by Kelvin F.Long
Centauri Dreams readers will know Kelvin Long as the Chief Editor for the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, but the résumé hardly stops there. He is also the Deputy Chair of the BIS Technical Committee and a member of the governing council. Long is the co-founder of Project Icarus, co-founder of the non-profit Icarus Interstellar (formerly serving as the Vice President European Operations) and is the co-founder of the pending Institute for Interstellar Studies. He is the managing Director of the aerospace company Stellar Engines Ltd. Here Kelvin begins a two-part article (to be completed on Monday) highlighting the British Interplanetary Society and its numerous contributions to spaceflight concepts both interplanetary and interstellar.
Liverpool is a unique location in British history. Not just because of the Beatles or Olaf Stapledon, but because this is where the British Interplanetary Society (BIS) was founded in 1933 by a Cheshire-born engineer, Philip E.Cleator. Impressed with the rocketry efforts in the US and Germany, he took the initiative to form a UK based rocket society and he published his article “The Possibilities of Interplanetary Travel” in Chambers Journal in January 1933. This was subsequently picked up by the Editor of the Liverpool Echo and eventually by the national press in the form of the Daily Express. This led to a front page feature and the gathering of a small collection of local people at his home.
The decision was then made to set up the British Interplanetary Society. The inaugural meeting of the society took place at the office of H.C.Binns on the second floor of No.81 Dale Street, Liverpool, on Friday 13th October 1933. It was not until the end of 1945 that the articles of the reformed BIS were drafted (the society was suspended during the war) and the society registered as a limited company. It was in 1936 that the London section was formed and this eventually became the main headquarters the following year. For the record, the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society was founded in 1934 and is the oldest astronautical journal in the world. The society’s popular space magazine Spaceflight (now edited by David Baker) was founded in 1956 (a year before Sputnik 1), and remains at least one of the oldest space magazines still in existence (today the BIS also publishes the space history journal Space Chronicles (1980), edited by John Becklake, and the science fiction based e-magazine Odyssey (2011), edited by Mark Stewart.
Image: Current headquarters of the British Interplanetary Society at 27/29 South Lambeth Road, London. Credit: Colin Philp.
The society grew from those early foundations and some of the earlier members included people like Arthur C. Clarke, Les Shepherd, Eric Burgess, Ralph Smith, Harry Ross, Ken Gatland, Val Cleaver and later on Patrick Moore. For anyone who knows their space history, all of these people have had huge impacts on the development of space technology or in helping to communicate and advocate for the exploration of space. Clarke pioneered the idea of the telecommunications satellite as well as writing world class science fiction; Eric Burgess was the first to suggest to Carl Sagan that a message for ET could be included on the Pioneer spacecraft; Val Cleaver was the inventor of the British rocket engine that went into the Blue Streak missile; Gatland, Smith and Ross were all pioneers of rocketry, satellite payloads and space architectures; Les Shepherd was a pioneer of nuclear propulsion and eventually went on to be the president of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF), an organization that included the BIS as one of its founding members in 1951.
According to the Memorandum of Association:
“The objects for which the British Interplanetary Society is established are to promote the advancement of knowledge and the spread of education and particularly to promote the advancement and dissemination of knowledge relating to the science, engineering and technology of Astronautics and to support and engage in research studies and to disseminate the useful results thereof and in furtherance thereof…to hold meetings, promote exhibitions, publish reports, make awards, medals or grants, to provide funds for educational and academic activities in furtherance of its objects”.
In order to understand the crucial role that the British Interplanetary Society has played in the history of space exploration, it’s worth looking at some examples from the society’s rich technical history.
The BIS Moonship
For years people had dreamed about visiting the Moon and some even wrote about it. Jules Verne originally wrote From the Earth to the Moon in 1865. This is a fascinating tale of a group of people who build an enormous space gun and launch themselves in a projectile spaceship all the way to the Moon. Verne had apparently done some calculations for the mission, although the particular method lacked the safety we have come to expect for man-rated vehicles – it is not likely the crew would have survived the trip. H.G.Wells made an interesting attempt at lunar flight in his 1901 story The First Men in the Moon. The vehicle would use a mysterious substance called “Cavorite” which would negate the force of gravity to effectively give the vehicle its required lift properties and allow a visit to the extraterrestrial civilization of insect-like creatures inhabiting the Moon known as the Selenites.
These were wonderful works of the imagination but could we come up with anything that resembled reality? So it was that in 1938, the BIS Technical Committee decided to go the full distance and produce a conceptual design of a vessel that would carry a crew of three safely to the Moon, permit them to land for a stay of fourteen days, and provide for a safe return to the Earth with a final payload of half a ton. The object of the exercise was to demonstrate that, within the capabilities of propellants that could be specified (at least theoretically) at the time, such a mission was not merely possible but would be economically viable – insofar as the vehicle lift-off mass from the Earth would be no more than one thousand tons. The conceptual design that resulted came to be known as the BIS Lunar Spaceship, and for all its flaws and misconceptions it must be regarded as one of the classical pioneering studies in the history of astronautics.
Image: BIS Moonship and Lander. Credit: British Interplanetary Society.
The mission proposed for the Lunar Spaceship would involve total velocity changes in excess of 16 km/s, a figure that would be significantly increased by certain losses. The best available propellants were not expected to achieve rocket motor efflux velocities of one quarter of that figure. This enormous disparity implied that, if one attempted to achieve the entire mission with a simple single-stage vessel, 99% or more of its initial lift-off mass would have to consist of the propellant. (In the more common parlance of rocketry this required a mass ratio exceeding 100.) The most enthusiastic proponents of space flight were at one with their critics in dismissing this as inconceivable. To circumvent the problems, the pioneers of astronautics invented the Step Rocket, in which the vessel consisted of a series of stages of diminishing size, fired in sequence. As each successive stage completed firing, its engines and other redundant structure would be discarded leaving the higher stages to continue the flight.
In this way it would be possible to obtain a high mass ratio without invoking the need to achieve impossible structural factors. Looked at in another way, the total velocity change required of the overall vessel would be shared between the stages. In this case, four equal stages would each need to contribute little more than 4 km/sec to the total velocity change. That would be possible with the performance of known propellants. The proportion of the stage mass taken up by propellant would assume a reasonable level (say, 75%, corresponding to a mass ratio of 4). However, a penalty would be incurred in the final payload, which would be reduced in inverse proportion to some number raised to the power of the number of stages. Optimistically, at the time, that number might have been taken as 10. Thus, with four stages, the final payload might be expected to be only one ten-thousandth of the lift-off mass. The nub of the argument of the more informed critics of such a lunar flight would have been that such a mission would probably have required as many as five stages, perhaps more, so that the initial vessel would have had to match an ocean liner in size to carry an ultimate payload of one ton. Such a mission could not be viable.
In 1919 Robert Goddard, in his classic paper “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes”, went a stage further than the step rocket principle in suggesting a firing procedure that amounted to the continuous discarding of redundant structure. This procedure, in principle, could result in a significant improvement in payload ratio compared to the step rocket. The BIS, in its design concept, adopted a cellular construction that, in essence, conformed to Goddard’s suggestion.
The BIS Space Ship was described in the January 1939 Journal by H.E. Ross. The vessel was divided into six tiers (steps) of equal hexagonal cross-section and the six sections were made up of an array of tubes each consisting of separate rocket motors. Each of the lowest 5 steps was made up of 168 motors, intended to impart sufficient velocity to achieve escape from the Earth’s gravitation. The remaining stage consisted of 45 medium motors and 1200 smaller tubes intended to land the remainder of the vessel on the Moon, allow for subsequent escape from the latter (leaving redundant structure on the surface of our satellite), and for reduction in velocity prior to entering Earth’s atmosphere. Perhaps the most important lasting achievement of the Lunar Spaceship study, however, came from its conclusions regarding the landing upon, and lift-off from, the lunar surface. R.A. Smith developed the concept after World War II in an article – “Landing on an Airless World” – published in the August 1947 BIS Journal, accurately depicting the procedure that was to be adopted with the Apollo Lunar Excursion Module. The only notable difference between the two cases was, perhaps, that Smith’s design was more elegant than the actual LEM.
The Technical Committee decided that its activities should embrace an experimental programme to support its Lunar Spaceship concept. From the outset, it rejected the experimental “firing of free rockets” as valueless on account of their small scale and lack of control over the many parameters involved in such flights. It made no attempt, therefore, to emulate the VfR [the German Verein für Raumschiffahrt, or Society for Space Travel] or later American groups. The BIS workers considered that the development of rocket motors for their proposed lunar mission would have to proceed in stages, beginning with literature and experimental studies of possible propellants, followed by the design of chambers and nozzles on the best theoretical basis – the work of Sänger was cited as noteworthy in this respect.
The resulting motors and selected propellants would then be brought together in static proving stand firings in which all the variables could be systematically controlled and measured. The intention was correct and logical, but even the over-optimistic members of the Technical Committee were bound to note that such a program was far beyond their resources. Nevertheless, largely under the supervision of Janser, who was a research chemist, they embarked on the preliminary stages of the propellant survey hoping that eventually they would solicit sufficient support from public benefactors, convinced by the evidence emerging from the Lunar Spaceship study, to proceed with serious development. Undaunted, R.A. Smith designed a basic test stand that was actually constructed. Despite some shortcomings, the program of the Technical Committee was a laudable endeavor.
