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Subject: SPACE Digest V11 #65

SPACE Digest                                      Volume 11 : Issue 65

Today's Topics:
      Re: Fun Space Fact #1: Launcher Development Costs
       Re: Fun Space Fact #1: Launcher Development Costs (long)
       Re: Did SEASAT See More Than It Was Supposed To?
               Re: Space Station Costs
             SPACE Digest archive address
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Date: 19 Feb 90 16:24:13 GMT
From: samsung!umich!umeecs!itivax!vax3![e-mail]  (Allen W. Sherzer)
Subject: Re: Fun Space Fact #1: Launcher Development Costs

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Constitutional rights? We don't need no stinking Constitutional rights!) writes:
>This shows a couple of interesting modes of thought.  First, of
>course, is the contention that the Shuttle "doesn't work very well".

Which it doesn't. It is by far the high cost suplier of launch services.
It requires too much processing, too many people to make it ever work
in a cost effective manner. Two pads and 10 launches a year aren't enough
to bring costs down.

>What this really means, of course, is that the Shuttle isn't what it
>was billed as when the money for it was justified to Congress.  But
>then, it was Congress that kept cutting back the funding for it,
>wasn't it?

This is the best arguement I have ever seen for keeping NASA out of
the operations buisness. Boeing builds aircraft because the market is
there. They assess the requirements, decide on cost, and comit the
funds.

Congress funds space because they feel like it. If they don't feel like
it this year, they cut back. They don't care about the markets to be
services or even if it ever works at all. We have got to build spacecraft
the way Boeing builds aircraft, not the way NASA builds spacecraft.

>The other interesting thing to be gleaned from Mr. Bowery's
>statement is that for some reason, totally undocumented and
>unsubstantiated, AMROC's booster is "likely to work very well".

I think that is a fair assessment.

>Why?  Other than the fact that it's a lot less complex and has a lot
>less capability than the Shuttle, on what is the contention that
>it's "likely to work very well" based,

Those look good enough to me.

>...would be from half a dozen to a dozen new LIGHT boosters.
>
>Which is great if your goal is to put payloads ranging from a couple
>hundered to a couple thousand pounds in LEO, but hardly what is
>needed for more ambitious undertakings.

At the moment, that's about all which is needed. However, as AMROC
gets going, markets will build. At AMROC prices, every grad student
in the country will be able to put up a payload for their thesis.

When US aircraft companies started, they didn't have 747's. Yet
they did fine and used the money they made to service larger and
larger markets until pretty soon we did have 747's. Why not do the
same thing with space?

>The scattergun approach is
>usually not particularly fruitful when a specific requirement is to
>be met.

So what is the requirement?

Actually, the scattergun approach worked quite will for many US
industries including: Computers, Automobiles, and Aircraft. A lot
of people get into it, they generate lots of ideas, a few strong
companies who can put it all together emerge. I don't have any
problem with it.

   Allen
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Allen W. Sherzer     | Cthulhu for President -                           |
|  [e-mail]         | If you're tired of choosing the LESSER of 2 evils |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Date: Mon, 19 Feb 90 16:24:52 CST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Fun Space Fact #1: Launcher Development Costs (long)

Henry Spencer writes -

>> Uncomfortable though it makes me to agree with Jim Bowery :-), he's
>> right on this one.

Well, it makes me uncomfortable when I agree with Mr. Bowery, too.
That, in fact, was a big part of my point.  Isn't it rather
counterproductive for him to usually behave in a fashion that causes
peoples' skin to crawl, even on those occassions when they might
agree in general with what he has to say?


>> If NASA had been given every cent it wanted, the shuttle
>> would still not be able to meet the schedule or cost promises --

This would seem to depend on just exactly when one chooses to take
one's benchmark, vis a vis costs, plans, and promises.  I believe
that the original system proposed at NASA involved a smaller, less
complex vehicle than the current Shuttle (which would have
consequently had lesser demands for processing) and a liquid-fueled
flyback booster.

In the face of budgetary pressures and the necessity of accepting funds
from (and meeting requirements for on-orbit delta-vee of) DoD, the
larger more complex Shuttle with solid boosters and its (relatively)
delicate main engine evolved.

So, it seems perfectly reasonable to me to say that at that point it
was the political and budgetary problems that created the initial
problems that led to the Shuttle that we now have.


>> And you can't overcome [the requirements for processing and the
>> subsequent long turn around time for Shuttle missions] by just
>> buying a pile of orbiters and enough manpower to process them in
>> parallel, because there aren't enough pads or VAB bays for that mass
>> processing.

