The Tale of Falcon 1

Liftoff of Flight 4 of the Falcon 1 from Kwajalein, September 28, 2008. SpaceX achieved an elliptical orbit (621 x 643 km) at 9.3° inclination and carried into orbit a dummy payload at 165 kg designed and built for the mission [SpaceX].

Paul D. Spudis
The Once and Future Moon
Smithsonian Air & Space
  

Elon Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) in 2002.  Its stated business objective was the development of launch services for a fraction of the cost of the then-available commercial launch providers – to the greatest extent practicable, they would create reusable pieces of its launch system, thereby greatly lowering the cost of space access.  Toward that end, SpaceX sponsored the development of its own launch vehicle and engines, using a vertically integrated business model in which SpaceX would design, fabricate, prepare and operate a launch system.

Alan Boyle’s recent review of commercial efforts to supply the International Space Station naturally included coverage of the successful flight of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon’s delivery demonstration.  The article focused on the way commercial space is financed, specifically how NASA is sponsoring the development of some of these capabilities.  This financial arrangement is the basis for a point repeatedly voiced by critics of the heralded vision of “New Space” replacing “government” space – a company like SpaceX is not actually commercial in the traditional free market sense, but simply another government-funded contractor using a different procurement model.

Falcon 1 was the first rocket developed by SpaceX.  It is a two-stage launch vehicle capable of putting a metric ton (1000 kg.) into low Earth orbit.  Falcon 1 uses a single Merlin, a SpaceX-developed, LOX-kerosene rocket engine producing ~570,000 newtons of thrust (for comparison, a single Shuttle main engine burns LOX-hydrogen fuel and produces about 2,300,000 newtons of thrust).  The Falcon 1 was designed to put relatively small satellites into low earth orbit.  With such payload capacity, it is also capable of sending 100-200 kg microsats beyond LEO, into cislunar space.

Much of the private start-up capital for SpaceX was used to develop the Falcon 1.  They also received some government funding from other than NASA.  The Department of Defense (DOD) had need for reliable, quick, and cheap space access for small payloads.  To that end, SpaceX received funding from several DOD entities, including several million dollars from the U.S. Air Force under a program to develop launch capability for DARPA (a defense research agency).  Space X was given access to and the use of DOD launch facilities at the Reagan Test Site (formerly Kwajalein Missile Range) in the Marshall Islands.

The early days of Falcon 1 development were not pretty.  The first launch failed after 25 seconds of flight.  The second flight successfully launched and staged, but did not reach orbit.  After the third attempt at flight failed during staging, a review board looked in detail at SpaceX’s launch processing stream and made recommendations for some significant changes.  The next launch was successful in putting a dummy payload into orbit.  In July 2009, six years after Falcon 1 development had begun, SpaceX achieved its first (and so far, only) commercial space success with the launch and orbit of the Malaysian RazakSAT imaging satellite on a Falcon 1 launch.

Typically when a space company finally achieves a long-sought success, it moves rapidly to exploit the new vehicle’s operational status and begins to aggressively market and sell its new launch service.  However, no Falcon 1 launch has occurred since the success of RazakSAT.  A visit to the SpaceX web site describes the Falcon 1 vehicle, but at the bottom of the page it states that a Falcon 1 launch is no longer available for purchase.  Instead, small, one-ton class payloads will be accommodated in the future through “piggyback” rides on the new, Falcon 9 medium-class launch vehicle.

For a company to spend six years and start up money developing a needed launch system, only to abandon it just as success and profit is at hand, is difficult to sort through.  One could be forgiven for imagining that the development of the Falcon 1 as a commercial launch system was never intended but rather a pretext to flight qualify the pieces (specifically the Merlin 1 engine) used in the nine-engine cluster that powers the Falcon 9 launcher.  Interestingly, others have noted that the now-cancelled NASA Constellation Ares I launch vehicle (“The Stick”), purportedly designed to launch the new Orion spacecraft to LEO, likewise appeared to be more of a development effort than a flight project, in that its various pieces (e.g., cryogenic upper stage, five-segment SRB) were all needed to build the large Ares V heavy lift rocket.

