millions more dollars for planetary exploration. For their second salvo, therefore, they turned towards a more potent lever by visiting the Washington offices of the National Space Organization. While the Organization’s break-up with Carl Sagan in the late 1980s had not been entirely amicable, it still retained substantial imprints from his directorship, particularly a (theoretically) strong commitment towards promoting robotic spaceflight. More importantly, it also had the largest membership of any space advocacy organization, with over 50,000 dues-paying members--less than half its peak in the early 1980s, but still a potentially formidable force if mobilized properly. By forcefully arguing the value of the planetary exploration program to space exploration and development more generally, they were able to persuade the Organization’s leadership to back their campaign to revive it. Soon enough, emails began landing in the inboxes of the Organization’s membership, urging them to call or write their Congressional membership. Many did, and though the Organization’s membership was too scattered to make a dent in the Congressional mail system, it certainly had effects on members from more space-interested districts like those containing NASA centers.
To wrap up their public relations offensive, the scientists turned at last towards their main target, Congress itself. As ever, the main enemy space advocates had to confront was indifference, not outright dislike. Most members of Congress, as with most Americans, liked robotic explorers when they turned up on the news; they appreciated the images sent home by probes such as Galileo or Cassini, or the drama which had surrounded the landing of the Mars Traverse Rovers and the inability to free the trapped “Liberty” rover. They even wondered at the scientific results from these spacecraft. And they felt that the United States should continue doing such things, as much out of a vague sense of wanting to push the frontier as anything else. What they did not think about, or perhaps know about in some cases, was what was being spent on those spacecraft, nor what was needed to keep the American planetary exploration program, nor, even, where that money was being spent. Most members of Congress, after all, did not have NASA field centers in their districts, and even with NASA’s mastery of contract distribution to all corners of the nation, few of them would obviously be affected by a further contraction of the planetary science program.
Therefore, the goal of the scientists was, primarily, to educate Congress, to make them aware of what the new budget meant and what planetary science meant for their districts, in both financial and non-financial senses. Many recruited their graduate students, staff, colleagues, and contractors to call, mail, or email their local Congressional representative to explain the amount of money that NASA’s programs brought to their district, often sums in the millions of dollars, and how many people they employed, both directly and indirectly, while also pointing out that the current planetary science program and its great successes had only been created by investments in the 1980s and 1990s, which were now on the verge of drying up. Others reached out to their local communities, whether via the media or through appearances at museums, planetariums, or simple community events, spreading knowledge about the planets and about how more funding was needed to continue the series of planetary probes that had been running since the 1970s, especially to new, exciting destinations like the undersea oceans of Europa or Enceladus, or to old destinations that had shown signs of needing a second look, like the curiously methanated plains of Mars.
All of these measures, naturally, had more influence in districts where the planetary science program and space exploration more generally were already important. In Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Orlando, and Baltimore, politicians were already primed to consider space exploration an important issue worthy of action. Many of the areas where the academic programs were largest, however, had never thought of themselves as having much direct connection to the space program, something these scientists were beginning to disprove. A more vigorous planetary science program, their representatives were learning, could bring federal dollars to their area--always an attraction--and, moreover, do so without any appearance of logrolling, favors trading, or, in short, pork at all, if they adopted the Cornell Plan’s recommendations. Thus, these representatives slowly began moving to investigate planetary exploration as a subject for Congressional action, as the Cornell Plan’s authors were only too happy to help them do. Their most immediate goal was to ensure that the Pioneer Program, at least, continued, something that could be done easily enough and which promised quick and easy action. As summer began to draw to a close, a series of hearings on the issue were begun on Capitol Hill to investigate just why NASA had chosen to stop the apparently successful Pioneer program.
The entire affair, it turned out several months later, had ultimately boiled down to apathy compounded with poor communication by NASA administration. The Woods budget had trimmed funding for the planetary science program, including the Pioneer budget line, something no one in Congress had caught, and Headquarters staff had determined that a Pioneer selection that fiscal year would not be feasible. However, a slight delay, to the next fiscal year, could permit work to carry on almost as usual, so they had decided to push back the selection announcement until September. Unfortunately, they had also decided to remain quiet until the new selection announcement could be made instead of mentioning this fact, exploiting ambiguities in the rules set up for the Pioneer program to avoid embarrassment for the agency and the President. Of course, this had now backfired, and the offending staff were reassigned or dismissed, while Congress ordered the agency to make a selection as soon as possible. Even before they did so, pro-space representatives had managed to insert increased Pioneer funding into the FY 2008 budget and added language requiring the agency to make a selection every other year, “beginning with the next normal selection in FY 2010.”
While Congress was investigating the Pioneer program, the scientists who had pushed it into doing so in the first place were still working, this time to convince Congress to institute a larger overhaul of how NASA selected planetary science missions, especially ones beyond the capacity of the Pioneer program. After all, as they had been saying from the beginning, there were plenty of missions that were simply beyond the budget and schedule guidelines of Pioneer, but at the same time the haphazard, arbitrary, and politically-driven mission selection process that had operated since the 1960s had clearly fallen apart in the face of greater budgetary challenges and diminishing top-level attention. While simply copying the Pioneer process was untenable due to the sheer expense of Cornerstone-class planetary science missions, a more science-driven approach, similar to the Pioneer process, or to project selection processes in many other fields of science, such as astronomy, nuclear physics, or particle physics, was greatly tempting. A similar planetary science process would separate the debate about which missions were most scientifically viable from the question of which missions would be launched. At the same time, doing so would provide Congress with a tool to check any wasteful spending, ensuring that NASA would always be carrying out the most scientifically valuable missions instead of the best at, say, lining the pockets of the President’s friends. Although it took longer than rectifying the Pioneer situation, this, too, became enshrined in law in early 2008. After another year of organizing, the newly establish Planetary Science Prioritization Panel, or PSP^2, began meeting in early 2009 to begin drawing up an outline of the next decade of American planetary science missions, eager to return NASA to the forefront of planetary exploration.
Actually, I read it as scientists getting their act together to serve as an effective pressure group. To be sure this means having to, if not "bow," at least learn to "read" the public enough to find their niche of opportunity.
