Carried Away

Back from Satellite Beach

I just returned from the sun and surf of Satellite Beach, South of Cocoa Beach, where I was busy formulating a couple of blog post ideas.  The sun and surf provided a good excuse to take a vacation week to see the launch of Space Shuttle Endeavor and to take a tour of Kennedy Space Center.

My overwhelming sense is that the infrastructure at KSC/Cape Canaveral AFS contemplated very big hardware.  Shuttle is the overshadowed runt little brother of Saturn V.  Once Shuttle is retired, and assuming that SpaceX doesn't have its Saturn V-replacement BFR ready to launch, the scale of operations mismatch will be quite a bit more stark than it is already.

Since KSC/Cape Canaveral is so heavily visited, I'm not sure that my other impressions are particularly unique or noteworthy.  I will not post my further impressions here, but please drop me a line if you have any questions.

Sun, Surf, Spaceports -- Wallops Island

(Note:  Click thumbnails for larger pictures.)

Bring your Deep Woods Off!  That was the first lesson I learned last weekend while visiting Wallops Island, Virginia, the site of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on the grounds of NASA's Wallops Flight Facility.  After 10 seconds in the grass in front of the NASA visitor's center on the mainland taking photos, I had a dozen mosquitoes on my legs, sucking away happily.  This was much more than I had bargained for when I planned my weekender on the Virginia Eastern Shore, about 3 hours drive from Washington.

A photo of great price; mosquitoes take no prisoners at Wallops.

Wallops Island is a several-mile long barrier island a mile or two off of the mainland Atlantic coast.  North of the island on Chincoteague Bay is a causeway from the mainland to Chincoteague, a small summer vacation town serving beachgoers who are visiting nearby Assateague Island.  Assateague Island's claim to fame is the wildlife refuge that is inhabited by herds of feral ponies.  It is interesting to see the ponies thrive in such marshy conditions.

Feral ponies in the marsh along the side of the road on Assateague Island.

On Assateague Island there is a couple-mile long beach, which serves as the primary attraction.  The beach isn't impressive compared to the many miles of public beach along the Space Coast, for instance.  Also, the water was a little cold for my taste.  But it serves well enough for those who don't make the short trip North to beaches in Maryland or Delaware.

The town of Chincoteague faces West to the bay.  The town has a few excellent places to frequent.  I especially enjoyed the lasagna at the plastic-tablecloth Maria's Restaurant on Maddox Boulevard and the homemade pastries and bread at Sugarbakers on Main Street.  Of course, there are numerous seafood restaurants.  There are plenty of outlying housing plots on the bay that are accessible by dirt roads.  For those who enjoy fishing out on your boat, this is the kind of place for you.  It has the feeling of remoteness, while being no more than a mile or two from town.

A local wit is unleashed on the signs along the mud roads of Chincoteague.

There are several good places from which to watch launches on Wallops Island.  The residents of Chincoteague go to the southern tip of the town at Curtis Merritt Harbor.  The docent at the NASA visitor's center on the mainland suggested watching from the visitor's center.  She said that the center opens a couple hours before launches (even late night launches) and that they have a viewing along the nearby waterfront.  She also mentioned that they have a small auditorium where the main press conferences are held.  This appears to be where all officialdom gathers.  Also, sometimes the beach on Assateague Island is open for launch watchers.

The closest points to the launch towers appear to be along the mainland bay shore West of the facility -- only about 2 miles between the pads and the shore.  Since rockets head Southeast from the pads, the rockets would launch away from the shore.  For this reason, it might be that you can see the rocket's trajectory longer if you watch from Curtis Merritt Harbor, even though it is slightly farther away.

The view of the towers from the bay shore West of Wallops Island.

The bay shore facing the facility isn't heavily inhabited.  Most of the land hosts farm fields and chicken farms.  But there are shore plots marked off and for sale -- something of a budding land speculation.  Some few houses have been built already.  These houses appear to be quality, although not luxury.

New houses along the mainland bay shore on Channel Road (if I recall correctly).

The town of Atlantic is the closest to the mainland bay shore, but there isn't so much as a gas station in town.  This fact became of some importance when I got my rental car stuck in the marshy land at the end of Arbuckle Neck Road on the bay.  The closest tow truck was about 30 minutes drive away and my cell phone was out of range.  This is an area surprisingly unforgiving to city slickers.  An amazing Good Samaritan fishing with his family on the bay let me drive his truck to the closest gas station, where I was able to call a tow.  What a lesson in charity!


