Back before the turn of the century (1999, to be exact), people just didn’t quite think of aerospace in the same way that we think of it nowadays. This was before SpaceX, before Burt Rutan and the Spaceshipone, before the X-Prize Cup and Armadillo Aerospace, in fact before the founding of most of the stellar companies that currently make up our “new space” industry.
In early 1999, I was thinking about the power of the individual to create, and how the homebuilt aircraft epitomized that spirit. Reflecting on my own experience, it occurred to me that aircraft homebuilders had a great deal in common with experimental rocketry people. Both groups were highly motivated, tended to be skilled craftsman, weren’t afraid to get into the math, and could have quite a bit of discretionary income. So it became an interesting idea of what these two groups might be able to achieve, if they joined forces. If the rocket guys built a rocket motor, and the airplane guys built the vehicle, you could put the rocket in the vehicle and have an aircraft that could fly high and fast, maybe higher and faster than any other aircraft.
Simple, suborbital vehicle concepts were not necessarily new. Geoffrey Landis’ and David Burkhead’s Space Cub was one such concept. Cerulean Freight Forwarding Company also had a concept, known as “the kitten”. There were likely others, as well. Many of these concepts had, in my opinion, emerged from the fertile minds of the experimental rocketry folks. Like me, they had designed and built rockets, and seen them fly. And I presume that, also like me, they had imagined what it would be like if you could ride on one of the vehicles. But it’s a far, far distance between building a rocket, even a big one, and building vehicle that will carry your carcass , allow you to pilot it, and do all the things that even the simplest airplane can do. So what I thought was missing from these concepts were the specifics of the vehicle design itself: how do you design and built a piloted flight vehicle. But that’s exactly what aircraft homebuilders do, what they know, and what gets them excited. But as far as I could tell, the aircraft homebuilders weren’t thinking about the propulsion end of things. Therefore, what I what I felt was novel about the presentation I was putting together was to more explicitly make that connection, to see if aircraft homebuilders could catch the spark and for experimental rocketry enthusiasts to see how the vehicle could go together. Furthermore, I wanted to explore how you could put such a project together, the approach, in other words.
This seemed like a very interesting idea, an idea that the kind of people that go to EAA Airventure, Oshkosh, would be interested in hearing about. At Oshkosh, a large number of presentations are given everyday throughout the venue, on all sorts of aviation-related topics. These presentations are the so-called “forum” presentations, and have been a tradition at Oshkosh for decades. So that spring, I contacted the Chairman of the Forums, and submitted an outline of my presentation. It was accepted, and I was invited to present.
Through most of that spring I prepared my presentation, researched the relevant topics, and tried to talk to as many people as possible. When I talked to people about this concept, this notion that amateurs could build their own aerospace plane, the response was generally one of almost unbelief. “That’s impossible”, “you’d need hundreds of millions of dollars to do anything remotely close to that”, etc. So an important part of my presentation, I thought, would be to provide a convincing argument that such an approach was even possible, and not absurd. I discovered that not everyone thought it a ridiculous idea, and those people usually had the most interesting comments.
Another element that I thought would be useful for the
presentation, was to provide what I called a development synopsis, a
development approach or a set of general “rules” which could help guide one’s
thinking in developing such a vehicle.
This was summarized in the KISS-cubed principle: keep it Simple, Small, and Safe.And lastly, I wanted to point out, what I thought would be
some of the major challenges, or design issues, facing a homebuilt aerospace
plane developer.
I then went on to describe a few vehicle concepts that were
out there, plus a sort of generic vehicle, to cover the aircraft side of the
equation. For the propulsion side, I
identified what I thought were the main propulsion approaches that I thought
had the best chance of success, and that were currently being conceived, and/or
actively developed. Propulsion concepts
included solid, liquid, and hybrid rocket motors, and the Air Turbo Rocket
engine, as possible candidate propulsion approaches.
In late July 1999, I traveled to Oshkosh with two of my closest friends, and we rented bedrooms from a nice lady in town, shuttling to Wittman field in our rental car.
I was given two separate times to present, one on Friday evening, and one on Saturday afternoon. The Friday session was attended by about 8 eight people, and is the version that was actually recorded. This version is available from EAA, forums Recordings, and can be ordered here, presentation number 99-10. The Saturday presentation was attended by about twenty people, including about three or four folks who would go on to form XCOR, and, somewhat ironically, a program manager from the yet-to-fly X-43 program. In addition, Pat Bahn, president of TGV rockets, attended both of my presentations. It turns out that both of us were thinking along the same lines, and our presentations covered different, yet parallel topics.