Another part of what seems to be going on is that we've got a new Republican President who wants to look somewhat Reaganesque. ITTL as OTL the Reagan Administration threatened to gut space science down to practically nothing, largely on ideological grounds (since the space probe budget was a trivial part of total Federal outlays, it wasn't so much to save any serious amount of taxpayer money as to establish the New Right ideology of divesting the government of as many functions as possible except of course for military spending).
The new guy seems less extreme and doctrinaire than either Reagan (who could, if one doesn't regard the New Right as a misconceived disaster across the board, as I do but many people clearly don't, be forgiven for his pioneering role obligating him to set sweeping examples) or his OTL successor in the 2000s--so insofar as the planetary scientists manage to embarrass the new administration a bit, it is a matter of them falling between stools. They don't really want to slash NASA, or even ivory-tower space probe science, to the bone, but they did want to look like they were accomplishing dramatic economies--so the Pioneer selection round was actually just delayed a bit--but by simply letting the traditional deadline slip pass with no mention and no funds allocated, it looked like they'd slashed it. From the Administration's point of view it would be a win-win; the scientists would get their next probe, a little late but the program would continue, but the people who got Woods elected would get the impression big cuts were accomplished--within a few years the current budget cycle would be of the past and forgotten, except that impression, and anyone hurt in the short run would be mollified and quiet when they got their goodies eventually.
Except that the scientists panicked, in a productive manner. I guess you can call the wake-up call that they have to sell their science to the public and can't just take it for granted an instance of "bowing." But to me it looks more like they are taking their show on the road, and it's getting good reviews too.
If I'd characterize anyone as "bowing" here, it's the Woods Administration.
Actually I feel sorry for the mid-level bureaucrats who got scapegoated; they merely carried out their visionary executive's orders (where that "visionary" is the President) and some Trumanesque "buck stops here" apologies from Woods himself seem in order, rather than weaseling. But what else do I expect from a modern corporate executive type (including anyone who can be President nowadays?)
really good post
Remember the discussion we had over how Pluto look like ?
New Horizon first picture are intriguing
seems Pluto is not a sphere, or pieces are missing, are they now his moons ?
hot new
Blue Origin just tested there Shepard space vehicle
Remember the discussion we had over how Pluto look like ?
New Horizon first picture are intriguing
seems Pluto is not a sphere, or pieces are missing, are they now his moons ?
hot new
Blue Origin just tested there Shepard space vehicle
Could just be very low albedo surface markings. I don't know the lower threshold for New Horizons' light sensitivity, but it ain't very bright out there and they're still a ways out. That said Pluto is close to the lower limit for gravity to force a spherical form, so it could possibly take awhile to subside after a traumatic enough impact.
Not missing pieces, but, it seems, surface discoloration:
That barycenter certainly is funky, though.
Part IV, Post 19: Reusable space vehicles
Good evening, everyone! I hope you'll find a thing or two to enjoy in this week's Eyes post...
Eyes Turned Skyward, Part IV: Post #19
Back in 2002 when competitors had contemplated Thunderbolt and the potential value of reusable vehicles, they had presumed the benefit of time to evaluate the still-immature technologies involved and plan their own reactions. However, the announcement of the Northrop TransOrbital division the next year had been a serious blow to this complacency, and studies throughout the US and around the globe had acquired a new degree of urgency. By 2006, almost four years later, the preferability of developing their own reusable vehicles was no longer up for serious debate--with more than 50 launches having cut the skies of the Northeast (launches from Wallops were commonly visible to tourists on the Washington Mall, and occasionally from New York City), the age of the reusable vehicle had clearly arrived. Moreover, the technology TransOrbital would use to achieve its “trans-shipment” of payloads from solely-LEO-capable light launchers to geosynchronous transfer orbits saw a serious risk reduction with the only-slightly-delayed launch of NASA’s Cryogenic Depot Demonstrator on a Delta 5060. Though the CDC alone was in theory within Thunderbolt’s capacity, the launcher wasn’t yet certified by NASA for such high-value payloads, and the increased launch capacity of the 5060 meant slightly more of the depot’s total theoretical 40-ton propellant capacity could be loaded, providing a better test of the depot concept.
Despite the high hopes resting on it from NASA, space fans, and Northrop’s management, the CDC’s operations were utterly routine--the spacecraft deployed its solar arrays, shifted residual ascent hydrogen from the converted Centaur second stage into the orbital storage module, purged the tank, then pumped the liquid oxygen residuals from their own tank into the now-empty hydrogen tank. With the main business done, there was little for controllers on the ground to do but wait as time passed and the effectiveness of the demonstrator at retaining oxygen and particularly hydrogen became clear. With Northrop engineers aiming to design a fully-operational sister depot for TransOrbital chomping at the bit for data, the months it took for full data to come in were an anticlimax: an exercise in patience and frustration. Finally, the initial results came out: in its first three months in orbit, the initial propellant load of eight metric tons had fallen to just over seven and a half. This loss of about 0.07% per day was concentrated mostly in the depot’s hydrogen supply as the station allowed hydrogen to boil off, serving for both a heatsink for the liquid oxygen tank and for orbital station-keeping.
Though for Northrop’s purposes this result was quite sufficient, the loss rate posed a problem for NASA--Northrop’s TransOrbital depot would be topped off potentially once a month or more, and its capacity “turned over” several times a year, while NASA was curious about storage at more distant destinations like EML-2 or on board spacecraft traveling to and from Mars--destinations which might require storage duration measured in years, not months, and where orbital station-keeping wasn’t a major need. NASA therefore began revisiting at low intensity the potential to incorporate active cryo-cooling into follow-on depots, to open up placement and supply of such distant depots. For their part, Northrop turned their attention fully to testing their tug architecture, rolling information from the CDC into their operational depot, and (most importantly) selling the service to customers. This process was helped by the ongoing progress in technology risk reduction , such as the mid-2007 launch of their first tug and modified Centaur “dumb tanker” on a Northrop Thunderbolt, which saw the tug separate, maneuver on its internal propellant, return to dock and pump fuel from the second stage, then alter its own orbit several times. However, in addition to these achievements and the lure of a near-50% cost reductions over their ELV competition, TransOrbital also found a new ally in selling the TransOrbital concept: Lockheed-McDonnell.