Earth and heaven meet on Arbuckle Neck Road near Atlantic, Virginia.  The corn is well more than knee-high on the Fourth of July.

As you may know, SpaceX and NASA are in preliminary discussions for the Falcon 9 to launch from Wallops for International Space Station servicing missions.  After visiting the area around the spaceport, it strikes me that the rocket is large for launching as close as a couple miles from inhabited areas.  I do not think that Wallops has launched a rocket even close to the size of the Falcon 9.  Also, the infrastructure in the surrounding area -- such as roads and railroads -- doesn't appear to be suitable for large rockets.  I guess SpaceX would have to barge its rockets in.  But if SpaceX does launch from Wallops, it would be quite a sight to see.

Overall, while I have been skeptical about how hospitable a spaceport on a NASA range would be for commercial launches at a high flight rate, I am keeping an open mind on Wallops, at least as far as space station servicing goes.  As I was made to understand, Wallops is the most active NASA range, and it deals almost exclusively with small launches and sounding rockets.  Maybe SpaceX can make it work.

Gwynne Shotwell on The Space Show

On Friday, Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX Vice President of Business Development, was a guest on The Space Show.  While the entire interview is worth listening to, some items of particular note include:

• If Falcon 9 successfully proves reusability, the company expects to reduce prices up to 50% over time;
• Over the next couple of months, SpaceX is moving into a new half-million square foot manufacturing facility in Hawthorne (I have covered this previously);
• The new facility will have a capacity to manufacture 3-6 Falcon 9s at a time and an equal number of Falcon 1s and Dragons;
• The company is in preliminary discussions with Wallops for Falcon 9 launches;
• The company will be accepting 50-60 Merlin engines per annum at its McGregor, Texas facility;
• The company expects a stock market Initial Public Offering after a couple of Falcon 9 flights;
• 60-70% of the funding for the NASA/SpaceX COTS Space Act Agreement is coming from the company (this percentage seems very high, so I wonder how it is calculated);
• In May, the company hired 30 new employees and expects to continue this hiring pace for the next couple of months; and
• The company's gross margins on the Falcon 1 are in the single digits, while its gross margins for the Falcon 9 are healthier.

On another note, Wired has a nice cover article about SpaceX in its June edition, with a play-by-play of the March launch of the Falcon 1.  Some of the nicer parts of the article are the large pictures, especially a full page head-on photo of a Falcon 1 first stage.

SpaceX to Lease Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral [Updated]

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.

A Good Time at the 2006 X Prize Cup

Note:  Click on thumbnails for full-size pictures.

A couple of days ago, I watched a re-run episode of NOVA (in high definition) that had a fairly long segment on the late-October 2006 X Prize Cup space elevator climber competition.  As readers of this blog may know, I made the trip out to the Las Cruces, New Mexico International Airport for the Cup, so it was nice to see "objective" footage about it.   I had a very good time at the Cup, and it was great to see real hardware, but it took a while to get used to the events and displays on offer.  Everything at the Cup was a reflection of where much of the alt.space industry stands today -- tremendously exciting and interesting, but not very well organized or well rounded.

There were a handful of alt.space companies displaying hardware, such as Armadillo Aerospace, Masten Space Systems, and XCOR Aerospace.  I was able to meet and talk briefly with Jon Goff, lead engineer of Masten Space Systems.  By way of background, I have known of Jon for several years, due to the content that he published on the web when he was still a student at BYU, and his later postings to his blog at Selenian Boondocks.  Jon is a great guy and an asset to the 30-something generation of "practical dreamers."

Masten's vehicle in the morning sun.

The Cup seemed disorganized and sort of thrown together at the last minute -- not surprising considering that this was the first X Prize Cup -- but there were several nice touches to promote the alt.space industry, such as informative signs on the side of containers that had been used to transport everything to Las Cruces.

Masten's sign on the side of a container near its display.

It was nice to see that the Armadillo Aerospace team  was very outgoing with those who attended the Cup, even while in the midst of long days of competition to win the Lunar Lander Challenge.  For several hours, the whole team gladhanded and answered questions from the crowd.  It was a shame that I didn't have any good questions prepared for the occasion, because the team was tremendously open and honest.  All of the folks at Armadillo are my heroes for the step-wise approach that they are taking to vehicle development, even though they didn't win the Lunar Lander Challenge this year.

