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. 

Astrobotics contracted for polar exploration refinements

Astrobotic "Polaris" lunar rover design and the Icebreaker expedition

Astrobotic Technology has unveiled a NASA contract to determine whether its Polaris lunar rover design can deploy an ice-prospecting payload to the Moon.

The increasing likelihood of ice on the Moon might eventually yield water, oxygen, methane and rocket propellant to dramatically reduce the cost of deep space exploration.

"Astrobotic seeks the immense resources available on the Moon to both accelerate space exploration and improve life on Earth," said Astrobotics president David Gump. "The lunar path is near term. We intend a prospecting mission in 2015."

Astrobotic began development of a lunar excavation robot in 2009 under a series of NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts now total $795,000. The new NASA SBIR Phase 3 follow-on contract is designed for refinements for carrying NASA-supplied instruments and a drill to Cabeus or Shoemaker craters at high latitudes in the lunar south and other heavily shadowed places nearer the lunar north pole where hydrogen in the form of water ice appears to have been detected..

Instruments on-board India's Chandrayaan-1 orbiter and its Moon Impact Probe (MIP), and detailed surveys from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) along with the LCROSS impact at Cabeus have directly detected water, hydroxyl compounds, methane, ammonia, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide and other volatiles. These resources went undiscovered during the Apollo expeditions which were concentrated near the Moon's equator.

An important next step is to discover the "ground truth" by directly drilling and measuring these ressources directly to see if they are sufficiently concentrated to be useful.

Propellants and other materials manufactured in place on the Moon could enable spacecraft for long voyages at greatly reduced costs or used for vehicles dispatched to Earth orbit more cheaply than the high cost of launching spacecraft and fuel out of Earth's gravity well. Water and oxygen would also be invaluable for life support, and other elements have immense value for energy, processes, fabrication and extended habitation.

When seeking resources from planetary destinations, the four-day travel time to reach the Moon enables early return on investment compared to more distant targets.

Astrobotic has reserved a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster to send its spacecraft and robotic explorer to the Moon. The Astrobotic payload will deliver a prospecting robot to the lunar surface with technology that autonomously avoids hazards such as boulders and craters. This navigation system was derived from technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University under the direction of Dr. William "Red" Whittaker, Astrobotic's founder. 

Dr. Whittaker won the DARPA Urban Challenge with a driverless car able to autonomously navigate city streets, avoiding other cars while obeying California traffic laws. The ability to detect hazards and automatically select alternative pathways is the core of Astrobotic's automatic lunar landing system.

Astrobotic has totaled $12 million in nine NASA lunar contracts covering issues from simulating lunar gravity on Earth to discovering ways to robotically explore the Moon's ravines and pits. Natural caverns on the Moon should provide vital shelter for both unmanned vehicles and human explorers, from ionizing radiation, a near constant infall of micrometeorites and the extreme temperature swings experienced directly on the lunar surface.

April unmanned orbital test for X-37B

The Air Force hopes its unmanned X37B (in taxi tests in 2007) will take on some of the functions of the shuttle

Air & Space - It's been a long wait—in some ways, more than 50 years—but in April 2010, the U.S. Air Force is scheduled to launch an Atlas V booster from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying the newest U.S. spacecraft, the unmanned X-37, to orbit. The X-37 embodies the Air Force's desire for an operational spaceplane, a wish that dates to the 1950s, the era of the rocket-powered X-15 and X-20. In other ways, though, the X-37 will be picking up where another U.S. spaceplane, NASA's space shuttle, leaves off.

With a wingspan of 15 feet and a length of 27.5 feet, the X-37 looks like a tiny space shuttle. It has a blunt (though windowless) nose, and one rocket engine bell instead of the shuttle's three. Two cargo doors open just as the shuttle's do, revealing a four- by seven-foot bay. Like the shuttle, the X-37 was designed for low Earth orbits—in the latter's case, altitudes of 125 to 575 miles. And the craft will fly like a shuttle, reentering the atmosphere with the orbiter's 40-degree nose-high attitude. After reentry, it will change to a 20-degree nose-down glide and, flying at up to 220 mph, land at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, with Edwards Air Force Base as an alternate.