Despite operating their own X-33 Starclipper demonstrator before Thunderbolt’s debut tests, Lockheed had (in the view of some) squandered their chance to make lemonade out of the failure to pluck the lemon of reusable single-stage-to-orbit. However, internally and in great secrecy, Lockheed had in fact been using the example of the Thunderbolt--and their own Starclipper knowledge and team--to pursue risk abatement and studies on their own potential RLV. Indeed, some within the team had been advocating for an immediate announcement before the arrival of TransOrbital had shaken the commercial scene, stymied mostly by the sheer scale of a vehicle required to match even Delta’s payload to geosynchronous transfer orbit, much less their new European and Russian competition, as well as the thermodynamic challenges introduced by returning from GTO compared to a low Earth orbit. The implications of Northrop’s announcement had much the same effect on this continued Starclipper project as it had on Thunderbolt--it put a commercially competitive launcher in reach with a smaller overall vehicle by dividing the mass required in LEO over multiple launches and enabling the launcher itself to be focused on just reaching and returning from low orbit.
Thus, as satellite builders themselves, Lockheed management had co-operated readily with TransOrbital’s design pitches on creating “TransOrbital-capable” variants of various popular comsats and adopted a wait-and-see approach while Starclipper development was internally focused on a fully-reusable Thunderbolt-class vehicle. In 2007, Lockheed judged the time right--sufficient risk had been eliminated that it seemed safe to bet on TransOrbital reaching operations. Thus, they publicly unveiled the “new” Starclipper concept, which called for a two-stage, fully-reusable launcher. The first stage would be a scaled-up refinement of the familiar X-33 design with roughly double the propellant load of the earlier vehicle. This booster would launch from the Matagorda Spaceport, which American Launch Services had been glad, this time, to share with a new tenant, having turned down a similar operation-sharing offer from Thunderbolt before StarLaunch had proceeded to absorb much of their business. Unlike Thunderbolt, which needed to retain substantial propellant in the first stage to boost back to the launch site, Starclipper’s first stage would instead contribute as much delta-v to the ascent as possible, building its own downrange velocity to enable it to glide forward to a new landing site on the Gulf Coast of Florida. From this site, where the booster would land like an airplane, the vehicle could either be barged back to Matagorda or (if the regulatory environment was more favorable) refueled and flown back on its own power.
For the orbiter, Lockheed wanted to ensure sufficient payload volume for geosynch-bound satellites, and thus planned a much larger cargo bay than would normally be included given the system’s targeted 10-ton payload capacity (aimed to enable them to launch the entire Delta national security line, as well as some of the smaller M02-class payloads which had been launched without competition on Multibody for decades). This large bay--5 meters across by 8 meters long-- and relatively small fuel load drove the Starclipper team away from the X-33 wedge shape, instead selecting a design closer to the delta-winged fuselage of the X-20 Dynasoar, the Japanese HOPE-C, or the long-dead Space Shuttle concepts. More like a craft out of science fiction, the propellant tanks for the orbiter would make up only half the orbiter’s fuselage, with the LH2 tank placed forward of the bay and the LOX tank aft. In the tail, a set of pod-mounted hypergolic thrusters would bracket the single J-2S main engine to form the Orbital Maneuvering System, which would be used for any orbital alterations or corrections as well as for initiating the vehicle’s descent. Several landing sites were proposed in the rollout, ranging from the same gulf-coast Florida site as booster recoveries to California to landings at Cape Canaveral itself, with airlift or self-ferry back to the launch site.
The proposal was a mix of technologies from the long-proven (such as the orbiter’s engines and both stage’s automated flight modes) to the tested-but-new (the metallic TPS tested on X-33 and fitted to both booster and orbiter, the booster’s altitude-compensating aerospike, and flight-proven lobed aluminum tanks) to the novel (the orbiter’s use of composite structures for the less-complex cylindrical propellant tanks and primary structure components), and the proposed results were striking--not only would the Starclipper beat Thunderbolt’s $2,500/kg price point, it’d be available for just half that. Moreover, based on their five years of secret internal development and refinement, Lockheed announced a goal for powered test flights within five years, with operational service to follow “shortly after.” The concept attracted immediate attention, not the least from StarLaunch, who had been experiencing difficulty funding their own reusable L2 second stage. Other early interest came from TransOrbital, who were intrigued by a backup--and potentially even cheaper--propellant provider. Lockheed, for their part, had prepared several images of a Starclipper carrying a propellant tank in its bay to such a depot, as well as trans-shipping payloads via TransOrbital. NASA, too, expressed some interest--with Starclipper able to maneuver itself, it could potentially carry a cargo pod similar to the Apollo Mission Module to dock to Freedom or a successor station with a substantial payload of supplies, even if crew-rating the vehicle might prove challenging--a potential way to supplement or replace the Aardvark logistics vehicle with a dramatically cheaper option.
Lockheed, however, wasn’t the only group considering their own reusable launch vehicle. The European space community had been pursuing reusable launchers since the 90s, stifled first by the failures of the Sanger II’s turborocket systems, then the political infighting and constrained budgets which had surrounded the RLV question in the aftermath of the introduction of Thunderbolt, compounded by the 2004 Recession. However, Thunderbolt and the new impetus of Starclipper were enough to finally set the gears of the bureaucracy binding the British, French, German, and Italian space programs together into motion. Beginning in 2007, talks between European space ministers and executives of the Europaspace consortium picked up, focused on a unified European response to retain the dominance in commercial space launch Europe had seemed poised for in the late 90s with the retirement of the American Titan and the introduction of the cheap and capable Europa 5. These talks dragged on, complicated by the need to apportion work appropriately between participating nations and the complexities of funding split between ESA and Europaspace, but finally in 2008 a plan emerged that all parties could be satisfied with, one which should see Europe matching American reuse capacities by the middle of the 2010s, as well as putting them at the forefront of future developments in reuse.