The BIS Space Suit
In a November 1949 symposium, Harry Ross presented a paper on the “Lunar Space-Suit”. Ross had examined the problem of a 68 kg lunar space suit (equivalent to 11 kg on the Moon) which could be worn for up to 12 hours, within the temperature range of 120 degrees to minus 150 degrees Celsius, representing night and day. The suit design was 4-ply, made up of a thin exterior skin of closely woven cloth. It had a 1 cm layer of cellular heat-resisting material (Kapok, wool, felt et cetera) and a 1-2 mm main airtight sheath of fabric-backed natural or synthetic rubber. It also had an interior lining of non-hygroscopic material, mainly for comfort and to manage contact between the rubber and skin and absorption of the water-vapor.
Image: The BIS Space Suit. Credit: British Interplanetary Society.
The exterior of the lunar space suit was to be a highly burnished metallic film, designed to reflect as much heat as possible. The chest and thigh areas were to be given an external matt-black finish to manage heat loss. Operation of the suit during the lunar day would require further cooling through the use of a low boiling liquid such as ammonia or water – which would vaporize to space through a thermostatic valve. The helmet was to be a light, rigid double-shell structure, with the inner a bright alloy metal and the outer a plastic with burnished metal coating. Lateral vision of 180 degrees was proposed with a minimal vertical extension in order to minimize heat gain or loss. A special glass to prevent heat and actinic ultraviolet rays would be employed. There would be further precautions, including providing the helmet with a shading peak and an external moveable visor made either of darkened glass or bright metal pierced with cross-slits in front of the eyes. The suit was to be a good fit to ensure maximum comfort and the shoulders would be internally padded.
Considerable thought went into the problem of air-conditioning, as discussed by Bob Parkinson in his book Interplanetary:
“Compressed (bottled) oxygen was regarded as simplest, and Ross recognized that a skin-tight suit with bottled oxygen flushing to waste might be sufficient, the weight of even a 12-hr supply not being excessive. However, a pure liquid oxygen supply was suggested, with the atmosphere maintained at about 160 mm Hg (21 kPa). The suit’s atmosphere was to be circulated through the conditioning units and throughout the dress by an electric fan-pump driven by the electric battery. Respired carbon dioxide was to be removed by chemical means – sodium peroxide being preferred because the reaction yielded oxygen, reducing the generous allowance of 0.78 litres per min by as much as 43% – as against, for example, sodium hydroxide, where there is no regain. The sodium peroxide would also absorb water, of which it was assumed the lungs and skin would yield some 108 gm/hr”.
The space suits that were eventually worn by the Project Apollo astronauts are a far cry from this original 1940s design. But the work started out by Harry Ross led to credible thinking on how humans could survive in a self-contained, mobile habitat. The original paper by Harry Ross is titled “Lunar Space Suit,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Vol.9, No.1, pp.23-37, January 1950
Project Megaroc
The “Megaroc” man-carrying rocket proposal had been put forward by R.A. Smith in 1946 after H.E. Ross observed that the V-2 was “nearly big enough to carry a man.” The objective was to provide manned ascents to a maximum of 304 km (one million feet). During flight, it was proposed that scientific observations could be made of the Earth and the Sun, that radio communication through the ionosphere could be tested, and that data should be collected on human performance over a wide range of g-conditions. The project was submitted to the Ministry of Supply on 23rd December 1946, but rejected. The proposal has remarkable similarities to the subsequent American Mercury project. Where differences do occur, they generally arise from the fact that Megaroc was much less ambitious, not being designed for orbital flight.
The Ross and Smith Megaroc was a modified, enlarged and strengthened V-2. The normal motor was retained but the tank diameter was increased and the end walls strengthened to accommodate enough propellant for 110 sec at full thrust, and a further 38 sec at constant acceleration. This brought the maximum hull diameter up to 2.18 m. The graphite efflux control vanes were retained, enlarged, and given the extra duty of imparting a slow stabilizing spin to the rocket. On the other hand, the big aerodynamic fins and associated controls were omitted, saving some 320 kg of weight. This was, indeed, one of the first big rocket designs in which aerodynamic fins were omitted – a feature not generally adopted in practice for another ten years.
Image: The BIS Project Megaroc. Credit: British Interplanetary Society.
The standard turbo-pump was retained but turned through 90°, rotating about the major axis of the rocket to prevent the turbine promoting tumbling after fuel cut-off. In place of the instrument bay and warhead there was a pressurized cabin, enclosed in a streamlined, jettisonable nose cone. This brought the overall length of the rocket up to 17.5 m. The launch weight was 21.2 tons. The cabin, with a return weight of 586 kg, had two large side-ports for access, observation and egress.
There was also a “strobo-periscope” (a modified form of the BIS’ pre-War coelosat, which was an experimental device to examine the possibilities of interstellar navigation) for rearward viewing after the rotating cabin had separated from the hull. Mercury’s one-ton double-walled titanium cabin started off with a topside escape hatch, two small ports and a periscope. However, the hatch was later more conveniently situated, like Megaroc’s, in the side of the cabin and arrangements were made for picture-window visibility. Megaroc’s observer was to wear a standard high-altitude g-suit, with its own air-conditioning unit and personal parachute. No other air-conditioning was proposed owing to the short duration of the flight. Although both used a cradle-type seat with integral controls, the Mercury cradle was fixed while Megaroc’s was counterbalanced and designed to tilt. The cabins of both rockets were attitude-stabilized by hydrogen peroxide jets, and both were fitted with automatic, manual and emergency controls, differing mainly in that the Megaroc was designed for a less hazardous mission.
Mercury’s cabin was provided with a heat shield against frictional heating upon re-entry to the atmosphere, retro-rockets and parachutes for braking and descent. Megaroc needed no special heat shield and relied on a reefing parachute ejected by spring flaps and a compressed air charge to provide constant drag irrespective of air-density and velocity of descent. Megaroc’s cabin was suitable for either sea or land impact and was fitted with a crumple skirt to absorb some of the shock and avoid bounce with a quick-release mechanism for the parachute. The maximum ascent acceleration imposed on the Megaroc observer was 3 g (for Mercury the figure was 9 g).
Megaroc would be launched from a tower inclined at an angle of 2° from the vertical with an initial acceleration of 9.8 m/sec2. Constant thrust would be maintained for 110 sec when the rocket would have reached 46,000 m, and the effective acceleration would have become about 20 m/s2. At this point the pilot would be experiencing 3 g, the limit at which it was thought that operational duties could be satisfactorily discharged. The pilot would actuate the fuel controls at this point to progressively reduce thrust and keep the g-meter reading constant. In case of emergency at any stage of the flight, relaxation of the pilot’s grip would switch the rocket from manual operation to automatic radio-telecontrol from the ground.
When the air-density had reduced to a point where drag was negligible, a pressure operated release mechanism would unlatch the nose-cone sections ready for jettisoning. At some subsequent moment the pilot would operate a compressed-air charge to drive the cabin and hull apart. This would also initiate operation of a delay mechanism for ejection of the hull-recovery parachute.
The control connections between cabin and hull would uncouple automatically on separation and the communication system would be switched from the four-dipole arrays arranged in blisters near the stem of the hull to arrays situated under the floor of the cabin. Cabin attitude and rate of spin would be controlled by hydrogen peroxide jets. It was thought that the pilot would therefore be able to carry out experiments with various values of g, down to zero, including free movement inside the cabin, and would be able to turn the cabin stern-down for re-entry into the atmosphere. The apex of the trajectory would be attained about 6 min 16 sec after launch and the cabin’s constant-drag parachute was to be ejected in descent at an altitude of about 113 km, the maximum deceleration imposed on the pilot being calculated as 3.3 g. The parachute would be fully extended on approaching touchdown, when it would be released to prevent the cabin from being dragged along.
It was appreciated that the Megaroc project would need to progress through a series of preliminary experiments to test the practicality of the design. For example, the modifications to the turbine and fuel control, and the endurance and reliability of the motor under the prolonged running conditions would need to be verified. The efficiency of other special innovations, such as the crumple skirt, variable-area parachutes and strobo-periscope were also to be tested. An operational mock-up of the cabin was proposed, to be suspended by a cable so that the pilot could be trained in control of orientation and spin. The pilot would also be trained in the telecontrol of an unmanned rocket and cabin assembly in free flight. Manned ascents to progressively increased altitudes were to be undertaken before attempting the maximum terminal altitude of over 1,000,000 ft (304 km).
End of part one. Part two follows on Monday.
In my essay “Water and Bombs” on yahoo voices I cite an author who attributes the beginning of the industrial revolution to British patent law (allowing inventors to protect and profit from their intellectual property).
If English guys in white wigs created the modern world then Nazi marks spent to get rid of them created the space age.
And a bomb instigated by a Jewish pacifist and a rocket built by atheist communists to carry that bomb was the starting gun.
Truth is indeed stranger than fiction- and the BIS may yet come up with a way to travel to another star.
