Bigelow Aerospace confirmed that the Genesis II space station test module was successfully launched and that the module has deployed itself. Hello Earth.
Among the first images from Genesis II
It's heartening to see Bigelow Aerospace execute according to plan so far. C0ngrats to Bigelow!
Space.com reports (as does Florida Today) that SpaceX has been approved to launch its Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets from Cape Canaveral Pad 40 (LC40). LC40 is one pad removed from LC39A (used for the Space Shuttle) and is next to LC41, which is used for the Atlas V.
For several years, SpaceX has been discussing using LC36A & B, but apparently the Air Force wanted the company elsewhere. I would be interested in knowing the relative attractiveness of LC40, since it could indicate the level of trust that the Air Force has placed in SpaceX's program. The Wikipedia article linked above mentions that during the 1960s, the Air Force planned manned flights out of LC40 and LC41. Perhaps the scale of rockets contemplated for LC40 and LC41 is larger than for the other pads. If SpaceX ever decides to build its Merlin 2 or Merlin 3 engines (as a recently tortured quote of Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, confessed was still a possibility), scale of infrastructure might become important.
The space.com article above quotes Musk as saying that retrofitting LC40 for the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 will cost the company "several tens of millions of dollars." Now I have an order of magnitude answer for my long-standing curiosity regarding the infrastructure costs for manned flights. Sounds expensive! Musk states that all of the currently scheduled Falcon 9 launches are planned out of Cape Canaveral -- none are planned out of Kwajalein. Even though no Falcon 9 flights are planned out of Kwajalein, I wonder whether SpaceX also will upgrade Kwajalein to handle the rocket.
The first launch of the Falcon 9 is slotted for 2Q 2008 -- about a year from now. Development on the rocket continues apace, with the recent fabrication of the first stage tank. Now it's off to McGregor, Texas for first stage test firing later this year.
Update: SpaceFlightNow has a nice, detailed article about SpaceX at the Cape. The article contains lots of good quotes from Musk.
By now, you may have heard of Bigelow Aerospace's announcement last week laying out some details from its business plan. In this week's The Space Review, Jeff Foust transcribed many of the details of the plan, so I will not repeat them here. My first reaction was that these prices seem awfully high -- they are low only in relation to the outrageous prices for work at the International Space Station. But after thinking about the details over the last week, I have to admit that the business plan as stated is plausible for Bigelow's target markets: private business clients and sovereign clients.
For private businesses, the price and execution will be the driving factors. The stated prices for some Bigelow services are high. However, it seems likely that Bigelow will aggregate lots of small pieces of business. The key will be to make it easy for each client to start very small -- well under a million dollars -- to get its feet wet. This strikes me as a very laborious and risky business for Bigelow. It will require lots of client hand-holding. This business probably will start very slowly. And even if Bigelow executes flawlessly, the attractiveness of microgravity manufacturing and research is unknown.
For sovereign clients (countries), the PR value and politics will be the driving factor. It seems that the demand at these prices will be inelastic -- e.g., a country would be no more or less willing to buy a month of hang time if the price is $15 million per month versus $5 million per month, since neither value will break the budget. The pool of potential sovereign clients seems healthy -- 50 or 60 countries that may be interested and capable of maintaining an affordable space program. The market is proven, with South Korea's recent purchase of a flight to ISS aboard the Soyuz and associated services. Bigelow may see some of its business driven by rivalries between countries. For instance, Taiwan may gain a PR benefit by maintaining a space program in the face of Chinese space expansion. Likewise, Pakistan, impoverished as it is, might see a need to keep up with the Indian space program.
The transportation piece of the business plan confuses me a little. I understand the necessity of diversity in the pool of potential launch vehicles and agree that sacrificing low costs for diversity might make sense. However, Bigelow takes away much of that diversity by stating that it doesn't want to do a splash landing. Unfortunately, the vehicle that may drive down Bigelow's operating costs the most -- the Falcon 9 with Dragon capsule -- splash lands. Is a splash landing really that dramatic? Were the Apollo capsule landings too exciting?
Overall, I'm intrigued by Bigelow's plan. It isn't obviously ridiculous, and Bigelow has several years to adjust the plan as the company learns more. The transportation picture is a little murky, and I will be interested in knowing more about Bigelow's plans in that regard.
Apparently, this young man has found a way to make it to orbit from his bedroom workshop. A little cramped, but Armadillo Aerospace would be proud.
No engine out capability on this vehicle.
Might have some questions from the FAA on this one.
Refuel on orbit.
Doing it for the glory and love of all mankind. Just like the X Prize Cup.
Imagination and fun courtesy of Ministry of Sound, The Annual 2007 , World, Hold On (Children of the Sky).