This line of argument seems just a bit disingenuous to me.  All it
shows is that the projected schedules and costs couldn't be met WITH
THE CURRENTLY EXISTING INFRASTRUCTURE.  If we can postulate the
addition of orbiters to the fleet and crews to fly and process them,
why is it such a great step to further postulate the addition of
pads to fly them from and VAB facilities to process them in?

But all that is still irrelevent to my point; that being that if
NASA had gotten what it asked for in the first place we would have a
very DIFFERENT Shuttle than that which we currently possess.


>> Sure about that?  The laser-launcher people say that the largest
>> payload which absolutely has to go up in one piece is a human with
>> life support.  That can be done with a couple of thousand pounds,
>> possibly rather less.

Well, until such time as you'd care to postulate many hundreds of
launches of these light boosters per day, I think I can probably
safely stand by my statement.

Personally, I don't see that quantity of launches as being a
realistic scenario until such time as lasers, launch loops, tethers,
mass drivers, or some yet to be discovered technology is put in
place.

Over the long term, putting things together is undoubtedly cheaper
than building them in one piece down here and then having to loft
them in one piece.  But it assumes having someone at the other end to
do the assembling.  And in order for costs to remain cheap when
including *that* cost, it's necessary to postulate some way for
those folks (or machines) doing that assembling to remain on
station.  And so on.

And of course, this gets back to the definition of what we're
talking about when we say something "works well" or it doesn't.  I
still maintain that Mr. Bowery's definitions seem to be strictly
motivated by politics.  I tend to be of a somewhat more pragmatic
turn of mind, and define "works well" as "fulfills mission X
successfully Y percent of the time", with Y a number approaching 100.

Hence, "works well" rather depends on what the mission required is.
If I want to loft HST or a KH-12 to LEO, which system "works well",
the Shuttle or a booster with a payload limit of 2,000 pounds?   If
I want to put up a multitude of (relatively) small surveyor
satelites in LEO, which system "works well" and which doesn't?  If I
want to put medium sized payloads in Clarke orbit or launch
sophisticated planetary probes to the outer solar system, which
system "works well" and which doesn't?

From the answers [Shuttle, light booster, and neither,
respectively], I think it's relatively apparent that "works well" is
a pretty mission-relative thing.  You seem to realize that yourself,
given your own words.

>> Modest goals and simple hardware really do go a very long way towards
>> making things work well.  I confess I do have a few doubts about Amroc's
>> hybrid rockets, but that aside, they've done the right thing.

Yes, I agree that they've done the right thing, particularly for a
commercial enterprise.  I'm also a firm believer in keeping things
as simple as possible.  However, if one has certain mission
requirements, there are some limitations on how far that can be
carried.

However, if we define "works well" to equate to "meets goals" and
then set modest goals, it would seem that the space launcher that
works *best* would be a brick, if we set the "modest goal" of putting
0 grams in orbit.  I just don't think it's reasonable to define
"works well" in that kind of absolute sense, other than to look at
the performance of assigned tasks after implementation (what is
generally referred to as 'reliability').

And the Shuttle, despite all its flaws, has overall been about as
reliable a system as any other experimental vehicle.  We can play
the political games of Mr. Bowery and simply declare that a system
which hasn't flown will be "likely to work very well", or we can
play the emotionalist games of Mr. Neff and talk about the Shuttle
that catastrophically failed (which failure doesn't seem to me to be
related to "not working very well" so much as it was to some very
bad bureaucratic decisionmaking - is a failure which occurs because
a system is demanded to perform under conditions for which it wasn't
designed "not working very well"?) without regard for the failure
rate of other experimental vehicles or of other launchers.  But if
that's the game, why bother to play?

I prefer to try to examine the facts and use logic, instead.  I think
from what I've seen of your writings in various places that you
probably do, too.  Perhaps that's why I've generally preferred your
postings to some others I've seen, even in those cases where I
disagreed with you.

I trust you've noticed (and I doubt some others have) that at no
point have I said that the Shuttle system is a *good* system.  I have
not stated that what seem to be the trends over the past dozen years
or more in the way of NASA management are *good* trends, nor have I
claimed that NASA is right/wrong and the rest of the world is
wrong/right, nor that AMROC or the other commercial startups are
wrong or bad.  I have, in fact, deliberately not made any comment on
all the very real flaws in the Shuttle or those at NASA, nor have I
made any comments about the good aspects of any systems, except
insofar as they seemed to be necessary to point out the things that
Mr. Bowery seemed to be quite deliberately glossing over.