If only the ‘Ministry of Supply’ had supplied one (1) Megaroc. The United Kingdom might have been first on the Moon. And Dan Dare might have been first on Venus…
The pre-World War II British Interplanetary Society also did work on inertial guidance systems, which are as essential for space vehicles as are rocket engines. From Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Promise of Space”:
“I do not know who invented inertial guidance, if indeed any single person ever did so. But I can still clearly remember my first encounter with the principle, when it was enunciated by the late J.H. Edwards, an eccentric near-genius who was the technical director of the British Interplanetary Society immediately before World War II. Edwards worked out, and published in the January, 1939, issue of the B.I.S. ‘Journal,’ the mathematics of such an instrument, which he called an ‘absolute accelerometer.’ The Society, with wild enthusiasm, even started its construction, and Edwards proposed that we test it on the escalators of the London Underground. (This I should like to have seen.) Little did any of us imagine that far more ambitious tests of such instruments were already in progress on the other side of the North Sea and that many of them would be arriving in London at high velocity within five years.” Also:
The British Interplanetary Society was also, as usual, ahead of the game concerning the finer points of maneuvering deep-space vehicles. In the September 1954 issue of the B.I.S. ‘Journal,’ there appeared Derek Lawden’s paper, titled “Perturbation Manoeuvres.” This was perhaps the very first analysis, in the field of astronautics, of what is now called the Gravity Assist Maneuver, which saves significant rocket propellant and time in planetary voyages. In addition:
It has always seemed odd to me that Great Britain–which devoted so much money and creative talent to navigating, exploring, and traveling the Earth’s seas–took almost no part in exploring “This New Ocean,” as space is often called. (Yes, I know about the British Skylark sounding rocket and Ariel satellite programs, as well as the Black Knight, Black Arrow, and Prospero projects, but even post-Empire Britain could have done so much more; hopefully Alan Bond’s Skylon spaceplane will change things.) I have wondered:
“Might Great Britain have in space reigned,
Had only the unicorn on her crest been unchained?”
Articolo e immagini, di grande suggestione…
Saluti da Antonio Tavani
Via Google Translate:
Article and images of great beauty …
@ James Wentworth – in retrospect, the great technological prowess of post WWII Britain was just a swan song, as the country became mired in economic difficulties. Space projects were canceled. I even remember the Mustard project. Then the defense projects foundered (TSR2) and by the 1980’s Britain was abandoning home grown technology and buying foreign (usually US) military hardware.
For a cartoon alternate history of Britain in space, I recommend Warren Ellis’ “Ministry of Space” for entertainment.
Concerning SSTO and reusable launch vehicles; we live in a pretty deep gravity well and need to accept what that entails.
Lightweight structures and high powered engines cannot be made reusable after the extremes of temperature, vibration, and pressure they experience during launch. It is physics and material science; there is no unobtanium or wishalloy that will change these conditions- and there is no cheap.
The only way to bend the rocket equation in our favor IMO is with beam propulsion. Until there is such a system we can do no better than what is being built right now; a Heavy Lift Vehicle with hydrogen upper stages.
Gary Church
I found your adticle on water and bombs fascinating. I have a couple of questions:
I have seen others pooh-pooh the bombs approach to space craft acceleration, saying that the pusher plate would be eroded quickly or become ineffective. The claim is that even a neutron-absorbing substance such as beryllium or boron would become quickly saturated and no longer absorb the neutrons, and also transmute into other substances that don’t absorb neutrons, become pitted and eroded by fission fragments, melt, etc. For example, see http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/01/friedlander-on-wang-bullet-and-on.html
Any thoghts on this?
Also, I always thought that the biggest probelm with chemical rockets is that they bring the energy with them, leading to the troblesome barrier embodied in the rocket equation. Bomb propulsion allows a much more concentrated energy source, but still requires that the spacecraft bring the energy along. While it is possible to do space exploration with chemical rockets and ion drives, and likely more efficent to do it with nucelar thermal or bombs, it seems to me that for space travel to really become efficient and affordable humans will need to perfect some form of laser propulsion or mass driver system, where you only need to accelerate the payload, and not some multiple orders of magnitude greater mass of propellant.
The 1938 Moon Lander project had to be known to Wernher von Braun and his colleagues.
Because his long fermenting Mar Project seems to have started at Peenemuende.
He did write up the V2 and Peenemuende experience in the JBIS , not long after the war, except for an account written for the US army I think this may have been the first publication in a journal.
I know von Braun was in touch with the BIS after the war, not sure before the war? ……..but he must of had access to the Journal.
Designing Das Marsprojekt down to the bolt head had to have been influenced by the BIS’s pioneering work.
“-it seems to me that for space travel to really become efficient and affordable humans will need to perfect some form of laser propulsion-”
Thanks for reading my article.
As for efficient and affordable: There is no cheap.
“I have seen others pooh-pooh the bombs approach–Any thoughts on this?”
They scoffed at Goddard’s paper on space travel. Humiliated him. He was right and so was Stan Ulam. If you want your questions answered I suggest you read George Dyson’s book on Project Orion. You will have to go to the library to check it out; it is out of print.
An evolved approach to pulse propulsion was described by the BIS; the “Medusa” concept which uses a gigantic parachute instead of a massive pusher plate. I have never read the paper but it also sounds fascinating as it combines the basic idea of a solar sail with nuclear weapons.
Whatever works; and chemical propulsion does not for deep space travel.
Al, your filled with information. I will have to check if von Braun did publish in JBIS. He was certainly aware of the BIS as some of the early BIS members had contact with the Germans before the war, I think. Not many people know that the Brits actually tested some of the V2s, but on the ground only. We had the odd one or two laying around London don’t you know. One of my friends Richard Osborne reminds me when I refer to the Project Megaroc, that the Germans also developed the A9, which would have gone further and higher, and hit the US.
James Jason Wentworth; yes you are right it is odd that Britain stepped back from participating in its own space program. This is not the fault of the scientists, but of the short-sighted political elite who did not get the vision or did not understand the investment opportunity. Things are looking better today thought under the current government, as I alluded to in my article. Ultimately, for us it comes down to always having to do things on a shoe-string budget.
GaryChurch; I disagree with your view on SSTO my friend. Check out the results of the Skylon spaceplane research. They have now cracked the heating problem by the development of their heat exchanger technology. It really is a significant technological breakthrough and perhaps has not yet been fully appreciated. It amazes me that this little piece of technology, a heat exchanger, may hold the key to opening up the solar system and beyond. Without SSTO, how do we build a human based infrastructure in space? It is not sustainable or practical to undertake interstellar exploration, from Earth HQ – we need to be out there and setting up the solar system wide economy. You refer to beam propulsion but how much mass is the beam and lens? Even STARWISP required a 50,000 tons Fresnel lens, which curiously is about the mass of the Daedalus fuel. And the STARWISP probe was like grams in mass, if I recall.
Regarding Medusa, the beauty of this concept is it solves two of the fundamental limitations to an external nuclear pulse system. The ISP of Orion is limited by the length of the shock absorbers and the angle you subtend from the blast products. Medusa gets around both of these issues by the employment of a canopy based system, and so leads to an improved ISP. Whether it would work in practice is a different question. But it’s the sort of out of the box thinking we need, if we are to navigate the rocket equation efficiently.
Best wishes
Kelvin
GaryChurch wrote (in part, regarding launch vehicles):
[Lightweight structures and high powered engines cannot be made reusable after the extremes of temperature, vibration, and pressure they experience during launch. It is physics and material science; there is no unobtanium or wishalloy that will change these conditions- and there is no cheap.]
MCD (Minimum Cost Design) satellite launch vehicles can be cheap. The MCD criteria, which engineer Arthur Schnitt of The Aerospace Corporation discovered in the early 1960s, enable simple and cheap expendable (recyclable) launch vehicles to be built (because of their structural robustness, MCD rocket first stages can even be parachute-recovered in the ocean for reuse, if desired). MCD rockets are built using simplified, mass-production techniques, are pressure-fed, and use easy- and-cheap-to-handle propellants such as LOX and kerosene or LOX and propane. Also:
Lieutenant Colonel John R. London III wrote a book titled “Low Earth Orbit on the Cheap: Methods for Achieving Drastic Reductions In Space Launch Costs” (see: http://www.dunnspace.com/leo_on_the_cheap.htm ). Chapter 9 of this book (see: http://www.quarkweb.com/nqc/lib/gencoll/leocheap_ch9.htm ) has information about proposed Minimum Cost Design satellite launch vehicles, and this web page (see: http://www.quarkweb.com/nqc/lib/gencoll/leocheap ) has links to each chapter and to the entire book. Engineer Arthur Schnitt of The Aerospace Corporation discovered the Minimum Cost Design criteria, and he designed several satellite launch vehicles using the Minimum Cost Design criteria (see: http://www.dunnspace.com/home.html ). In addition, the “Low Cost Rockets” section of the Dunn Engineering web site (see: http://www.dunnspace.com/index.htm ) has an interesting technical report about simple, self-pressurizing liquid propellant rocket systems (see: http://www.dunnspace.com/self_pressurized_rockets.htm ). In addition:
In the late 1960s Boeing, Chrysler, and McDonnell Douglas studied MCD rockets, and Boeing even built a prototype MCD first stage, whose actual construction was sub-contracted out to a non-aerospace metal-working firm. At about that time, TRW built and successfully static-fired a 250,000 pounds thrust, pressure-fed LOX/kerosene MCD rocket engine that–except for its pintle injector, which TRW built in-house–was also sub-contracted out to a non-aerospace metal-working company for its actual construction; the engine was free of combustion instability. Aerospace companies lost interest in MCD rockets when they realized that non-aerospace companies could also produce them, thus creating new competition in their field. As well:
Because of their simplicity, MCD rockets face twin psychological barriers among aerospace engineers. Such engineers, with their inculcated training and tradition of reducing rocket mass while maximizing rocket performance, find MCD rockets to be at odds with their mindsets. Many engineers also find MCD rockets to be uninspiring and uninteresting because their designs do not push the limits of the state of the art. In my humble opinion, however, a rocket is a means to an end–for getting into space. Being able to get into space more cheaply and frequently (which would allow us to go farther and do more out there) is–to me, at least–a very exciting and inspiring reason to use MCD rockets to get out there.