Meanwhile, customers in need of low-cost options for launching small payloads are out of luck.  Falcon 9 has yet to launch an ounce of commercial payload and Falcon 1 is not for sale.  Of course, one can launch small satellites using Orbital’s Taurus launch vehicle, but its ~$50-70 M cost and recent record of unreliability (e.g., the Glory satellite launch failure) engender neither comfort nor confidence.  More significantly, after investing in the R&D effort of a new, unproven company that was offering a low cost, small launch vehicle, SpaceX’s original DoD customers, banking on the creation of a quick, inexpensive capability to launch small satellites, saw their support of Falcon 1 go by the board.  It appears that SpaceX dropped their initial operational vehicle for the promotion and promise of far more ambitious and distant goals.

Artist's rendering of the Falcon 9 heavy-lift launch
plans for which are expected in 2013 [SpaceX].

That template seems to work for them – NASA has “invested” more than $500 million in the Falcon 9 over the last five years.  Now, SpaceX holds court to advance their founder’s Mars fantasies and plans for a Falcon “heavy” launch vehicle – designed and marketed as sending very large payloads into space, at unbelievably low prices.  (As an aside, I thought that a New Space article of faith is that heavy lift is a boondoggle and that fuel depots are the way to go beyond LEO.)

When New Space advocates characterize old NASA contractors, legacy launch companies and politicians with NASA centers in their districts as “pigs at the trough of government funding,” they’d be wise to watch out for a “pig” donning falcon feathers.  Debate, like competition is good and helpful but only useful when advocates honestly pitch their abilities, services, products and intentions.   Money is an important consideration, however our nation’s ability to compete in the arena of space must be the overriding concern.  In light of the current situation, that ability is slipping further and further away.  We need to honestly assess what we’re buying before nothing remains of our decades long investment and leadership role in space.

Originally published at his Smithsonian Air & Space blog The Once and Future Moon, Dr. Spudis is a senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute. The opinions expressed are those of the author and are better informed than average. 

Congress as rocket designers

Creature of Congress: The Ares V heavy-lift, last seen in 2007 and as part of the Constellation program. Thrown out with the bath water in abandoning Constellation in FY2011, does the congressional consensus for NASA now call for the same vehicle, with no Altair to fly, or is Congress looking for something similar to the Saturn 1-B? [NASA]

Jeff Foust
Space Politics

While the Senate version of the NASA authorization bill, S. 3729, made it clear that the heavy-lift launch vehicle it calls for, the Space Launch System, should be developed by “extend[ing] or modify[ing] existing vehicle development and associated contracts”, it wasn’t specific beyond that in terms of vehicle design.

However, as Space News reported Friday, the report accompanying the bill goes into additional detail about their desired vehicle design.

Read the Post, HERE.

Augustine Final Report released

The Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee, headed by Norm Augustine, released it's final report, Thursday.

The committee, appointed by President Barack Obama, immediately made the report available online in Adobe Reader format.

To get to the Moon, and eventually to Mars will take more money and technology than NASA has in its recurring availability, the committee concludes.

The committee made several recommendations to President Obama and Congress, including continuing the on-going retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet, extension of U.S. support for the International Space Station beyond present commitments through 2015 and continued development of Ares V and Orion, though it will become necessary to recognize that these new resources may not be available until 2017.

The panel said it might be an option to scrap Ares 1, though an initial first test of the configuration is now sitting on Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, in favor or using existing boosters for eventual crew support.

"Heavy-Lift yes, EELV no?"

Jeff Foust
SpacePolitics.com

"While the Augustine committee wraps up its final report, NASA hasn’t been standing still waiting for it. In an article in Monday’s issue of The Space Review, I wrote about Bolden’s statements in his Space Transportation Association speech on Thursday about what NASA’s internal planning:"

"While Bolden didn’t mention any specifics in Washington, he did let slip a few details about what might be included on Monday at the IAC in Daejon, South Korea, Flightglobal.com reports. Bolden was clearly interested in developing a heavy-lift vehicle, saying that NASA was “costing” such a launcher, which the report believes is the Ares 5 “Lite” vehicle mentioned in the Augustine committee report instead of a shuttle-derived alternative or even simply re-estimating the development cost of the Ares 5 itself."