But as for the period between launch and landing, no one, save for a select few in the Department of Defense, knows exactly what the little Boeing-built spaceplane will do, or for how long. The Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, which is running the program, says only that the orbital test version, the X-37B, will take a suite of next-generation technologies to orbit and will break new ground in the realm of launch, recovery, and reuse, all with an unmanned twist that the shuttle never offered.

At a 2008 Space Foundation breakfast in Washington, D.C., Gary Payton, deputy under secretary of the Air Force for space programs, recalled the X-37's origins. Payton started the program while at NASA. "Then, the X-37 was intended to be a testbed for new technologies that could retrofit into the shuttle: predominantly guidance, navigation, and control, and [thermal protection system] technologies," he said. In that era, planners imagined the shuttle carrying the X-37 to space in its cargo bay and releasing it.

Now, with the shuttle's retirement looming, it appears the X-37 will have an independent, post-shuttle life. Payton envisioned such a role for the X-37, saying: "It would be really advantageous in my mind if we had a system you could launch, recover, change out the payload bay quickly, and put into a different orbit, and do all that measured in weeks instead of decades." David Hamilton, director of the Rapid Capabilities Office, says in an e-mail: "Eventually, I see the unique possibility to operate X-37B more like an aircraft and explore the needs of responsive, reusable spacecraft." Unlike a satellite, he points out, the spaceplane returns, enabling "detailed inspection and significantly better learning than can be achieved with [a satellite's] remote telemetry alone. Experiments can be modified and reflown, with the objective of shortening the technology maturation timeline."

"The space shuttle was designed to be a very heavy payload lifter, and it has performed that job extremely well," says Mark Lewis, a University of Maryland hypersonics expert who recently completed a four-year appointment as chief scientist for the Air Force. "But you don't need to send a Mack truck into space when a Toyota Celica will do."

The question is: Will do what? Lewis, whose enthusiastic speech barely keeps pace with his mind, is happy to talk about the skin-deep similarities between the shuttle and the X-37. ("A lot of the basic reentry physics is treated the same way," he says. "Blunt configurations. The shuttle has very blunt leading edges.") But when he's asked about anything more than the X-37's aerodynamics, he clams up.

So does everyone else. "While some aspects of the…program have been designated as unclassified and been released to the public; information regarding specific technical and performance capabilities will not be released at this time," writes David Hamilton. "Hide it in plain view," says one observer of the Air Force's practice of letting out just a little about the X-37, enough to make it seem like it will never be more than a research tool.

Hamilton does say that "once declared operational, the X-37B could have applications to support missions such as space situational awareness; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; on-orbit servicing and repair; and satellite deployment and/or retrieval."

It's possible the spaceplane could have a role in national security, particularly since China, India, Japan, and even Iran have begun to exploit space. In December 2007, photographs of an unmanned, classified Chinese spaceplane, the Shenlong, or "Divine Dragon," began to appear on Chinese Web sites. Though hitched to the underside of a bomber, rather than perched atop an expendable booster, the mysterious Shenlong has a blunt nose and single rocket engine bell, making its appearance strikingly similar to the X-37's.

The U.S. program started out relatively open to view, a research effort jointly shaped by the Air Force, NASA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and Boeing. The Air Force ordered the first prototype, the X-40A, from Boeing in 1996. When it came time to produce the next iteration, the X-37A drop-test vehicle, NASA had the company increase the size by about 20 percent.

But since then, the X-37 has taken a winding and perplexing path among NASA, DARPA, and the Air Force. From 2004 to 2006, DARPA oversaw it. Along the way, both the X-40A and the X-37A have been drop-tested (first over New Mexico in 1998 and California in 2006, respectively), which proved their automated approach and landing abilities. Finally the program was taken over by the Air Force. Today, call up any of these organizations and say "X-37" and it's like spraying a garden hose at housecats.

We have our lunar rover...

From the people who (really) brought us the Internet, DARPA and Boston Dynamics, a robotic mobility system whose prototype is creeping out people all over the world wide web. Imagine what this thing could do on the lunar surface, with hardened electronics, and obviously something to power it other than a two-cycle gasoline engine.