I simply saw yet another very one-sided and polemic posting from a
source of many of like tone in the past, and felt that comment was
necessary after having refrained so many times in the past.


>> How so?  I don't see anything much Amroc is doing that couldn't have
>> been done when the shuttle was designed.  (Remember that launch technology
>> has been largely stagnant ever since NASA stopped funding for all
>> launch-technology work not related to the shuttle.)  They've got slightly
>> better materials and somewhat better electronics, and that's about it.

And you don't consider that better materials and electronics, coupled
with improvements in manufacturing (which have gone on regardless of
what NASA did), are enough to warrant some comment?

Manufacturing and production are subject to engineering improvements,
too, and ignoring that and talking as if simply adjusting the dollars
spent for inflation makes all else equal strikes me as rather
misleading.  But then, Mr.  Bowery seems to be more interested in
winning converts and followers than he is in intelligent support
based on reason.

No, they're not doing anything that couldn't have been done, but
they're able to do it more easily and more cheaply.  Certainly not
enough differential there to cover the difference in costs between
what NASA spent on the Shuttle and what AMROC will probably spend,
but then we're not talking about quite the same mission requirements,
are we?


==============================================================================
| Fred McCall  ([e-mail]) | My boss doesn't agree with anything  |
| Military Computer Systems           | I say, so I don't think the company  |
| Defense Systems & Electronics Group | does, either.  That must mean I'm    |
| Texas Instruments, Inc.             | stuck with any opinions stated here. |
==============================================================================

------------------------------

Date: 19 Feb 90 18:15:37 GMT
From: swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utzoo![e-mail]  (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Did SEASAT See More Than It Was Supposed To?

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (John A. Weeks III) writes:
>    ... it showed things in the world's oceans
>    that the Navy neither expected nor wanted to
>    have shown."
>
>Does anyone know exactly what is being alluded to here?

Seasat radar images definitely showed detailed features of the sea bottom
in shallow areas.  This was thought to be the result of bottom features
affecting the shape of the sea surface -- the radar beam definitely does
not penetrate seawater to any significant extent, last I heard.  The
question is, can you find a submerged submarine that way?  There has
been much speculation, but as far as I know there has been no definitive
answer from people in a position to know.
--
"The N in NFS stands for Not, |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
or Need, or perhaps Nightmare"| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: 19 Feb 90 14:57:42 GMT
From: usc!samsung!umich!ox.com!itivax!vax3![e-mail]  (Allen W. Sherzer)
Subject: Re: Space Station Costs

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Todd Johnson) writes:
>My problem with the idea is that it appears to be a very short-lived
>approach (not that that's necessarily bad but it certainly has to be
>factored in).

True. The LLNL people don't see this as a permanent base. Rather it is
a way to boot up the infrastructure. We need space based industry and
this is a cheap and fast way to get it started.

>So what's going to happen to an inflatable
>structure with five years of accumulated space debris damage?

If designed properly, about the same thing as a hard structure. The only
difference is that the inflatable one will cost millions to fix and the
hard one will cost billions.

I don't think the LLNL people see the inflatable as permanent. Their point
is to get something up cheap which can pay for itself. The hard structure
station should be built a few years later with lunar materials. Much cheaper.

>I'm also not wild about LLNL's credentials as a space research organization.
>I think that's pretty far out of their area of expertise.

First of all, it is not far out. It's all off the shelf.

Second of all, a lot of imposible things have been done by people who
didn't have the expertise and experience to know they were impossible.

Give them a shot. The competition will do everybody a lot of good and all
they want is 20% of the cost of the Freedom station. Isn't that worth
the risk?

   Allen
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Allen W. Sherzer     | Cthulhu for President -                           |
|  [e-mail]         | If you're tired of choosing the LESSER of 2 evils |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------

Date: 19 Feb 90 17:47:37 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Todd L. Masco)
Subject: SPACE Digest archive address


My apologies;  The address I gave for anonymous ftp of back issues of
the Digest, space-tech, etc. was erroneous.

The correct address is fed.expres.cs.cmu.edu (128.2.209.58)

--
| Todd L. Masco        |  Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of.
| [e-mail] |        ( ...!harvard!andrew.cmu.edu!tm2b )

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End of SPACE Digest V11 #65
*******************