Read the Post, HERE.

Mars Society: 'Junk cost estimates' delivered to Augustine Committee threaten to sink NASA's human spaceflight plans

Ares V Heavy-Lift successor to Shuttle & Saturn
(NASA 2008)

Robert Zubrin, on behalf of The Mars Society, has published a claim that Aerospace Corporation delivered highly inflated cost estimates for completing NASA's Ares V heavy-lift booster to the U.S. Review of Human Spaceflight Plans Committee, headed by Norman Augustine.

The "Augustine Committee" is on deadline to deliver its "recommendations" to the Obama administration, August 31. Though NASA administrators do not expect to see the committee's full report before the end of September, the end of the present federal fiscal year, the committee membership has already hinted that there are no affordable manned spaceflight options within NASA's long-term budget.

The Committee may conclude NASA is $50 billion short, over the next decade and a half, according to some press accounts.

Aerospace Corporation's estimates, however, as to the cost of Ares V or Shuttle C configurations," Zubrin wrote, "have no scientific basis and have clearly been composed to make the case that human space exploration is unaffordable."

"Examining the Aerospace Corp's cost estimates," Zubrin wrote, "they claim an insane development cost of the Ares 5 heavy lift vehicle of $35 billion dollars and assign a development cost of $28 billion for a somewhat lower capacity Shuttle-C type launcher."

"Both of these incredible estimates are about a factor of 7 higher than what is generally believed in the industry to be necessary for the development of such systems," Zubrin wrote.

"In testimony delivered directly to the committee, SpaceX president Elon Musk offered to develop a heavy lift system for $2.5 billion," Zubrin wrote. "Lockheed Martin presentations estimate the cost to develop a heavy lift (150 tons to Low Earth Orbit) launcher at $4 billion."

Zubrin strongly criticises the methodology used by Aerospace Corporation to estimate the continued developmental and, eventually, the operational costs for Ares V, and he also makes his case for Mars as a singular goal of manned spaceflight.

Read Zubrin's Statement HERE.

Ignoring a Clear and Present Danger

Ray Villard
Cosmic Ray
Discovery.com blogs

"The irony now is that astronomers were quoting a 1 in 10,000 chance of seeing another repeat of the 1994 comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9) impacts on Jupiter in our lifetimes. To everyone’s surprise another comet slammed into Jupiter just a few weeks ago. Granted this wasn’t nearly the scale of SL9, but astronomers were nevertheless left dumbfounded."

"Thankfully, largely privately funded all-sky “movie camera” telescopes planned, such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) and the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan STARRS) will conduct the task of doing a census on Earth-killers by the end of the next decade."

"But even when rogue asteroids are listed on the astronomical equivalent of “America’s Most Wanted” what are we going to do about it?"

The Inner Solar System, Wednesday morning, August 12, 2009: This map shows the positions of all known asteroids in the inner Solar System. Earth's orbit is white, and all the red and yellow objects are potentially hazardous to life on Earth.

"One of the last men to walk on the moon, Senator Harrison Schmitt, (R-NM), wrote in the Wall Street Journal this week that the United States once had the capability, with the Apollo Saturn V rocket, to place a propulsion source on an asteroid and altered its path so as to miss the Earth.

"In the shadow of President Obama’s Augustine Committee that is reviewing NASA’s current manned space program, Schmidt was putting in a plug for the planned Ares V rocket – a monster Saturn V class heavyweight. “The Ares V, combined with a helium-3 fusion propulsion system, would be a giant step toward protecting the Earth in the future,” Schmitt wrote."

"But I cynically can’t imagine lawmakers getting serious about funding an Earth-defense payload, until it is too late..."

Read the Full Posting at Discovery.com, HERE.

