Calblog

I wonder what the planed flight trajectory is, and what the liability for an object that falls from a vehicle launched from the site. There is a reason that NASA (and the Air Force) has launch facilities with trajectories over oceans (Cape Canaveral and Vandeburg AFB).

Debris can fall from vehicles on landing approaches too, and getting to Edwards Dry Lake Bed requires gliding over some pretty densely populated territory.

So I have a feeling somebody's already given this some thought.

Well the big one, I think, is that it's being certified as a horizontal launch site. Anything launched horizontally probably has similar issues to airplanes, instead of rockets, which have a whole different set of problems.

Sadly, we've had the shuttle breakup to remind us of this problem. It was nothing short of a miracle that no one on the ground was killed by the string of debris that fell across several states.

There was a reason that Muroc (now Edwards) was located in the middle of nowhere. Chuck Yeager almost drilled a hole to China with the X1-A I believe, as he barely pulled it out of a spinning dive.

The frontiers of flight have always been risky. DeHaviland did auger in with the 'Swallow' trying to break the sound barrier.

But contrast that with the fact that I live on an approach to Dulles near the beacon on Buck's Elbow Mountain. The sky is FULL of airplanes. That's probably the norm for most of the country. You just don't see how many planes are up there. September 12, 2001 was eerie because they were NOT there!

I've seen the paintings of the next generation of space planes. Renderers LOVE that kind of thing. I'm assuming we're looking at some designs that overcome the very obvious weaknesses in the present shuttle.

For twenty years NASA has been noodling these problems but they were committed to one reusable airplane that was already built. The next model will be safer, smarter and so forth. If civilians ever get regular rides (and as a child I had high hopes!) the technology gets more dependable.

So eventually you might see planes like this landing at Dulles or LAX as an acceptable risk. That is when they are seen as being of the same level of development as the current Boeing civilian aircraft.

Economics seems to be the biggest brake on this taking place. Consider that if a 747 costs 200 million, the space plane will still cost more than the GNP of most countries! At this point there is no 'Spanish Gold' to be had on the moon and the technologies that could have been done in space are still pretty speculative. The real paying payloads, such as communications satellites, do not require human passengers.

Our best hope for civilian space flight seems to be in finding a high altitude replacement for the Concorde. Again, the economics didn't seem to favor that wonderful aircraft. Problem is the 747 does a pretty good job carrying a lot of passengers and although it's subsonic, the Pacific can be crossed in half of a day. There is a law of diminishing returns at play here. To get it down to a few hours you are going to have to go into space.

Still, I was up in Baltimore's BWI airport when I noticed a wonderful model they had of one of the old China Clippers built by the Martin Company. I don't think they could have imagined our present age of jet travel back then!

Economics seems to be the biggest brake on this taking place.

Not much of one, given the number of contestants trying to win the X-prize with a private reusable launch vehicle.

The real problem with the horizontal-launch approach seems to be a lack of economies of scale in the government sector where most of the R&D has been taking place.

Economies of scale have never kicked in for the shuttle program, for the very same reason. You have to have more than four launch vehicles (now we only have two) and there have to be more than a handful of launches in a given year.

Let the private sector loose in this industry, and if there are any sensible economies to be found, they'll find them.

I'm not sure what NASA is charging for putting up a satellite these days, but given that it is high and the schedule goes out the window when the shuttle is grounded, and the economics start to encourage private initiative.

Of course, the initial r&d has really already happened as part of a government initiative.

Not that this is a bad thing. Spin offs have been enriching private industry and our lives for years. Now if we can feasably spin off the prime technology to the private sector as well, we will be ready to roll.

But the x prize is just the beginning.

I have often wondered if the shuttle program made a mistake by trying to combine too many functions in one vehicle. A simple booster system can get the payload up and smaller, more efficient reuseable personel carriers would seem to make sense here.

A smaller vehicle could use a different heat shield, for example, than the troublesome tiles on the shuttle. It could mount on top of its booster with 'escape' capability like the Apollo had. Eventually you might be able to build enough of them to cut production costs and incorporate continual improvement into the vehicle as it would be feasible to replace the fleet on some sort of schedule.

Although they were regularly retrofitted with improvements, both the shuttle and the Concorde lacked the improvement that would have come from producing a 'second generation' of the aircraft. Hence, both were dealt severe blows by virtue of their longevity as prototype aircraft.

But, if indeed, we are on the verge of a privatized space race, these improvements will likely be part of outcome.

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