While our ancestors mocked Goddard et al because the idea of rocket travel through space was so outside the box for most people (or viewed as kiddish science fiction thanks to Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers) – though ironically many grassroots rocket organizations across the globe got their starts in the 1930s – the view on nuclear bomb propulsion for space is different.
The public has known since 1945 that nuclear power and weaponry is real. Until the early 1960s the powers that be touted nuclear energy as the solution to many of our future needs and issues. Even cars were going to be nuclear powered: The Ford Nucleon concept of 1958 (some versions even had the classic tail fins) would go five thousand miles before the driver had to stop at a local nuclear fuel rod station to have their old rods changed out. The satire in Dr. Strangelove about our nation being able to survive a nuclear conflict with no more than ten to twenty million citizens killed – tops – was no joke to military strategists who saw nuclear bombs as the way to win all future wars.
All that has since changed, of course. Remember how people flipped out in 1997 about Cassini carrying some RTGs? Notably there was almost no noise about Curiousity using an RTG for its mission on Mars, probably because folks have more immediate concerns these days.
Thanks to decades of anti-nuke events and propaganda, you are not going to find many Americans or Western Europeans who will be enthralled at the idea of using nuclear bombs to propel spaceships, off Earth or especially on it. Things were going to start changing just a few years ago by key environmentalists who saw nuclear energy as cleaner than fossil fuels, ironically enough, but the 2011 earthquake in Japan which played havoc with some of their nuclear power plants changed that for now.
So it is not ridicule at the idea of an Orion type space vessel that will continue to do in the concept, but the fear of its propulsion system. I have said this numerous times before on Centauri Dreams, but I will repeat it again: I can think of one and maybe two nations that have the ability, the ambition, and the location to build and launch an Orion – and neither of them will be the USA or UK.
So, Gary, you can tell us over and over again why nuclear-bomb powered spaceships are the way to reach the stars, but this is not the place you should be talking to if you want to see them become reality. Not trying to sound mean here and in fact I agree with many of your ideas, but unless a high-powered Chinese or Russian politician or businessman has been following this blog, I doubt Orion will ever literally get off the ground any time soon.
Kelvin F. Long wrote (in part):
[James Jason Wentworth; yes you are right it is odd that Britain stepped back from participating in its own space program. This is not the fault of the scientists, but of the short-sighted political elite who did not get the vision or did not understand the investment opportunity. Things are looking better today thought under the current government, as I alluded to in my article. Ultimately, for us it comes down to always having to do things on a shoe-string budget.]
From what I’ve read (including in Hill’s book “A Vertical Empire”), those who were in charge of the British space program back then were indifferent to its commercial possibilities (the American companies Douglas and Vought made money launching the UK’s Ariel satellites with their Delta and Scout rockets, respectively). The UK (alone or through ELDO) could have used the Blue Streak-based Black Prince (proposed) or Europa to launch satellites for India and other Commonwealth nations. Also:
I too followed with great interest the pre-cooler breakthrough on Skylon’s SABRE air-breathing rocket engine. If space activities are to grow beyond what we now do, either SSTO (Single-Stage-To-Orbit) or MCD (Minimum Cost Design) launch vehicles (or both) *must* be developed, or else the high launch costs will forever limit money-making spacecraft to communications satellites, with all others remaining “money sinks,” although worthwhile ones (for meteorology, Earth resources, navigation, reconnaissance, etc.).
Kelvin F. Long said on March 25, 2013 at 21:00:
“James Jason Wentworth; yes you are right it is odd that Britain stepped back from participating in its own space program. This is not the fault of the scientists, but of the short-sighted political elite who did not get the vision or did not understand the investment opportunity. Things are looking better today thought under the current government, as I alluded to in my article. Ultimately, for us it comes down to always having to do things on a shoe-string budget.”
When former Prime Minister Tony Blair was interviewed by the British media about the ESA Huygens probe landing on Titan in 2005, he practically bragged about his lack of scientific knowledge regarding space and just about any other related subject going back to his school days. American politicians are hardly any better.
Scientifically ignorant leaders in the 21st Century are not only shameful and ridiculous, they are downright dangerous on a global scale these days. We need to make them more aware, or at least their advisors more aware. Or maybe we should start getting more scientists who can also do politics to run for office.
So long as we have to rely on narrow-minded and self-absorbed politicians for our space and science budgets, we will continue to crawl along in our progress with the specter of decline and worse over our heads. We can keep complaining about the weather to each other or we can do something about it.
Hi Mr. Long, thanks for your time. The NASP soured me on SSTO. I will believe it when I see it.
“You refer to beam propulsion but how much mass is the beam and lens?”
I am a fan of Kevin Parkin’s work on microwave powered launch vehicles; perhaps that heat exchanger technology might make Parkin’s concept a reality.
“-this little piece of technology, a heat exchanger, may hold the key to opening up the solar system-”
It is the small improvements that often make the difference between what works and what does not.
“-high launch costs will forever limit money-making spacecraft-”
High cost is relative. Know how much a B-2 bomber costs? There is no cheap.
“-you can tell us over and over again why nuclear-bomb powered spaceships are the way to reach the stars, but this is not the place you should be talking to if you want to see them become reality.”
And this is not the place where you should be telling other people what to write. I will keep telling it over and over again as long as Paul will let me comment.
So I will repeat again what I have said many times;
There is no other candidate for a practical interplanetary propulsion system. None.
“So it is not ridicule at the idea of an Orion type space vessel that will continue to do in the concept, but the fear of its propulsion system.”
Fear of asteroid or comet impacts may be greater after that comet lights up the sky this year. The SLS has a very powerful escape system and packaging the fissionables will allow it to transport them as safely as possible to the only place we can launch an interplanetary mission; the Moon.
Lik; I am against launching an Orion within the atmosphere of the Earth. Instead, they could be launched from deep space where any radiation would be saturated by the background anyway. Especially if launched around Jupiter but you don’t need to go that far out, just high enough above the Earths magnetosphere. Note also:
“Personally, I couldn’t think of a better use for the world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons”, Carl Sagan, Cosmos, Episode 8.
Regarding politician, yes I agree. We need more “scientifically literate” people as Defrass Tyson calls them. He is right.
Kelvin
GaryChurch said on March 26, 2013 at 17:36:
[LJK] “-you can tell us over and over again why nuclear-bomb powered spaceships are the way to reach the stars, but this is not the place you should be talking to if you want to see them become reality.”
“And this is not the place where you should be telling other people what to write. I will keep telling it over and over again as long as Paul will let me comment.”
I apologize if I did not make myself clear enough: What I meant was that while you may certainly write what you want here (so long as it falls within the Centauri Dreams guidelines et al), you are preaching to much of the choir here regarding an Orion style ship and the need for space colonization and interstellar vessels in general (this all includes myself). The people who really need to know about Orion so something can be done about it are very likely and very sadly not reading this blog.
Kelvin said on March 27, 2013 at 5:38:
“Lik; I am against launching an Orion within the atmosphere of the Earth. Instead, they could be launched from deep space where any radiation would be saturated by the background anyway. Especially if launched around Jupiter but you don’t need to go that far out, just high enough above the Earths magnetosphere. Note also:
“Personally, I couldn’t think of a better use for the world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons”, Carl Sagan, Cosmos, Episode 8.”
While I understand the concern about launching an Orion from the surface of Earth, I see several other issues here:
To build and launch an Orion in space, even no further than a high Earth orbit, will require a space infrastructure that we are decades or more away from making a reality.
Then you have the issue of lofting nuclear bombs into space for Orion. If people at one time flipped out about a few RTGs for robotic space probes which were designed to survive a rocket explosion and uncontrolled reentry (just ask the RTG that was on the Apollo 13 Lunar Module), imagine the international reaction to sending whole bombs into space. Then there is that 1963 Treaty which originally killed Orion.
As I have said, there are at least two nations I can think of which have the will, the resources, and the political imperative to launch an Orion. In addition to having their own space programs and plenty of nukes, they also have remote regions where exploding a few nuclear bombs would not be an issue. These nations are also known for not asking their populace for permission to do things on a vast scale, whether they be dangerous or not.
What I am saying here is that while we in the West bicker over every little point, these other nations could one day be sending Orions skyward. They will then have the means to colonize and utilize space with little need for cooperation.