It has been nice to follow this year's Space Access Conference in Phoenix through the corps of live bloggers at the event. One of the more interesting presentations has been from Armadillo Aerospace (blogged by Clark Lindsey and Rand Simberg). As some of you know, while I follow with interest Armadillo and the other suborbital teams, I don't really cover them in this blog in a systematic manner. This seems likely to change as John Carmack, head of the Armadillo team, has started to mention long-term plans for orbital launch. Carmack is becoming something of a kindred spirit with and disciple of Lutz Kayser, the "voice in the wilderness" for modular launch. Carmack proposes to create an array of Pixel-like modules in order to eventually make orbit in two or three stages.
Pixel flies during the Lunar Lander Challenge at X Prize Cup '06.
One year ago tomorrow, on the occasion of the first Falcon 1 failure, Lutz Kayser commented on this blog about his skepticism on the way SpaceX and some others were doing business. I replied that John Carmack might be doing something along the lines that he advocated. Subsequently, in May last year, Kayser visited Armadillo and was said to be quite generous. For instance, he left some hardware with Armadillo from the OTRAG effort -- a project in the late '70s and early '80s which Kayser led.
An OTRAG part left with Armadillo by Lutz Kayser.
I can claim no credit for getting the two together -- they probably spoke months before Kayser posted here, and in any event it is no big parlor trick to recognize the similarities between them and mention it. But it is interesting to see the conversation and interplay between the two similar approaches develop over the last year+.
From the little I understand of Kayser's thoughts, the benefits of the modular approach are closely tied to the engineering process necessary to make the approach work. There is no substitute for building, flying, and redesigning key parts in an iterative manner. If your vehicle is modular, you can focus on simplifying and making robust those few key parts. You can test low numbers of modules and then scale up once you're ready for something bigger. Low costs and high reliability at scale follow naturally.
I don't think the point of the exercise is to assign a definite per pound price for modular spaceflight -- it can't help but be lower than that available through the traditional vendors -- but some of the cost figures would be absurd, if they weren't true. Carmack says that so far, Armadillo has spent some $3 million in research and development funds and that the company could get to orbit on some million more. He believes that a team like his, 8 part-time volunteers and 1 paid employee working out of a garage or small warehouse, could produce an orbital launch vehicle. Of course, the marginal costs of the rocket depend on module manufacturing costs and any reusability in the system.
In addition to Space Access, we are being treated to a wealth of treasure on modular vehicles, like Carmack's February and March updates. These updates are where we can follow as Carmack backs up his words with flight-tested hardware. Also, in the next few days, Armadillo will release on its website the video it presented at Space Access. As I understand from the reports, the video is very good, like similar high quality videos presented by Armadillo in the past.
After losing telemetry at an altitude of about 300 km, and dumping the second stage in the ocean after a half orbit, Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, positioned last night's launch of the Falcon 1 as a 90% success. Certainly, this launch will go in the record books as a failure, but it has been shown that the rocket mostly works. Given a working rocket and a reasonably fat order book, the business case for a privately-funded rocket company probably has been closed from Musk's perspective. A bonus is that we were shown something closer to "responsive space launch" (i.e., fuel up and fire away). I would be interested in finding out whether there ever has been a similar ignition-abort-recycle-launch occurrence in the history of space launch.
It is often perceived that governments are the only entities that have the financial wherewithal and staying power to weather the inevitable failures in space launch development. Beal Aerospace's travails seemed to confirm that conventional wisdom. However, SpaceX is showing that private firms can be persistent as well, even without an unlimited bank account. To be sure, SpaceX has solid government customers in DARPA and the Air Force, which has helped. Perhaps DARPA will become the customer of choice for small, inexpensive launch vehicles as they are working through the teething process. At these prices, it shouldn't be much of a problem for DARPA to buy a half dozen demonstration launches.
From a non-engineer's perspective, this launch made me feel like the Falcon 1 is a sturdy machine and that SpaceX had the launch process under control. There was a lot of drama involved with the first countdown and ignition (I laughed at the F bombs dropped under the breath of the engineer on the countdown net -- I empathized with his plight). But the rocket was able to recycle for another attempt without incident. SpaceX had the information at its fingertips to determine that it was fine to proceed with another attempt. In hindsight, it's clear that I did not have the same feeling during last year's first launch attempt. I am hoping that SpaceX uses the lessons learned during this and future launches to continuously improve its systems and processes in order eventually to make launches bullet-proof.
Overall, I think that SpaceX moved the ball down the field with this launch. It is an incremental improvement in the business of space launch, but such improvements have been long in coming. For this, I think hearty congratulations to SpaceX are in order.
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