Review of Human Space Flight Committee: NASA Constellation program unaffordable

Robert Block
The Write Stuff
Orlando Sentinel

The Augustine Panel re-examining NASA's human spaceflight plans has concluded that the agency's current Constellation Program to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 will not fit into the current presidential budget.

In fact, the panel has found that President Barack Obama's current budget does not allow for any significant human exploration program.

"We are on a path right now for a system on a close order of just double the budget to operate," said panel member Jeff Greason of Constellation, which stemmed from President George W. Bush's 2005 "vision" to return Americans to the moon by 2020 and then move on to Mars.

Greason added that if Santa Claus gave the program to the country fully developed, NASA would still have to cancel it because the agency could not afford to launch it.

Read the Post HERE.

Apollo 8-type test for Orion considered

Like Apollo 8 in December 1968, mission planners are considering a test-flight in lunar orbit for Orion, as part of the run-up to surface expeditions, in tandem with Constellation's Altair lander.

Shelby G. Spires, The Huntsville Times

Engineers and managers at Marshall Space Flight Center have been conducting initial studies that would configure the in-development Ares V heavy lift rocket into a vehicle that could be used to take a crew to orbit the moon or place large probes in space, Marshall managers said this afternoon.

"We are back in the concept stage," Ares V managers Steve Creech told members of the Augustine review panel, which is chartered to look at NASA's future. "It is cheap to look at different alternatives, and we continue to look at options."

Currently, NASA chief plan is to use a smaller Ares I rocket for crew missions, and the larger Ares V for cargo missions. This plan would use only the large rocket.

Read the Article HERE.

Report that EELV is viable as Ares alternative 'not accurate,' Coppinger reports

Delta IV Heavy

NASA via Rob Coppenger @ FlightGlobal's Hyperbola, following good journalist practice, has posted a correction to reports first headlined by NASASpaceFlight.com. The erroneous conclusion drawn from the Areospace Corporation study was then picked up by Lunar Pioneer Research Group's blog Lunar Networks and has since been withdrawn.

"NASA managers are reviewing an independent analysis," NASA told Hyperbola Wednesday.

Headlines had appeared reporting Areospace Corporation's study concluded that Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) boosters were adequate to support NASA's Constellation, program, "(u)nder evaluation was not accurate," NASA told Coppenger. "The Aerospace report...is not finished."

Lunar Network reported yesterday that a study "by the Aerospace Corporation "conducted at the request of NASA to disprove the viability of an option to switch Orion to an alternative Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) has found both the Atlas V Heavy and Delta IV Heavy are capable of launching Orion on both ISS and Lunar missions."

Lunar Networks, especially on behalf Lunar Pioneer Research Group, regrets the error.

Coppenger recommends a more thorough reading of theAerospace Corporation's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel 2008 annual Report.

"While is says nothing about EELV suitability for launching Orion, " Coppenger writes, "there is one entry that is very interesting. Acting (NASA) administrator Christopher Scolese is quoted as saying, when asked by the (Panel) "what was harder than you expected."

"Designing Ares and Orion to have improved operational characteristics over our Shuttle and EELV system," Scolese is quoted.

Coppenger also recommends reading former NASA Administrator Michale Griffin's answers to the Panel's question picked up in their Annual Report.

Boeing: Contrators face layoffs unless NASA moves faster on Constellation

By Andrea Shalal-Esa

Colorado Springs - March 31 (Reuters) - A senior Boeing official said March 31 American contractors working on manned spaceflight capabilities will have to lay off up to 10,000 workers unless NASA accelerates orders for Constellation.

"The Gap," the period between the end of the Shuttle program in late 2010 and the follow-on Constellation program's first flight in 2015 is a challenge for the companies involved, said Brewster Shaw, vice president and general manager of Boeing Space Exploration.

Shaw said the five biggest contractors in the sector faced combined layoffs of 8,000 to 10,000 workers, the largest among them Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Alliant Techsystems, United Technologies, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and United Space Alliance (a Boeing-Lockheed joint venture.

The companies and their smaller suppliers were urging lawmakers and NASA to accelerate work on Ares 5, the cargo heavy-lift booster, as well as Altair, the Constellation's lunar lander., Shaw said.