As with Starclipper, the primary goal of the 2008 reusability plan was the development of Aquila, a fully-reusable two-stage launch vehicle sized for a capacity of roughy 30 tons to orbit--having finally achieved the lofty payload possible with the American Saturn and Russian Vulkan, Europe could hardly take a step back in capacity. The orbiter, Ganymede, would be based on the Horus spaceplane that had seen glider tests almost a decade before, using a new French-developed hydrogen/oxygen gas generator engine. As Horus itself had been German-led, so too would the Ganymede operational variant. Ironically, unlike with Starclipper, with the European plan it was the orbiter vehicle which was closer to previously developed and tested hardware, with the main challenges anticipated for the Horus spaceplane being the scaling up of the vehicle.
To start Ganymede on its way to orbit, the French and British members of the consortium would combine forces on the new booster stage, Aetos. Here, the Europeans were faced with problems of geography: unlike Lockheed’s planned operations from Matagorda, French Guiana had been specifically selected for having no troublesome land for thousands of kilometers downrange, ensuring that any first stage would have to return to Kourou for reuse. This narrowed the reuse options to a rocket-powered first stage, similar to a dramatically scaled-up Thunderbolt first stage, or a winged booster fitted with jet engines. Though the systems were comparable in weight, internal development at Europaspace focused primarily on the winged flyback booster, since once ignited, the jet engines would give the booster sufficient range to recover from vast distances downrange, and thus minimize the need for a lofted trajectory to reduce downrange distance, boosting achievable first stage contribution to the ascent. There were also both cultural and organizational reasons: designing a winged vehicle would draw on the extensive experience of European aeronautical firms (such as those making up Airbus, another part of the same European conglomerate which owned the private shares of Europaspace), and assist in spreading development funding and responsibilities within Europe. The fact that this would result in Aetos, named for the Eagle of Zeus, bearing more resemblance to the concepts of reusable vehicles which had permeated aerospace since the era of Von Braun was also valuable, and not entirely a coincidence--when asked for a reusable vehicle, many still pictured the reusable spaceplanes of the 50s, 60s, and early 70s.
The second leg of European development efforts would be focused matching this reusable launch system with new developments in orbital operations to enhance its capabilities. The Italian-led effort focused on the newly-important “orbit-to-orbit” area of space missions, with the goal of developing a new, all-European version of the American TransOrbital system, pairing a reusable orbital tug with LEO depots. However, unlike the Centaur heritage of Northrop’s design which meant its capacity was limited by the need to carry propellant to brake the tug back into low Earth orbit to refuel and pick up new payloads, the Italians planned to start from a clean sheet and aim for maximum capability by making use of Minotaur experience with ballistic entry to design a tug which would “aerocapture” back to LEO from higher energy orbits like GTO or even (potentially) lunar return trajectories, scrubbing off velocity in the rarified upper atmosphere protected by a (relatively light) reusable thermal protection system. Once operational, this Phoenix tug would thus be more capable and fuel-efficient than than the TransOrbital Centaurs, and the only cost would be higher development costs. However, with recovery from the sharp but short 2004 recession ongoing, investing money in supporting the European industrial base wasn’t unwelcome, and in fact constituted something of a benefit.
The final element of the European plan was aimed at the future, ensuring that the European community would end up out in front in any further evolutions of the reusability field. For almost five years, a small team of former Rolls-Royce engineers lead by Alan Bond had been pursuing a new design for a combined-cycle air-breathing rocket engine which they had originally developed in the 1990s. However, between their departure from the main British space establishment and 2008, the team had made what they believed to be several key breakthroughs, mostly derived from a new precooler concept and the insight of not seeking to fully liquify incoming air. Combined with a reconfigured vehicle layout, they believed that a fully reusable SSTO with payload comparable to the emerging TSTO RLVs might be achievable before 2025. With the overall spending on reusability efforts in Europe picking up, the project now finally found interested ears, particularly within the British portion of the European space development community. The team thus picked up several contracts for low-cost efforts aimed to validate the engine and precooler’s design assumptions, and confirm if the system were at all feasible. If successful, the system could be pursued as a second-generation reusable vehicle to follow-up on Aquila.
However, while their competitors were beginning work on their own full-scale reusable vehicles, engineers at Star Launch Services, who had begun the reusability boom with their Thunderbolt vehicle, were hardly idle. After all, Thunderbolt had always been conceptualized as part of a fully-reusable vehicle, not dissimilar to the European and Lockheed systems. However, unlike those firms, Star Launch had no major government ties or alternate revenue to draw upon, and had to fund L2 development entirely from what they could afford internally or draw from outside investment. Thus, despite the head start of operating Thunderbolt for more than 6 years, the L2 design was still in a relatively early design stage. The core concept was an adaption of the Thunderbolt first stage with a payload bay sandwiched between the five meter diameter LOX and LH2 tanks. However, unlike Starclipper and Horus, Thunderbolt’s second stage would re-enter tail-first. Several options were considered for this heat shield and the incorporation of the vehicle’s main engines. These included a ceramic tile system including doors closing over conventional bell nozzles, a regeneratively-cooled annular “plug” aerospike which could serve as combination of engine and heat shield, and more novel systems such as a “transpiration” setup which would flow residual cryogenic hydrogen into the base plasma flow to absorb and carry away heat before it could reach the vehicle. As Allen and Hunt’s team worked to address these questions, the firm’s lead in reusable vehicles was eroding. They would be lucky to get the L2 funded, designed, and tested by the time that Lockheed and Europe were planning to introduce their own vehicles.