Speaking of Daedalus, I have always felt that the need to mine Jupiter’s atmosphere was one of the biggest sticking points in making that interstellar probe a reality, right up there with a working fusion engine and an Artilect to run the ship and mission. Even in 1978, did they really see something like a floating Jupiter mining operation happening within their next century?
“Regarding politician, yes I agree. We need more “scientifically literate” people as Defrass Tyson calls them. He is right.”
The problem is most of the truly smart folks avoid politics like the plague. Thus we end up with some real winners, like the GOP nominees of the 2012 US Presidential race. And unfortunately a lot of scientists who are book smart are lacking in the social and leadership departments.
To add about Orion and its method of propulsion: Even if we could manufacture nukes, say, on the Moon, and even skipping over the slight detail about how long and how much it would take get a nuclear processing facility on the Moon, I can then see the leaders and populace of Earth fretting about what those lunar colonists might do with their own nukes, especially if they decide to become an independent society.
Orion could have happened decades ago, but we have so far missed the opportunity and if some key hurdles are not surmounted soon, the concept may never happen. Somebody needs to rechant about turning swords into plowshares and starships. Plus all the jobs and money it would make.
“-perhaps that heat exchanger technology might make Parkin’s concept a reality.”
I was musing last night and thought about another British-American joint effort; putting a Rolls Royce Merlin in the P-51 airframe. I recall watching a documentary where Adolf Galland (I think it was him) said they had nothing close to it. Not that it won the war or anything- but it is an example of that out-of-the-box thinking we need.
Gary Church; “ there is no other candidate for a practical interplanetary propulsion system”. I don’t agree with this: nuclear thermal rockets, solar sails, laser sails, ion engines….there are other ideas. David Fearn (before he passed away) published a paper around 2006/2008 proposing a 4-gridded ion thruster for example which had a claimed ISP 150,000 s. And if you don’t know him, Fearn was the world expert on Ion engines. I just dug up his two key papers on this:
Fearn, D.G, Technologies to Enable Near-Term Interstellar Precursor Missions; Is 400 AU Accessible?, JBIS, 61, pp.279-283, 2008.
Fearn, D, Ion Propulsion: An Enabling Technology for Interstellar Precursor Missions, JBIS, 59, pp.88-93, 2006.
Ljk; Agreed on building a large Orion, not practical from Earth, but once space infrastructure opens up who knows what is possible? I’m not saying you are allowed to do it, I’m just saying that from a physics and engineering perspective Orion is totally credible. Starship selection criteria goes (1) Physics (2) Engineering (3) Economics (4) political and legal.
Orion gets to (2) so far, but stumbles on the others.
Regards Daedalus, they were thinking of timescale for launch around the 2200 – 2250 timescale. By this time you would have a solar system wide economy in place. If commercial fusion reactors were common on Earth (which IMO they will be well before then) then the idea is you would have a fuel mining industry in place anyway. This brings the cost of mining He3 right down. That said, there are other ways of doing it other than using the Daedalus Aerostat method. See the John Lewis He3 mining plan for example, published in his book “mining the sky”. This uses ramjets and looks at Uranus and Neptune instead of Jupiter.
Thanks for the chat guys, and please consider joining the British Interplanetary Society, the purpose of my original article:
http://www.bis-space.com/
Best wishes
Kelvin
“-nuclear thermal rockets, solar sails, laser sails, ion engines….there are other ideas.”
Very true Kelvin, but NTR’s are only about twice as efficient as chemical rockets. For a reaction a million times more powerful that is pathetic. Ion engines have thrust measured in ounces; we are not sending any multi-thousand ton spaceships anywhere with that.
As for the rest they are…..ideas. H-bombs are on the shelf.
Thanks for your time Kelvin, as soon as I get back to work I will join the BIS. And wear the baseball cap around with pride.
Gary
“The people who really need to know about Orion so something can be done about it are very likely and very sadly not reading this blog.”
I am not Tyson or Kaku and I have no creds- I did not even graduate high school; who do you suggest I write to? I sent a letter to Obama but he has not got back to me yet. I tried to hook up with the B612 society and they are pushing their own gravity tug agenda and want nothing to do with nukes. And private space crowd; ugh. They are…..not nice people.
And I am reaching people here- I notice several comments echoing my own opinions. Maybe they had those opinions before and maybe I had something to do with it. In any case I like to write- and read other peoples opinions. Yours to.
“Even if we could manufacture nukes, say, on the Moon”
A little plutonium goes a long way. We do not have to manufacture them on the Moon, just transport the pits there for assembly. A couple thousand bombs for a mission to the outer planets moons and back (or to deflect an impact threat) would require….how many SLS trips to the Moon? That would depend on how they are packaged so as to survive a launch failure.
We can do it for what we spend on half a dozen DOD programs; and those shiny cold war toys we would be doing without do not work that well anyway.
http://www.ccnr.org/bomb_Pu.html
I find this implicit jump from commercial fusion reactors to Helium 3 hilarious. He3 fusion is orders of magnitude more difficult than D+T fusion, and we will count ourselves very lucky if we can achieve that one anytime soon. D+T fusion is what the plasma physics community is striving for and has not yet achieved in 50 years. He3 fusion is a pipe dream promulgated by some as a not-yet-existing possible future economic motive to go back to the moon. Pathetic, really.
There is a 1993 documentary on Project Orion made by BBC. This is the best of the two of documentaries on the subject.
(60 minute) Project Orion – To mars by A. bomb 199 (playlist) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22iv_g7u6IQ&list=PL8B18987EB0897E92
GaryChurch wrote (in part):
[“-high launch costs will forever limit money-making spacecraft-”
High cost is relative. Know how much a B-2 bomber costs? There is no cheap.]
If the space-based infrastructure that will one day build starships is ever to come into being, launch costs to Earth orbit *must* become low–that is, cheap. Absolute (as opposed to relative) low cost -is- possible in space flight, and it has already been achieved in at least one sector: sounding rockets. As with the simple MCD (Minimum Cost Design) satellite launch vehicles (France’s Diamant series used MCD-type, pressure-fed first stages), sounding rockets have achieved low unit costs via simplicity and mass production, particularly for those vehicles that use/used surplus military rocket motors. The Nike-Apache sounding rocket only cost approximately $6,000 apiece, and the Arcas cost about $1,800 each. Also:
In the late 1970s, the West German firm OTRAG was well on its way to achieving similarly inexpensive orbital launch capability. They successfully test-flew their modular MCD rocket design, which used standard, commercially-available, *non-aerospace* components such as: oil pipeline tubing for its nitric acid & diesel fuel propellant tanks, simple pressure-fed (ablatively-cooled, if memory serves) thrust chambers, and differential throttling (using automobile windshield-wiper motors to actuate the commercially-sourced propellant valves) for steering. The OTRAG rocket modules could be combined to create vehicles of any desired size and payload capability; as with the Jupiter C’s and Juno II’s “washtubs” of nested solid propellant upper stages, the OTRAG module-stages were also nested like a tree’s growth rings, thus keeping the vehicles’ heights reasonable. In addition:
OTRAG was not liked by the legacy aerospace companies, because their much cheaper vehicles would have greatly lowered the accepted cost ceilings for space launch vehicles, leading the governments of their countries to ask them: “Why can’t *you* launch our satellites as cheaply as OTRAG?” Had OTRAG not decided to accept Libya’s invitation to set up shop there (which brought unbearable political pressure from West Germany, the USA, and the USSR down on them), they would have out-competed the IRBM- and ICBM-derived launch vehicles that we’re still stuck with today. More recently, Beale Aerospace (which was developing a large MCD satellite launch vehicle) folded under pressure from NASA and the traditional aerospace companies, which did not want competition. As well:
These events and the failure of the Space Shuttle to lower launch costs have led to a false belief among engineers, project managers, and government officials that space flight can *never* be cheap. The legacy aerospace companies have no interest in dispelling this belief; indeed, they happily seize upon this belief, because it allows them to charge more for their rockets and launch services without being criticized for doing so. Now:
Unless we do things differently (recall Einstein’s famous definition of insanity…), that starship-building, space-based infrastructure will *never* come to pass. I think SSTO (Single-Stage-To-Orbit) launch vehicles and Earth-based space elevators will come as technology advances (my fingers are crossed for Alan Bond’s Skylon SSTO), but until then, MCD rockets can lower launch costs *now*. Their spent stages can simply be expended in the ocean, or they can be retrieved and recycled, or they can even (in the case of the first stage) be recovered by parachute and reused. The materials and manufacturing techniques that are used in these rockets are cheap enough that it does not matter (from the economic standpoint, although retrieving and recycling their spent stages would be prudent) what is done with them after use, even at high launch rates. Their final stages, which would go into orbit along with their payloads, could even be re-purposed and used as reusable “space tugs.”
ljk wrote (in part):
[The problem is most of the truly smart folks avoid politics like the plague. Thus we end up with some real winners, like the GOP nominees of the 2012 US Presidential race. And unfortunately a lot of scientists who are book smart are lacking in the social and leadership departments.]