Read the Story HERE.

Russia officially aims for manned moon missions

For only the second time since the disintegration of the Soviet Union the Russian Federation is preparing to choose a new booster design, a heavy lift designed to carry 25 tons into Earth orbit and man-rated to ferry cosmonauts to Earth's Moon.

The only true heavy-lift boosters presently in operation are ESA's high-performiance Ariane V and the Space Shuttle, now only eight missions away from a scheduled retirement in late 2010.

According to a report from the Anatoly Zak, science reporter for BBC News, "Russian space officials say the yet-to-be-named rocket should carry its first manned spacecraft in 2018.

In 2008, Roscosmos finally started quietly soliciting proposals from the industry to develop a brand-new rocket which could support lunar expeditions. All major Russian space firms reportedly vied for the government contract to build the vehicle.

While Roscosmos had never publicised details of the bidding process, a number of Russian space officials hinted that they were close to choosing a winner at the beginning of 2009.

On 14 March, Alexander Chulkov, head of the rocket and launch facilities directorate at Roscosmos, told BBC News that the agency would pick a winner by March 25.

"We have a bidding procedure, under which we made a request for proposals and now will be reviewing those proposals to determine a prime developer, based on the most interesting project from the cost-effectiveness point of view," Mr Chulkov said.

Read the BBC Report HERE.

Powering Exploration: The Ares I Crew Launch Vehicle and Ares V Cargo Launch Vehicles

Ares V places hypothetical monolithic 8 meter UV-visual telescope on a path to Sun.
With a shroud size dictated by the eventual size of the Altair lunar lander,
developers are investigating uses of Ares V unrelated to human space exploration,
e.g., 8 meter science telescopes in LEO of Lagrange orbits,
capabilities could exceed Hubble by an order of magnitute.

Stephen A. Cook, project manager & Teresa Vanhooser, deputy project manager, Ares Projects, Marshall SFC, Huntsville.

NASA’s Constellation Program is depending on the Ares Projects to deliver the crew and cargo launch capabilities needed to send human explorers to the Moon and beyond. Ares continues to make progress toward design, component testing, and early flight testing of the Ares I crew launch vehicle, as well as early design work for Ares V cargo launch vehicle. Ares I and Ares V will form the core space launch capabilities the United States needs to continue its pioneering tradition as a spacefaring nation.

Download (pdf) Study & presentation HERE.

Ares V: Progress Towards a Heavy Lift Capability for the Moon and Beyond

Steve Creech, integration manager, Ares V
Ares Projects Office, Marshall SFC

NASA's new exploration initiative will again take humans beyond low Earth orbit, to the moon, and into deep space. The space agency is developing a new fleet oflaunch vehicles that will fulfill the national goals ofreplacing the Space Shuttle fleet, completing the International Space Station, establishing a permanent outpost on the moon, and eventually traveling to Mars. Separate crew and cargo vehicles emerged from mission architecture studies - the Ares I to carry the Orion crew exploration vehicle and its crew of4 to 6 astronauts, and the Ares V to carry the Altair lunar lander or other supplies to support future exploration missions. (Figure 1) These vehicles will be designed to be safe, affordable, sustainable, reliable, operable with the safety, reliability, flexibility, and operability to serve this nation's manned and unmanned exploration programs for the coming decades. This paper discusses recent and current progress on the Ares V and planned future activities.

In its present configuration, Ares V stands 360 feet (l09.7m) tall, with a gross liftoffmass of 7.4 million pounds (3.3 kg). It will lift 138,000 pounds (62,596 kg) to trans lunar injection (TLI) in dual launch mode with Ares I or 287,000 pounds (130,000 kg) to low earth orbit (LEO) in single launch mode.

By comparison, The Apollo-era Saturn V was 364 feet (110.9m) tall, with a gross liftoffmass of 6.5 million pounds (2,948,350 kg), and could carry 99,000 pounds (44,906 kg) to TLI or 262,000 pounds (118,841 kg) to LEO.

Download the AIAA Study HERE.