The question of developing reusable vehicles had even reached the halls of NASA itself. Excitement over the achievements of Thunderbolt had long circulated, as well as debates over redeveloping the Saturn system to be capable of similar feats, though with substantially larger payload capacity However, with the pressure of Freedom and Orion support, as well as ongoing development of their respective successors, NASA was--for all its budget--in less of a position to begin a complex development program, and the concepts remained confined primarily to design and operations studies. Like the Europeans at Kourou, NASA’s launch site at Cape Canaveral was specifically sited to avoid overflight of land downrange, which now became a challenge in potential return and reuse of some sort of Saturn-scale system. However, the payload hit of designing a full boost-back system like Thunderbolt was steep--as much as 30%, for first stage reuse alone. Given the specific goal of retaining Saturn-class payload capacity, this was unacceptable. However, unfortunately, the advantage of a winged, jet-powered stage like the European plans were relatively minor, as the weight gain from wings and turbines would be similar to that required to boost back to the launch site on the stage’s own rocket engines, and require much more dramatic departure from the existing Saturn design.
In the end, NASA’s research contracts with Boeing focused on a compromise approach: Saturn first stage tankage placed atop a thrust structure modified with landing gear and terminal descent engines flanking the existing F-1A. Like Saturn, this new core would be capable of being clustered into a tri-core “Heavy” configuration. For flights where the payload capacity could be spared, the first stage would conduct a full return to launch site as with Thunderbolt, and some research was begun to determine the feasibility of cross-feeding propellant from the boosters into the center core to deplete the boosters faster and separate slower and closer to land. However, for flights where payload capacity was critical, the core would instead conduct a recovery downrange on a new landing barge, which would cut the “reuse penalty” for the stage almost in half. The second stage which was intended to be paired with this first stage was much more notional, ranging from L2-style near-capsules to winged orbiters like Starclipper and Horus, and in fact both concepts were studied in “Phase A” contracts commissioned from several firms. However, given the cost benefits for reuse were found primarily in the first stage, NASA placed priority on determining the feasibility and operational concepts of this new, reusable Saturn core, in the hopes of seeing it approved and development begun. Considering the other projects on their plate and the re-election of the budget hawk President Woods, it would be an uphill battle to achieve even that.
While plans for reusable systems around the globe were percolating, at least one system was reaching milestones in its introduction. In early 2008, a Lockheed Delta carried the Transorbital depot to orbit. There, it underwent a series of storage and commissioning trials over the next several months, similar to the ones conducted two years earlier on its near-sister, the NASA CDC. However, August saw the differences between the NASA demonstrator and its operational derivative put to the test when the tug launched the previous summer met a Thunderbolt tanker launch, filled its tanks from the Centaur second stage, then carried the fuel to the depot to begin the process of topping off the station’s tanks. The transfer worked just as had been planned, and the system was ready for its first trial run. As Thanksgiving approached, a Lockheed-built mass simulator/demonstration payload was prepared and launched on another Thunderbolt to meet the tug, which had already undocked from the depot and been positioned for pickup. The tug successfully locked onto the payload’s beacon, and ground controllers put it through its paces to phase its orbit to match the payload as it had with the tanker flight in August.
The two made rendezvous the day after launch, and after a careful docking to the simulated satellite’s CADS port, the tug lit its engines to push the combined stack into the intended GTO and separated from the “satellite.” Once the maneuver’s success was confirmed and the achieved orbital accuracy plotted, the tug redocked to the satellite and made another short burn to drop the stack’s perigee into the atmosphere before separating a second time--a maneuver aimed to both further demonstrate docking procedures as well as minimize orbital debris [1]. The tug, alone once more, then fired its engines to raise its own apogee to safety, coasted back to low Earth orbit, and burned again to drop into LEO and return to the depot for refueling. The gamble had worked, and TransOrbital Services was open for business none too soon, with their first commercial customers expecting launches in the summer of 2009. It would take many more missions before the process would become routine and considered totally risk-free, but the cost benefits were tempting. In the early 2000s, the benefits and risks of reusable systems had been up for debate, but with the ongoing commercial success of Thunderbolt and the technical achievements of TransOrbital, these systems were clearly only the beginning. The end goal wasn’t the partial reuse of these first-generation systems, but full reuse, and the race to achieve it was on as StarLaunch, Lockheed, and Europe vied to achieve this next stage in reusability development...
[1] A trajectory similar to EFT-1 IOTL
Eyes Turned Skyward, Part IV: Post #19
Back in 2002 when competitors had contemplated Thunderbolt and the potential value of reusable vehicles, they had presumed the benefit of time to evaluate the still-immature technologies involved and plan their own reactions. However, the announcement of the Northrop TransOrbital division the next year had been a serious blow to this complacency, and studies throughout the US and around the globe had acquired a new degree of urgency. By 2006, almost four years later, the preferability of developing their own reusable vehicles was no longer up for serious debate--with more than 50 launches having cut the skies of the Northeast (launches from Wallops were commonly visible to tourists on the Washington Mall, and occasionally from New York City), the age of the reusable vehicle had clearly arrived. Moreover, the technology TransOrbital would use to achieve its “trans-shipment” of payloads from solely-LEO-capable light launchers to geosynchronous transfer orbits saw a serious risk reduction with the only-slightly-delayed launch of NASA’s Cryogenic Depot Demonstrator on a Delta 5060. Though the CDC alone was in theory within Thunderbolt’s capacity, the launcher wasn’t yet certified by NASA for such high-value payloads, and the increased launch capacity of the 5060 meant slightly more of the depot’s total theoretical 40-ton propellant capacity could be loaded, providing a better test of the depot concept.
Despite the high hopes resting on it from NASA, space fans, and Northrop’s management, the CDC’s operations were utterly routine--the spacecraft deployed its solar arrays, shifted residual ascent hydrogen from the converted Centaur second stage into the orbital storage module, purged the tank, then pumped the liquid oxygen residuals from their own tank into the now-empty hydrogen tank. With the main business done, there was little for controllers on the ground to do but wait as time passed and the effectiveness of the demonstrator at retaining oxygen and particularly hydrogen became clear. With Northrop engineers aiming to design a fully-operational sister depot for TransOrbital chomping at the bit for data, the months it took for full data to come in were an anticlimax: an exercise in patience and frustration. Finally, the initial results came out: in its first three months in orbit, the initial propellant load of eight metric tons had fallen to just over seven and a half. This loss of about 0.07% per day was concentrated mostly in the depot’s hydrogen supply as the station allowed hydrogen to boil off, serving for both a heatsink for the liquid oxygen tank and for orbital station-keeping.