Those two things–leadership and “social smarts” (i.e., salesmanship) were a large part of Wernher von Braun’s and Sergei Korolev’s spectacular successes in their respective countries (*two* countries, in von Braun’s case!)–they were both able to infect the powers-that-be with their enthusiasm and to lead & inspire their development teams. Also:
I once read an account of how Freeman Dyson and Wernher von Braun were with President Kennedy, trying to “sell” him on their respective projects (Orion and Apollo). Freeman Dyson spoke carefully an unemotionally (as in a lecture) and gave the President a long-range plan for exploring the solar system with Orion. Von Braun, in contrast, was passionate, enthusiastically pitching his vision while vividly describing it as in his 1950s “Collier’s” articles, and emphasizing its near-term realization (within a second term in office, that is), which was what sold President Kennedy on Apollo. And:
[To add about Orion and its method of propulsion: Even if we could manufacture nukes, say, on the Moon, and even skipping over the slight detail about how long and how much it would take get a nuclear processing facility on the Moon, I can then see the leaders and populace of Earth fretting about what those lunar colonists might do with their own nukes, especially if they decide to become an independent society.]
Indeed, this is no trivial consideration. Even large-scale *solar* power facilities on the Moon could be used as a “War of the Worlds”-type ‘heat ray’ weapon against Earth by independence-minded lunarians (“Lunatron” electromagnetic freight catapults could also be used as weapons against Earth). In Neil P. Ruzic’s non-fiction book “Where the Winds Sleep–Man’s Future on the Moon: A Projected History” (with a forward by Wernher von Braun, see: http://www.amazon.com/Where-Winds-Sleep-Projected-History/dp/0385060645 ), he posited the necessity of a treaty limiting the size of lunar solar power collectors on the Moon’s Earth-facing hemisphere, in order to prevent such mis-use of them against Earth. I’m not wild about the idea of large numbers of nuclear bombs *anywhere* in the Earth-Moon system or its immediate vicinity–a few stolen ones would make things a bit too exciting for my liking…
James Jason Wentworth – Thank you for your capsule summary of OTRAG and its most unfortunate ending.
You are also quite correct about the need to make general access to space cheap. However, I am now concerned that once private enterprise finally realizes how much there is to be made and owned in space, that they will only increase the prices to line what will be their already bulging pockets.
Oh sure, they might make it relatively cheap to vacation in an Earth orbiting hotel or even a stay on the Moon, but overall space colonization and utilization will remain expensive so long as space is a money maker for them. The minute that stops, so will they and there will go our foothold in space.
Thus the condundrum: Governments react on the geopolitical winds and are thus unreliable and corporations care only about the bottom line, not what a bunch of eager and often naive space enthusiasts might want. The rest of the populace wants to be entertained ala Star Wars and otherwise are focused on their mundane terrestrial lives.
Prove me wrong here, folks! Show me that my boyhood enthusiasm for galactic conquest is still possible.
“He3 fusion is a pipe dream promulgated by some as a not-yet-existing possible future economic motive to go back to the moon. Pathetic, really.”
I tend to agree but I have read the math on those reactions is solid; just a question of making it work (like fusion).
Since I am critical of fusion reactors I would be interested in a He3 bomb that generates a great deal of electro-magnetic energy that could be used in some way to improve the efficiency of bomb propulsion. Yes, I love the bombs.
“These events and the failure of the Space Shuttle to lower launch costs have led to a false belief among engineers, project managers, and government officials that space flight can *never* be cheap.”
It is not a false belief so far- no offense but in reality yours is. I would like to see it as much as you but the rocket equation is merciless. IMO beam propulsion is the key to any airliner to space and that is one of those technologies that may or may not prove practical.
As for space elevators; I will not even go there. I have zero faith in that fantasy. I support Criswell’s Lunar Solar Power concept so you cannot accuse me of being close-minded.
GaryChurch wrote:
[“These events and the failure of the Space Shuttle to lower launch costs have led to a false belief among engineers, project managers, and government officials that space flight can *never* be cheap.”
It is not a false belief so far- no offense but in reality yours is. I would like to see it as much as you but the rocket equation is merciless. IMO beam propulsion is the key to any airliner to space and that is one of those technologies that may or may not prove practical.
As for space elevators; I will not even go there. I have zero faith in that fantasy. I support Criswell’s Lunar Solar Power concept so you cannot accuse me of being close-minded.]
…Then this entire enterprise (pun *very* much intended) is a complete waste of time–if space travel cannot be made cheap in absolute (not relative) terms, “little more expensive that jet travel,” as Arthur C. Clarke wrote in “The Promise of Space,” then colonization of the solar system and starships will forever remain just a fantasy. If the first and most difficult (in terms of energy requirements) rung on the ladder–access to Earth orbit–can’t be made that cheap, there is no point in pursuing any space goals more ambitious than the occasional robotic planetary probe. BUT:
The $6,000 Nike-Apaches, the $1,800 Arcases, and the German V-2s show how mass production can dramatically lower vehicle costs. (Yes, the V-2s were produced using slave labor, but simplified pressure-fed rockets built in mass quantities using automated, numerically-controlled tooling can achieve similarly low unit production costs.) Also:
Another MCD (Minimum Cost Design) rocket is AirLaunch LLC’s “QuickReach” launch vehicle (see: http://www.airlaunchllc.com/ ). The two-stage QuickReach, whose testing has reached the structural test article and rocket engine static firing phase, uses LOX and liquid propane, with the propellants being forced into each stage’s single, ablatively-cooled, pressure-fed rocket engine by means of their vapor pressure alone. The U.S. Army’s liquid-propellant MGM-52 Lance ballistic missile was also pressure-fed; like the French Diamant satellite launch vehicle’s first stage, the Lance used a chemical gas generator to pressurize its propellant tanks. In addition:
The legacy aerospace companies fear MCD rockets like the OTRAG and QuickReach vehicles because, since they have more in common structurally with a submarine hull than with typical rocket tankage, nearly any metal-working company can produce them–and at much lower cost than the highly-stressed, fragile IRBM- and ICBM-derived launch vehicles. As well:
I think beam propulsion will be a wonderful way to reach Earth orbit–someday…but it isn’t available (in full-scale form) today; “the beam remains a dream.” MCD rockets, while not an elegant solution to the problem of cheap space flight, have already flown (OTRAG, Diamant first stage, Lance, etc.) and are available *now*. (Ljk is right that the new private space companies might charge what the market will bear, even with cheap space access, but that is a human problem rather than an engineering one.) As in other markets, though, competition should prevent this from happening (sooner or later, someone always wants to undercut the others’ prices in order to grab more market share). If this happens, then:
Cheap space access will, over time, increase the volume of space traffic, which will in turn create a demand for more elegant (logistically efficient) and still cheaper methods of space access to service the traffic needs, which will drive investment into developing SSTO vehicles, beamed-power propulsion, and Earth-based space elevators. This, bye and bye, will enable solar system colonization and, eventually, starships.
“Von Braun, in contrast, was passionate, enthusiastically pitching his vision-”
Von Braun supported bomb propulsion- so did Clarke- and Sagan. The ship in 2001 would have been depicted as bomb-propelled if Kubrick had not been burned out on bombs after Dr. Strangelove.
As for manufacturing bombs on the Moon, again I have to stress that is unnecessary. Hundreds of bomb pits at a time can be transported there by Heavy Lift Vehicle missions for assembly into pulse units. I repeat; a little plutonium goes a long way.
“The legacy aerospace companies have no interest in dispelling this belief; indeed, they happily seize upon this belief, because it allows them to charge more for their rockets and launch services without being criticized for doing so.”
I do not think that is right at all; they would happily seize on cheap rockets if they could be built. They would make far more money with them.
The only way to make rockets better is to make them bigger. I have always been a fan of the 260 inch solid rocket booster. They should have built that.
GaryChurch wrote:
[“Von Braun, in contrast, was passionate, enthusiastically pitching his vision-”
Von Braun supported bomb propulsion- so did Clarke- and Sagan. The ship in 2001 would have been depicted as bomb-propelled if Kubrick had not been burned out on bombs after Dr. Strangelove.]
Arthur C. Clarke was not a fan of Orion; in “The Promise of Space,” he wrote:
“Meanwhile, of course, the nuclear-test ban has put a stop to further development along these lines–permanently, many will hope. A-bombs going off at the rate of one a second for twenty minutes at a time just outside the atmosphere may be too high a price to pay for the conquest of the Solar System.”
[As for manufacturing bombs on the Moon, again I have to stress that is unnecessary. Hundreds of bomb pits at a time can be transported there by Heavy Lift Vehicle missions for assembly into pulse units. I repeat; a little plutonium goes a long way.]
Technologically possible, yes; politically possible, no. Also:
[“The legacy aerospace companies have no interest in dispelling this belief; indeed, they happily seize upon this belief, because it allows them to charge more for their rockets and launch services without being criticized for doing so.”
I do not think that is right at all; they would happily seize on cheap rockets if they could be built. They would make far more money with them. ]
They don’t do so for two reasons:
[1] They have tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of tooling and equipment for building their IRBM- and ICBM-derived launch vehicles, which would be rendered worthless if they switched to building MCD (Minimum Cost Design) rockets.