Armadillo preps Pixel, one of two vehicles that it brought to the Cup for the Lunar Lander Challenge.

In the picture below, you can see the crane truck that was used to transport Pixel for its run at the Lunar Lander Challenge.  The Challenge was one of the highlights of the Cup.  Armadillo's run was great in filling the down time between events.  The Lunar Lander Challenge flights were held in the far distance.  I thought that the flights  should have been more "front and center" and closer to the crowd.

Armadillo Aerospace's Texel vehicle, one of two vehicles prepared for the Lunar Lander Challenge.

Another highlight of the Cup was the small rocket launches from Tripoli Rocketry Association.  Even though the rocket launches were far away from the crowd, they were loud enough to be crowd pleasers.  The crowd was ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the launches and I think that there should have been been many more of them.  Less interesting to me were the events that didn't have anything to do with getting to space, such as military jet flyovers, rocket belts, and rocket bikes.  Sometimes the space-related events were held up due to non-space-related events, which didn't make sense to me.  This is something to keep in mind, as the Rocket Racing League is contemplated as a future part of the Cup.

A Tripoli Rocketry Association small rocket launch.

There were several tents filled with booths for all sorts of companies and organizations.  It was surprising and nice to see Google Earth with the largest and most prominently placed booth.  There were several large screen TVs running demos of Google Earth.  Everybody could try their hand.  It was great to meet lrae, a Google employee and moderator at the Google Earth Community.  He showed me a very cool 3D model of a space elevator in Google Earth.  (By the way, John Dvorak is a spitting image of lrae.)

I would have liked to have seen SpaceX, Bigelow Aerospace, and Blue Origin participate in a similar fashion to Google Earth.  Maybe they will participate next year.  It felt that alt.space wasn't totally represented and that old space was overrepresented.  There was too much NASA and too much Northrop Grumman, although I fully recognize that you have to tip your cap once in a while to your sponsors.  NASA did have the impressive Space Shuttle Main Engine on display.

A Space Shuttle Main Engine on display at the 2006 X Prize Cup.

Back to space elevators.  To be honest, I am not sure whether there will ever be a suitable tether material for a space elevator, but the climber challenge at the Cup was very fun to watch.  As the days wore on, I gravitated toward the competition, because that's where all the action was happening.

The vibe at the climber challenge was a lot different than the rocketry-focused events of the Cup.  The participants mostly were affiliated with universities and each entrant had at least a slightly unique approach.  Some of the teams were trying several different approaches on-the-fly.  All of the teams were very approachable.  I talked with a University of Michigan team member who said that Lockheed Martin had provided them with a high efficiency solar panel normally used for satellites.  Apparently, it wasn't a perfect panel and therefore couldn't be used on a satellite for a paying customer.

It took a long time for the competition to progress, so I would have wished for grandstands with a little shade.  As stated in other posts, the New Mexico sun is brutal and there were few places to sit and casually watch.  Also, I think that they should have had more than one tether so that there was more action going on at one time.

The Cup had a VIP pavilion sponsored by Red Bull to which I purchased a ticket.  Food and drinks were served.  It proved decreasingly of use to me as the Cup wore on, but I viewed the ticket as more of a way to support the Cup.  I did get to meet the Ansari family at the pavilion, who described making the trip to Kazakhstan to watch their sister Anousheh's launch to visit the International Space Station.  They are from the D.C. area, so we had plenty to talk about.

Overall, I had a really good time at the Cup and would recommend it to others.  As the X Prize Foundation gains more experience with these events, I am sure that they will become more organized and more well-rounded.  Probably, I will get the time off work to do it again next year.

Spaceport Trip Report -- Rickenbacker Airport

Note:  Click on thumbnails for full-size pictures.

While at home in Ohio for Christmas, I had some spare time, so I visited the nearby Rickenbacker International Airport, the preliminarily proposed location of a spaceport for the development of PlanetSpace's Silver Dart suborbital launch vehicle.  Rickenbacker is on the South Side of Columbus, Ohio, and was, until its closure in 1980, the site of Rickenbacker Air Force Base, a major logistics center for the Air Force.  The airport has parallel runways each of 12,000 feet in length, making the airport suitable for the takeoff and landing of large aircraft and spacecraft.  By way of comparison, the longest runways in the U.S. are about 15,000 feet in length, including that for Oklahoma Spaceport.  Like as happened with the Oklahoma Spaceport/Rocketplane, the state and local governments in Ohio may provide up to $20 million in tax incentives for PlanetSpace to develop its vehicle at Rickenbacker.