Though for Northrop’s purposes this result was quite sufficient, the loss rate posed a problem for NASA--Northrop’s TransOrbital depot would be topped off potentially once a month or more, and its capacity “turned over” several times a year, while NASA was curious about storage at more distant destinations like EML-2 or on board spacecraft traveling to and from Mars--destinations which might require storage duration measured in years, not months, and where orbital station-keeping wasn’t a major need. NASA therefore began revisiting at low intensity the potential to incorporate active cryo-cooling into follow-on depots, to open up placement and supply of such distant depots. For their part, Northrop turned their attention fully to testing their tug architecture, rolling information from the CDC into their operational depot, and (most importantly) selling the service to customers. This process was helped by the ongoing progress in technology risk reduction , such as the mid-2007 launch of their first tug and modified Centaur “dumb tanker” on a Northrop Thunderbolt, which saw the tug separate, maneuver on its internal propellant, return to dock and pump fuel from the second stage, then alter its own orbit several times. However, in addition to these achievements and the lure of a near-50% cost reductions over their ELV competition, TransOrbital also found a new ally in selling the TransOrbital concept: Lockheed-McDonnell.
Despite operating their own X-33 Starclipper demonstrator before Thunderbolt’s debut tests, Lockheed had (in the view of some) squandered their chance to make lemonade out of the failure to pluck the lemon of reusable single-stage-to-orbit. However, internally and in great secrecy, Lockheed had in fact been using the example of the Thunderbolt--and their own Starclipper knowledge and team--to pursue risk abatement and studies on their own potential RLV. Indeed, some within the team had been advocating for an immediate announcement before the arrival of TransOrbital had shaken the commercial scene, stymied mostly by the sheer scale of a vehicle required to match even Delta’s payload to geosynchronous transfer orbit, much less their new European and Russian competition, as well as the thermodynamic challenges introduced by returning from GTO compared to a low Earth orbit. The implications of Northrop’s announcement had much the same effect on this continued Starclipper project as it had on Thunderbolt--it put a commercially competitive launcher in reach with a smaller overall vehicle by dividing the mass required in LEO over multiple launches and enabling the launcher itself to be focused on just reaching and returning from low orbit.
Thus, as satellite builders themselves, Lockheed management had co-operated readily with TransOrbital’s design pitches on creating “TransOrbital-capable” variants of various popular comsats and adopted a wait-and-see approach while Starclipper development was internally focused on a fully-reusable Thunderbolt-class vehicle. In 2007, Lockheed judged the time right--sufficient risk had been eliminated that it seemed safe to bet on TransOrbital reaching operations. Thus, they publicly unveiled the “new” Starclipper concept, which called for a two-stage, fully-reusable launcher. The first stage would be a scaled-up refinement of the familiar X-33 design with roughly double the propellant load of the earlier vehicle. This booster would launch from the Matagorda Spaceport, which American Launch Services had been glad, this time, to share with a new tenant, having turned down a similar operation-sharing offer from Thunderbolt before StarLaunch had proceeded to absorb much of their business. Unlike Thunderbolt, which needed to retain substantial propellant in the first stage to boost back to the launch site, Starclipper’s first stage would instead contribute as much delta-v to the ascent as possible, building its own downrange velocity to enable it to glide forward to a new landing site on the Gulf Coast of Florida. From this site, where the booster would land like an airplane, the vehicle could either be barged back to Matagorda or (if the regulatory environment was more favorable) refueled and flown back on its own power.
For the orbiter, Lockheed wanted to ensure sufficient payload volume for geosynch-bound satellites, and thus planned a much larger cargo bay than would normally be included given the system’s targeted 10-ton payload capacity (aimed to enable them to launch the entire Delta national security line, as well as some of the smaller M02-class payloads which had been launched without competition on Multibody for decades). This large bay--5 meters across by 8 meters long-- and relatively small fuel load drove the Starclipper team away from the X-33 wedge shape, instead selecting a design closer to the delta-winged fuselage of the X-20 Dynasoar, the Japanese HOPE-C, or the long-dead Space Shuttle concepts. More like a craft out of science fiction, the propellant tanks for the orbiter would make up only half the orbiter’s fuselage, with the LH2 tank placed forward of the bay and the LOX tank aft. In the tail, a set of pod-mounted hypergolic thrusters would bracket the single J-2S main engine to form the Orbital Maneuvering System, which would be used for any orbital alterations or corrections as well as for initiating the vehicle’s descent. Several landing sites were proposed in the rollout, ranging from the same gulf-coast Florida site as booster recoveries to California to landings at Cape Canaveral itself, with airlift or self-ferry back to the launch site.
The proposal was a mix of technologies from the long-proven (such as the orbiter’s engines and both stage’s automated flight modes) to the tested-but-new (the metallic TPS tested on X-33 and fitted to both booster and orbiter, the booster’s altitude-compensating aerospike, and flight-proven lobed aluminum tanks) to the novel (the orbiter’s use of composite structures for the less-complex cylindrical propellant tanks and primary structure components), and the proposed results were striking--not only would the Starclipper beat Thunderbolt’s $2,500/kg price point, it’d be available for just half that. Moreover, based on their five years of secret internal development and refinement, Lockheed announced a goal for powered test flights within five years, with operational service to follow “shortly after.” The concept attracted immediate attention, not the least from StarLaunch, who had been experiencing difficulty funding their own reusable L2 second stage. Other early interest came from TransOrbital, who were intrigued by a backup--and potentially even cheaper--propellant provider. Lockheed, for their part, had prepared several images of a Starclipper carrying a propellant tank in its bay to such a depot, as well as trans-shipping payloads via TransOrbital. NASA, too, expressed some interest--with Starclipper able to maneuver itself, it could potentially carry a cargo pod similar to the Apollo Mission Module to dock to Freedom or a successor station with a substantial payload of supplies, even if crew-rating the vehicle might prove challenging--a potential way to supplement or replace the Aardvark logistics vehicle with a dramatically cheaper option.