[2] They know that if they switched to making MCD rockets, smaller non-aerospace companies would jump into the market, and those smaller (read: lower overhead costs) firms would be able to beat their prices. IRBM- and ICBM-derived launch vehicles require special, high-precision tooling operated by highly-trained specialist personnel, as well as surgically-clean production facilities. MCD rockets (as Boeing and TRW found, when they subcontracted-out the actual production of hardware) can be built by ordinary metal-working outfits staffed by workers with ordinary skills for that industry. TRW’s 250,000 pounds thrust MCD rocket engine was stored outdoors in a dusty environment between static firings, which had no effects on its reliability (which was perfect, with no combustion instability); doing the same with a Thor, Atlas, or Titan rocket engine would be asking for trouble. In addition:
[The only way to make rockets better is to make them bigger. I have always been a fan of the 260 inch solid rocket booster. They should have built that.]
Um, making the rockets bigger *is* the point of MCD rockets… The MCD philosophy is -not- to minimize the rocket’s dry mass & size while maximizing its engine performance (as is the case with IRBMs and ICBMs and launch vehicles derived from them), but to minimize the -cost- of the rocket; MCD rockets are heavier and larger than their minimum dry mass & size/maximum performance (and maximum cost) counterparts, but they are much cheaper due to their simplicity, cheaper materials, and lower-performance (less stressed) rocket engines. As well:
When Arthur Schnitt discovered the MCD rocket design criteria, his analyses showed that solid propellant rockets–even very large ones, somewhat to his surprise–are not cheaper rockets. In order of cost, he found that solids and pump-fed liquid rockets are the most expensive, hybrids are less so, while pressure-fed liquid rockets using LOX and hydrocarbon fuels are the cheapest. (Pressure-fed hypergolic [hydrazine/nitrogen tetroxide] liquid rockets proved more expensive due to their higher fuel and oxidizer costs, plus the costs due to the special precautions that are necessitated by their nasty characteristics.) In some cases, he found that nitric acid used instead of LOX, burning with a hydrocarbon fuel, is economically viable; OTRAG used nitric acid and diesel fuel in their rockets.
“The MCD philosophy is -not- to minimize the rocket’s dry mass & size while maximizing its engine performance-”
Which is why it does not work. If it did they would be flying them every day and making a fortune. What you are describing is a fantasy taking place in a neat and tidy world of powerpoints and CAD drawings.
This drama was played out in the 50’s when Von Braun did calculations for reusing his massive rocket stages. He ended up with a few tons lofted into orbit for rockets bigger than the Saturn V. Those calculations still remain largely valid because the exhaust velocity of propellants and the weights of parachutes and flotation gear have not changed.
“A-bombs going off at the rate of one a second for twenty minutes at a time just outside the atmosphere may be too high a price to pay for the conquest of the Solar System-”
No one wants bombs going off in the magnetosphere; everyone with any knowledge of this subject accepts that. Clarke said it would work.
All this citing of nitric acid and dust in engines is a distractor; what matters is how much gets into orbit and nothing else. The shuttle was in fact a very efficient vehicle in the Saturn V class. The tragedy was it wasted most of it’s lift sending a 737 into orbit so it could come right back down.
GaryChurch wrote:
[“The MCD philosophy is -not- to minimize the rocket’s dry mass & size while maximizing its engine performance-”
Which is why it does not work. If it did they would be flying them every day and making a fortune. What you are describing is a fantasy taking place in a neat and tidy world of powerpoints and CAD drawings. ]
*Sigh* You just don’t get it. Such vehicles (the pressure-fed Aerobee sounding rocket series [used for -38 years-, from 1947 to 1985], the Lance ballistic missile, The Diamant SLV, and the OTRAG vehicles) not only *have* flown in large numbers (hundreds if not thousands, in the case of the Aerobees), but *are* in use today. The U.S. Navy’s Bullpup air-to-surface missile and the AQM-37 target drone (both still in use today around the world) also use pressure-fed liquid rockets. In addition:
Interorbital Systems (see: http://interorbital.com/ ) is *flying* classic MCD sounding rockets that are powered by nitric acid and turpentine/furfuryl alcohol (France’s first self-launched satellites were orbited by their Diamant A vehicle, whose MCD pressure-fed first stage burned nitric acid and turpentine). Like OTRAG’s rockets, Interorbital Systems’ in-development Neptune series of satellite launch vehicles also uses bundled rocket modules that utilize differential throttling for steering.
[This drama was played out in the 50?s when Von Braun did calculations for reusing his massive rocket stages. He ended up with a few tons lofted into orbit for rockets bigger than the Saturn V. Those calculations still remain largely valid because the exhaust velocity of propellants and the weights of parachutes and flotation gear have not changed.]
This is one of those cases where a little knowledge is, if not dangerous, at least misleading. I have read those studies, and what made the reusable parachute-recovered S-IC Saturn 5 first stage impractical were its fragility–it was built like an ICBM, with self-supporting but nonetheless thin-walled tanks–and its pump-fed F-1 engines’ susceptibility to salt-water damage. To prevent the tanks and the intertank skirt from buckling on impact, huge and heavy parachutes (which required much bigger fins, in which to stow them) were necessary, plus the forward tank dome had to be pyrotechnically blown off (along with a ring of air vent holes being pyrotechnically blown through the forward tank walls) in order to make the forward tank act as a huge, air-filled, Mercury capsule-like “landing bag” to cushion the water impact. The overhaul and refurbishment of these “abused” S-IC stages would have made the Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster refurbishment look like washing a car by comparison. In contrast:
During the ASSC (Alternative Space Shuttle Concepts) phase of the Space Shuttle’s design process in 1971, McDonnell Douglas proposed an orbiter/external tank combination that would have been mounted atop a big six-engine, pressure-fed MCD first stage that would burn LOX and propane. This thick-walled MCD first stage (the orbiter’s main engines would have ignited after it separated) was parachute-recovered and reusable, and it needed no special water impact-attenuation features like the reusable S-IC because of its robust design. Its simple, pressure-fed rocket engines, lacking turbopumps, were much less affected by seawater immersion. During the ASSC phase, the other contractors also proposed pressure-fed MCD boosters (to be used in pairs, mounted to the sides of the external tank like the Solid Rocket Boosters). NASA, under Air Force pressure (plus, the Air Force had experience with the segmented Titan IIIC & D solid boosters), chose segmented solid boosters for the Shuttle instead.
[“A-bombs going off at the rate of one a second for twenty minutes at a time just outside the atmosphere may be too high a price to pay for the conquest of the Solar System-”
No one wants bombs going off in the magnetosphere; everyone with any knowledge of this subject accepts that. Clarke said it would work.]
No one doubts that it will work. The other, non-engineering considerations make Orion untenable.
[All this citing of nitric acid and dust in engines is a distractor; what matters is how much gets into orbit and nothing else.]
Actually, no; the propellant costs, the propellant handling costs, and the vehicle launch preparation costs are also factors in the MCD criteria, which cover total life-cycle costs (including launch facility costs)–all of these things affect the payload’s *cost per pound*, which is the -only- figure that really matters. OTRAG’s president, Lutz Kayser (who is a consultant to Interorbital Systems), has described how people from the legacy aerospace companies criticized his vehicles’ low mass ratios. He would laugh and reply, “Satellite customers couldn’t care less what a launch vehicle’s mass ratio is; all they care about–besides its reliability–is how much the launch costs.”
[The shuttle was in fact a very efficient vehicle in the Saturn V class. The tragedy was it wasted most of it’s lift sending a 737 into orbit so it could come right back down.]
Reading this, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry… The Shuttle’s very design–including its heavy crew compartment and crew, with their required supplies and life-support systems–made it *by definition* one of the most, if not THE most, -inefficient- launch vehicles ever flown. It could put a maximum of 32.5 tons into orbit, while the Saturn 5 (which could and did fly unmanned) could orbit 120 tons. Aside from the dead weight of the orbiter’s wings and tail, carrying that 40-ton (later around 30 tons) External Tank all the way up from the ground to just shy of orbital velocity made it even more inefficient, while the Saturn 5 dropped off the dead weight of its spent stages as they exhausted their propellants. Even the Shuttle-C (which substituted a side-mounted cargo module for the orbiter, equipped with two or three Space Shuttle Main Engines) could orbit only 47 metric tons (2 SSME version) or 77 metric tons (3 SSME version), far short of the Saturn 5’s orbital payload capability. As well:
Ballistic missiles got the first satellites into orbit, and vehicles utilizing their technology got humans to the Moon and sent robotic probes throughout the solar system–and beyond. But that is as far as this half century-old technology will take us (affordably, that is). If we want to do more out there (and go farther in person, even to the stars) without bankrupting the human race, we will have to do things differently. No cheap LEO capability=No solar system colonization=No starships.
“This is one of those cases where a little knowledge is, if not dangerous, at least misleading.”
You are being extremely misleading; Von Brauns original calculations were for very large reusable boosters recovered in the Pacific from an assumed launch base on an island- to allow recovery of stages far downrange.
Dropping stages into the ocean to reuse them IS different than SRBs. You specify all the things to make it “cheap” but those very things are what reduce payload to impracticality. Which why Von Braun calulated hundreds of launches of these tremendous rockets to assemble vehicles in orbit for a Moon mission. Making a rocket reusable makes it unusable. Unless you are trying to sell it, of course. Then it just makes the salesman a liar.
“No one doubts that it will work. The other, non-engineering considerations make Orion untenable.”
No one doubts that non-engineering considerations can change.