Columbus is a city of 1.7 million people that has come to prominence due to the construction of Interstate 70, one of the main freeways through the Midwest.  This is the land of warehouses and accompanying light industry.  Even though downtown has a few skyscrapers, most of the city and surrounding area consists of pleasant and cheap-living suburbs that have grown consistently but slowly over the years.  Columbus has largely avoided the manufacturing decline plaguing other parts of Ohio and the Midwest and enjoys a healthy, if unspectacular economy.  The Ohio State University, one of the largest universities in the United States by enrollment, is located in the city.

Upon closure of the Air Force Base, because Rickenbacker is located only about 2 miles South of I-270 -- the freeway around Columbus -- the local governments decided to provide substantial long-term tax incentives for relocating warehousing and logistics businesses to the area.  Large warehouses are being built, apparently on speculation.

Move in today.  Any scale accommodated.  Tax incentives plentiful.

Many businesses have taken the local governments up on their offer of tax incentives.  Not far from the airport are large warehouses for various multinational companies adjacent to cornfields waiting for warehouse or light industry construction.

A setting Winter sun illuminates a very large occupied warehouse near Rickenbacker.

The airport is promoted as a Foreign Trade Zone.  I'm not sure what that means specifically, but it could mean that the port is set up with customs infrastructure to receive international air freight.

An entrance sign to Rickenbacker Airport.

The tarmac at the airport/FTZ is several miles long, part of which is devoted to the operations of FedEx, a major tenant.  The airport has a wide variety of tenants.

FedEx operations on the airport tarmac.

I toured the airport on Wednesday.  There weren't many people around, due I'm sure in large part to the fact that it was the week between Christmas and New Year's Day.

Rickenbacker Airport's main control tower.

The airport has a small terminal, which accepts charter passenger flights.  It is about 10 miles South of Port Columbus International Airport, the main passenger airport for the city.

Rickenbacker Airport passenger terminal.

In addition to freeway access, the airport has excellent rail access.  Norfolk Southern has had a hub at the airport for decades and is building a major facility next to the airport to handle up to 300,000 container transfers per annum.  The scale of activity at and near the airport is extreme compared to the spaceports that I have visited (Spaceport America, Blue Origin/West Texas, and Mojave).

Airliners on the Rickenbacker tarmac at dusk.

So does having Planetspace at Rickenbacker make sense?  Columbus' weather is not a positive factor when thinking about a spaceport for suborbital tourism purposes.  The weather isn't harsh when compared to much of the rest of the Midwest, but cloudy days are plentiful.  Since suborbital flights last only 5 or 10 minutes in space, you wouldn't fly on cloudy days.  Also, there are large population centers to the North (Columbus, Cleveland, etc.) and to the East (Canal Winchester, Washington, Baltimore, etc.), which doesn't seem conducive to orbital spaceflight with our current state and mode of technology.  There is no place to drop a stage.  On the other hand, it seems like the city would be a good location for regular orbital spaceflight with a carrier aircraft/daughter spacecraft approach, like that of Scaled Composites' Tier Two.

At Port Columbus during the early 1960s, my grandfather worked as an engineer at the since-closed North American Aviation facility (North American Aviation was bought by Rockwell, which in turn was bought by Boeing).  However, nowadays there is not much aerospace design legacy in the area.  All workers designing and manufacturing a spacecraft would need to make the move to Columbus.  As stated, the area is pleasant and has a low cost of living.  Culturally, the city has a lot to offer, especially with the presence of OSU, but it is not at the level of Los Angeles or other major metropolitan areas.  On the other hand, the city center is close and a wide variety of living styles are available nearby -- from a townhouse in German Village to a cabin in Wayne National Forest.

I am surprised by all of the tax incentives that the state and local governments seem willing to provide.  Further, it's not clear whether the incentives could be turned into cash, as Rocketplane accomplished with its tax incentives from Oklahoma.  Perhaps these tax incentives are easier to obtain from governments than thought previously, and should be sought out as a matter of course by aerospace entrepreneurs.  Perhaps tax incentives are becoming the way of the world today.