Lockheed, however, wasn’t the only group considering their own reusable launch vehicle. The European space community had been pursuing reusable launchers since the 90s, stifled first by the failures of the Sanger II’s turborocket systems, then the political infighting and constrained budgets which had surrounded the RLV question in the aftermath of the introduction of Thunderbolt, compounded by the 2004 Recession. However, Thunderbolt and the new impetus of Starclipper were enough to finally set the gears of the bureaucracy binding the British, French, German, and Italian space programs together into motion. Beginning in 2007, talks between European space ministers and executives of the Europaspace consortium picked up, focused on a unified European response to retain the dominance in commercial space launch Europe had seemed poised for in the late 90s with the retirement of the American Titan and the introduction of the cheap and capable Europa 5. These talks dragged on, complicated by the need to apportion work appropriately between participating nations and the complexities of funding split between ESA and Europaspace, but finally in 2008 a plan emerged that all parties could be satisfied with, one which should see Europe matching American reuse capacities by the middle of the 2010s, as well as putting them at the forefront of future developments in reuse.
As with Starclipper, the primary goal of the 2008 reusability plan was the development of Aquila, a fully-reusable two-stage launch vehicle sized for a capacity of roughy 30 tons to orbit--having finally achieved the lofty payload possible with the American Saturn and Russian Vulkan, Europe could hardly take a step back in capacity. The orbiter, Ganymede, would be based on the Horus spaceplane that had seen glider tests almost a decade before, using a new French-developed hydrogen/oxygen gas generator engine. As Horus itself had been German-led, so too would the Ganymede operational variant. Ironically, unlike with Starclipper, with the European plan it was the orbiter vehicle which was closer to previously developed and tested hardware, with the main challenges anticipated for the Horus spaceplane being the scaling up of the vehicle.
To start Ganymede on its way to orbit, the French and British members of the consortium would combine forces on the new booster stage, Aetos. Here, the Europeans were faced with problems of geography: unlike Lockheed’s planned operations from Matagorda, French Guiana had been specifically selected for having no troublesome land for thousands of kilometers downrange, ensuring that any first stage would have to return to Kourou for reuse. This narrowed the reuse options to a rocket-powered first stage, similar to a dramatically scaled-up Thunderbolt first stage, or a winged booster fitted with jet engines. Though the systems were comparable in weight, internal development at Europaspace focused primarily on the winged flyback booster, since once ignited, the jet engines would give the booster sufficient range to recover from vast distances downrange, and thus minimize the need for a lofted trajectory to reduce downrange distance, boosting achievable first stage contribution to the ascent. There were also both cultural and organizational reasons: designing a winged vehicle would draw on the extensive experience of European aeronautical firms (such as those making up Airbus, another part of the same European conglomerate which owned the private shares of Europaspace), and assist in spreading development funding and responsibilities within Europe. The fact that this would result in Aetos, named for the Eagle of Zeus, bearing more resemblance to the concepts of reusable vehicles which had permeated aerospace since the era of Von Braun was also valuable, and not entirely a coincidence--when asked for a reusable vehicle, many still pictured the reusable spaceplanes of the 50s, 60s, and early 70s.
The second leg of European development efforts would be focused matching this reusable launch system with new developments in orbital operations to enhance its capabilities. The Italian-led effort focused on the newly-important “orbit-to-orbit” area of space missions, with the goal of developing a new, all-European version of the American TransOrbital system, pairing a reusable orbital tug with LEO depots. However, unlike the Centaur heritage of Northrop’s design which meant its capacity was limited by the need to carry propellant to brake the tug back into low Earth orbit to refuel and pick up new payloads, the Italians planned to start from a clean sheet and aim for maximum capability by making use of Minotaur experience with ballistic entry to design a tug which would “aerocapture” back to LEO from higher energy orbits like GTO or even (potentially) lunar return trajectories, scrubbing off velocity in the rarified upper atmosphere protected by a (relatively light) reusable thermal protection system. Once operational, this Phoenix tug would thus be more capable and fuel-efficient than than the TransOrbital Centaurs, and the only cost would be higher development costs. However, with recovery from the sharp but short 2004 recession ongoing, investing money in supporting the European industrial base wasn’t unwelcome, and in fact constituted something of a benefit.
The final element of the European plan was aimed at the future, ensuring that the European community would end up out in front in any further evolutions of the reusability field. For almost five years, a small team of former Rolls-Royce engineers lead by Alan Bond had been pursuing a new design for a combined-cycle air-breathing rocket engine which they had originally developed in the 1990s. However, between their departure from the main British space establishment and 2008, the team had made what they believed to be several key breakthroughs, mostly derived from a new precooler concept and the insight of not seeking to fully liquify incoming air. Combined with a reconfigured vehicle layout, they believed that a fully reusable SSTO with payload comparable to the emerging TSTO RLVs might be achievable before 2025. With the overall spending on reusability efforts in Europe picking up, the project now finally found interested ears, particularly within the British portion of the European space development community. The team thus picked up several contracts for low-cost efforts aimed to validate the engine and precooler’s design assumptions, and confirm if the system were at all feasible. If successful, the system could be pursued as a second-generation reusable vehicle to follow-up on Aquila.
However, while their competitors were beginning work on their own full-scale reusable vehicles, engineers at Star Launch Services, who had begun the reusability boom with their Thunderbolt vehicle, were hardly idle. After all, Thunderbolt had always been conceptualized as part of a fully-reusable vehicle, not dissimilar to the European and Lockheed systems. However, unlike those firms, Star Launch had no major government ties or alternate revenue to draw upon, and had to fund L2 development entirely from what they could afford internally or draw from outside investment. Thus, despite the head start of operating Thunderbolt for more than 6 years, the L2 design was still in a relatively early design stage. The core concept was an adaption of the Thunderbolt first stage with a payload bay sandwiched between the five meter diameter LOX and LH2 tanks. However, unlike Starclipper and Horus, Thunderbolt’s second stage would re-enter tail-first. Several options were considered for this heat shield and the incorporation of the vehicle’s main engines. These included a ceramic tile system including doors closing over conventional bell nozzles, a regeneratively-cooled annular “plug” aerospike which could serve as combination of engine and heat shield, and more novel systems such as a “transpiration” setup which would flow residual cryogenic hydrogen into the base plasma flow to absorb and carry away heat before it could reach the vehicle. As Allen and Hunt’s team worked to address these questions, the firm’s lead in reusable vehicles was eroding. They would be lucky to get the L2 funded, designed, and tested by the time that Lockheed and Europe were planning to introduce their own vehicles.