“It could put a maximum of 32.5 tons into orbit, while the Saturn 5 (which could and did fly unmanned) could orbit 120 tons.”
You just do not get it; it was lifting the orbiter into orbit- a payload which approached that of the Saturn V. A sidemount cargo version was always the best way to go but never funded.
“- 77 metric tons (3 SSME version), far short of the Saturn 5?s orbital payload capability.”
Not that far short. There is no cheap.
James, you seem very well read on space stuff. I understand your desire to see cheap lift become a reality and begin a new space age; I want that also.
But…..after a couple of years of knock down drag out’s with private space advocates about all these pesky details that make cheap lift impossible, I finally made peace with myself over this charged topic.
The DOD budget is the dirty big secret that makes space exploration and colonization a real possibility. We spend more air conditioning tents in the sandbox in the summer than NASA spends on launchers.
A rocket sends something up into space where it can travel distances that do not exist on Earth. Like a jet engine that flies 30 million miles it does all this work and experiences all the wear and tear in the 8 minutes it takes to get up there where there is no drag. That is how I let go of the SSTO cheap lift dream. It is all in your point of view. Space is not like airliner travel and spaceships are not like airliners.
No cheap access to Earth orbit means no large-scale operations beyond Earth orbit–period. I quoted Boeing’s proposed Saturn 5 S-IC recovery & reuse study, which is hardly being “misleading.” The only way to make access to Earth orbit cheap with current technology is to use MCD rockets that are so simple and inexpensive to manufacture in mass quantities that it does not matter if they are simply thrown away after use. Recovering them–their first stages, at least–and recycling them (as in melting them down to make new rockets) could be left to others, perhaps in return for being paid deposits like those on soft drink containers; here in Alaska, people are paid for returning sounding rocket components found downrange at the Poker Flat Research Range. Unless something like this is done, Orion–no matter how far from Earth one proposes to start up its “engine” for safety–will forever remain a paper spaceship.
“No cheap access to Earth orbit means no large-scale operations beyond Earth orbit–period.”
Saying something HAS to be cheap does not make it so. It might become cheaper over time or it might not. We are dealing with physics and material science at the bottom of this gravity well. We cannot use nuclear propulsion in the atmosphere- actually anywhere near Earth’s magnetosphere- so that means chemical rockets.
Until some kind of beam propulsion is perfected, a Heavy Lift Vehicle with hydrogen upper stages is the best that can be done. There is nothing with a higher exhaust velocity than the steam produced by liquid oxygen and hydrogen. With egg shell stages pressurized like balloons to keep from collapsing during launch, a Heavy Lift Vehicle can put somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred tons into low earth orbit. But the hydrogen upper stage is what is required to push a fraction of that one hundred tons to escape velocity. Using inferior propellants increases the fraction that is not payload. Making the lower stage reusable increases this fraction. Making the lower stage pressure fed instead of turbopump fed increases this fraction. Making the lower stage solid fuel instead of pressure fed increases this fraction. A lower reusable stage with solid rocket boosters and an upper hydrogen stage was what made the space shuttle work. As previously stated, that “work” was mostly lifting the orbiter into orbit.
We will go to the Moon and assemble true spaceships capable of interplanetary flight there. It will be expensive but just like any other DOD program it will be justified.
What an insightful and thought provoking article. My head is spinning from the information on and history of space program pioneering contained therein. Bravo, Kelvin Long! Bravo, Centauri-Dreams! It may not have been imagined so but this is why the internet was created.
[ARGH! I had to fix a typo below, plus I forgot a sentence. — Jason]
GaryChurch wrote (in part):
[“No cheap access to Earth orbit means no large-scale operations beyond Earth orbit–period.”
Saying something HAS to be cheap does not make it so.]
I never said or implied such, but the statement is valid nonetheless; as long as access to LEO remains expensive, all plans for extensive deep-space operations will be merely celestial wish-lists. That is why payload cost per pound or kilogram matters and rocket mass ratios don’t matter much (although the payload mass delivered into orbit must be reasonable for the rocket’s total take-off mass, of course); even the highest-possible mass ratio rocket is useless if it is prohibitively expensive to use it.
[We will go to the Moon and assemble true spaceships capable of interplanetary flight there. It will be expensive but just like any other DOD program it will be justified.]
The DOD has no need or desire to go to the Moon, nor are there any military functions that would justify their operations there. LEO & GEO satellites cater to all of the DOD’s communications, meteorological observation, and reconnaissance needs much more cheaply than a lunar surface base or a lunar orbit space station would, and ICBMs are much cheaper (and faster-acting) than Moon-launched missiles. One possible exception to this (which Neil P. Ruzic discussed in his book “Where the Winds Sleep–Man’s Future on the Moon: A Projected History”) is as follows:
If Earth-to-LEO costs are brought down to the point that civilian Moon bases are financially feasible, at some point the DOD will likely set up an Earth-observing telescope for reconnaissance purposes. While its “viewing schedule” would obviously be known to those nations who’d rather not be so observed, such a visible-light telescope (augmented with infra-red capability, or perhaps set up along with a second, dedicated infrared telescope) could be very large and have high resolution, and could track movements of surface ships, land vehicles, troop formations, and aircraft; but it would supplement, not replace, closer-to-Earth spy satellites. Also:
Ruzic discussed similarly supplementary, large Earth-pointing meteorological imaging telescopes and radiometers that would be part of lunar bases’ instrumentation sections. However, neither of these telescope systems would–either together or separately–justify establishing a Moon base; they would be secondary, “tenant” projects that would be “folded into” a much larger lunar base program that would have other primary purposes.
“The DOD has no need or desire to go to the Moon, nor are there any military functions that would justify their operations there.”
Impact Defense. You want to launch a nuclear armed, nuclear propelled vehicle to deflect a comet or asteroid you would want to do it from the Moon. Nothing to do with Earth (except saving it).
“I never said or implied such, but the statement is valid nonetheless; as long as access to LEO remains expensive, all plans for extensive deep-space operations will be merely celestial wish-lists.”
“LEO is not halfway to anywhere,” it is just high enough to go in endless circles. Geostationary is closer to the truth.
To get those extra thousands of miles an hour to escape the Earths gravity you end up with a much larger vehicle (Like the Saturn V). If you want to do it with the mythical fuel depot in space you will have to do it with a hypergolic booster instead of hydrogen because liquid hydrogen does not store well and may never be practical to transfer in space. Subtracting that 100 seconds or so of ISP means that hypergolic Earth Departure Stage will be much larger than one using hydrogen.
So IMO LEO is really a dead end. Getting there “cheap” is getting to a dead end cheap. The Moon is the gateway to the solar system by way of impact threat deflection using nuclear armed and nuclear propelled spaceships.
GaryChurch wrote (in part):
[“The DOD has no need or desire to go to the Moon, nor are there any military functions that would justify their operations there.”
Impact Defense. You want to launch a nuclear armed, nuclear propelled vehicle to deflect a comet or asteroid you would want to do it from the Moon. Nothing to do with Earth (except saving it).]
That could be done, but a station in MEO (Medium Earth Orbit), between LEO and GEO would be cheaper. And:
Getting to GEO actually requires -more- propellant than is needed to reach the Moon (an odd fact that Arthur C. Clarke pointed out in “The Promise of Space”); the transfer orbit (GTO) requires nearly the same amount of propellant as a translunar trajectory, plus another high-energy burn to circularize the orbit at GEO altitude. Also:
Using LEO as a parking orbit saves considerable propellant in reaching the Moon (and GTO) because a rocket has significantly lower gravity losses than in direct-ascent GTOs or translunar–as well as Earth escape–trajectories (because with a LEO parking orbit, a rocket mostly thrusts at or near a tangent to the Earth’s surface instead of spending most of its powered flight time climbing at steep angles). This is why cheap access to LEO is important, because the cost of reaching it is a big part of the cost of traveling beyond it; it is the “admission price” for cislunar and interplanetary voyages.
Look at this handy chart: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_budget#Delta-vs_between_Earth.2C_Moon_and_Mars
Then tell me again that from Earth to LEO (9.3-10 km/s) is not more than halfway to the moon (~16 km/s). Really?
James Jason Wentworth:
Right. But, that only gets you a flyby or crash landing at the moon, I think. Lunar orbit insertion would cost some more, and a landing even more, getting us to the roughly 16 km/s from the chart.
Gary Church:
Again you are simply wrong. The delta-V chart tells us that LEO is on the way to everywhere, quite literally, and it is indeed more than halfway to anywhere but Mars surface (close, though) and the sun. The dead-end you are talking about is GEO. It is not on the way to anywhere and its only attraction is that it is geostationary. The moon’s surface is even more out of the way than GEO, but at least it is a real place, with lots of rocks and maybe even a little ice.
So IMO LEO is really a dead end.
“Again you are simply wrong.”
It is not the DeltaV numbers- it is the hardware that makes those numbers happen that determine how we get there.
“This is why cheap access to LEO is important,”
It is not- access to the Moon is important. LEO is a dead end. Parking there for a couple orbits to check systems as in Apollo is one thing- but building an infrastructure there is a total waste of time.
Unless you want to start a tourist business.
Being critical is easy but understanding something complex is not; we will not be building any nuclear spaceships in Earth orbit or anywhere in the magnetosphere.