The question of developing reusable vehicles had even reached the halls of NASA itself. Excitement over the achievements of Thunderbolt had long circulated, as well as debates over redeveloping the Saturn system to be capable of similar feats, though with substantially larger payload capacity However, with the pressure of Freedom and Orion support, as well as ongoing development of their respective successors, NASA was--for all its budget--in less of a position to begin a complex development program, and the concepts remained confined primarily to design and operations studies. Like the Europeans at Kourou, NASA’s launch site at Cape Canaveral was specifically sited to avoid overflight of land downrange, which now became a challenge in potential return and reuse of some sort of Saturn-scale system. However, the payload hit of designing a full boost-back system like Thunderbolt was steep--as much as 30%, for first stage reuse alone. Given the specific goal of retaining Saturn-class payload capacity, this was unacceptable. However, unfortunately, the advantage of a winged, jet-powered stage like the European plans were relatively minor, as the weight gain from wings and turbines would be similar to that required to boost back to the launch site on the stage’s own rocket engines, and require much more dramatic departure from the existing Saturn design.
In the end, NASA’s research contracts with Boeing focused on a compromise approach: Saturn first stage tankage placed atop a thrust structure modified with landing gear and terminal descent engines flanking the existing F-1A. Like Saturn, this new core would be capable of being clustered into a tri-core “Heavy” configuration. For flights where the payload capacity could be spared, the first stage would conduct a full return to launch site as with Thunderbolt, and some research was begun to determine the feasibility of cross-feeding propellant from the boosters into the center core to deplete the boosters faster and separate slower and closer to land. However, for flights where payload capacity was critical, the core would instead conduct a recovery downrange on a new landing barge, which would cut the “reuse penalty” for the stage almost in half. The second stage which was intended to be paired with this first stage was much more notional, ranging from L2-style near-capsules to winged orbiters like Starclipper and Horus, and in fact both concepts were studied in “Phase A” contracts commissioned from several firms. However, given the cost benefits for reuse were found primarily in the first stage, NASA placed priority on determining the feasibility and operational concepts of this new, reusable Saturn core, in the hopes of seeing it approved and development begun. Considering the other projects on their plate and the re-election of the budget hawk President Woods, it would be an uphill battle to achieve even that.
While plans for reusable systems around the globe were percolating, at least one system was reaching milestones in its introduction. In early 2008, a Lockheed Delta carried the Transorbital depot to orbit. There, it underwent a series of storage and commissioning trials over the next several months, similar to the ones conducted two years earlier on its near-sister, the NASA CDC. However, August saw the differences between the NASA demonstrator and its operational derivative put to the test when the tug launched the previous summer met a Thunderbolt tanker launch, filled its tanks from the Centaur second stage, then carried the fuel to the depot to begin the process of topping off the station’s tanks. The transfer worked just as had been planned, and the system was ready for its first trial run. As Thanksgiving approached, a Lockheed-built mass simulator/demonstration payload was prepared and launched on another Thunderbolt to meet the tug, which had already undocked from the depot and been positioned for pickup. The tug successfully locked onto the payload’s beacon, and ground controllers put it through its paces to phase its orbit to match the payload as it had with the tanker flight in August.
The two made rendezvous the day after launch, and after a careful docking to the simulated satellite’s CADS port, the tug lit its engines to push the combined stack into the intended GTO and separated from the “satellite.” Once the maneuver’s success was confirmed and the achieved orbital accuracy plotted, the tug redocked to the satellite and made another short burn to drop the stack’s perigee into the atmosphere before separating a second time--a maneuver aimed to both further demonstrate docking procedures as well as minimize orbital debris [1]. The tug, alone once more, then fired its engines to raise its own apogee to safety, coasted back to low Earth orbit, and burned again to drop into LEO and return to the depot for refueling. The gamble had worked, and TransOrbital Services was open for business none too soon, with their first commercial customers expecting launches in the summer of 2009. It would take many more missions before the process would become routine and considered totally risk-free, but the cost benefits were tempting. In the early 2000s, the benefits and risks of reusable systems had been up for debate, but with the ongoing commercial success of Thunderbolt and the technical achievements of TransOrbital, these systems were clearly only the beginning. The end goal wasn’t the partial reuse of these first-generation systems, but full reuse, and the race to achieve it was on as StarLaunch, Lockheed, and Europe vied to achieve this next stage in reusability development...
[1] A trajectory similar to EFT-1 IOTL
NASA ITTL is going the way of SpaceX with recoverable/reusable first stages, whether it be by Return-to-Land or Barge Landing?
And a lot of players in this game now trying to attain full-reusability in order to bring down the costs of launching payloads. And given there's no STS ITTL to serve as an example, the sheer variety being developed isn't something that surprises me too much.
And a lot of players in this game now trying to attain full-reusability in order to bring down the costs of launching payloads. And given there's no STS ITTL to serve as an example, the sheer variety being developed isn't something that surprises me too much.
Proportionally, Charon is much more massive compared to Pluto than the Moon is compared to Earth. That and the orbit is pretty eccentric. Okay, yeah "eccentric," "funky," "potato," "potahto."
Do i read right ?
NASA goes in this TL the SpaceX way
Well, for SpaceX, this is just an interim measure. Once they convince NASA that they can safely land the core regularly they intend to go to an RTLS recovery at Canaveral. The alt-NASA approach seems to be permanently focussed on bringing the Saturns down on barges. Forever. To the extent that NASA is likely to be bending metal on the reusable Saturn project ever…
Saturn Multicore certainly seems a lot bigger than Falcon, though. That'll have to be one impressive carrier landing.