All in all, it was an interesting experience, but it didn’t have the impact that I thought it would. I suppose I was expecting light bulbs to go on, for folks to catch the buzz, and see the vision of what could be.
I asked my friend to pass my presentation on to Burt if he
was interested, and he said he did.
Maybe it was helpful, maybe it never got looked at. I like to think that if it had any impact at
all, it strengthened his resolve to create an aerospace craft.
In retrospect, what I find interesting is first, I think I
did a good job of anticipating what was to come. As you look over the slides, keep in mind
that this presentation was made in 1999, and reflect on what was going on, and
what was yet to happen at the time.
Secondly, I’d like to think that maybe someone, somewhere,
found the presentation useful, exciting, and/or motivational. If someone found something to take home, then
my objective had been more than met.
This presentation spawned a few additional
presentations. Some four years later, in
2003, I gave an updated version of this presentation to the Huntsville L5
Society, the local National Space Society chapter. Here, I was able to show some of the progress
that had actually been made in the ensuing years, and where things might be
headed. In the summer of 2003, these ideas
formed the basis for an episode of “The Space Show”, with Dr. David Livingston.
I’ve never really seen any direct impact of that presentation, never had any of the ideas I thought so novel and fresh, ever discussed beyond the forum presentations, or the caller or two into the space show. Oh sure, the success of Spaceshipone turned the concept of a rocket-powered “homebuilt” into reality in a huge way, and now it seems so obvious that this approach would work. But we don’t think of it in terms of the homebuilder and the experimental rocketeer joining forces to create this success, even though in many important ways, that was how the program came to be. There’s been little discussion about the whole idea of homebuilt aerospace planes, let alone what are some of their fundamental design problems might be. So all in all, the net impact of what I was trying to present seemed to have been essentially nil. After all, you’re reading this blog post, and it’s highly unlikely that you ever heard anything about my EAA forum talk from ten years ago.
Made me wonder if it was just like so many of the things we do. We make our best effort not knowing if our best effort ever did or will make any difference at all. And who can really know, and who can really claim an idea for their own, given all the many ideas and concepts that course through our consciousness, influence our thinking, and become superimposed on what we thought was our new concept. The value, so it seems to me, would be that it stirred someone to action. That someone did something tangible, something real. And maybe that something put us just a little bit farther down the road to developing more routine and economically-viable space access, and ultimately creating a space faring civilization.
This powerpoint presentation, entitled “Aerospace Planes: A New Technical Arena for the Homebuilder” can be downloaded here:
An interesting presentation. Thanks for posting the slides. Is there anything you would add or change now after ten years?
Oh, the references mention video of an ATR in action but there don't seem to be any stills in the presentation. Do you have any images?
Posted by: jsuros | July 17, 2009 at 11:12 PM
Jsuros:
I thought I posted a response to this on Sunday, but apparently it didn't take. Sorry for the delay in responding.
Regarding anything to I would add or change, I believe that my prognostications have held up surprisingly well. I think if I were to add anything, it might have been more details on the types of trajectories you could fly.
I neglected to mention that I showed a short videotape during the presentation. It showed movies of a firing of Space America's LO2/RP1 engine, a firing of HARC's LO2/HTTP hybrid motor, and a firing of Army AMCOM's hydrazine monopropellant ATR. It also showed a movie of Glenn May starting, then driving his hybrid-rocket motor-powered canoe. Very cool.
I will try and make some of those ATR images available on the blog.
Posted by: John Bossard | July 21, 2009 at 11:03 AM
I wanna go to college for aerospace engineering but know nothing about planes.....is that a problem?
Also im just a sophomore in high school.
Posted by: buy penegra | March 04, 2010 at 02:07 PM
Buy penegra,
If you know nothing about planes, that is indeed a problem. Fortunately it can be solved in a straightforward manner. Start reading books on planes, rockets, engines, turbojets, launch vehicles, etc. Anything you can on the subject. I strongly recommend that you read books, and not rely on the internet (too much wrong information, books are much better researched).
Also, its never too late (or too early) to start learning about planes.
If you hit it hard now and stay with it, you can be quite knowledgeable by the time you get to college. Good Luck!
Posted by: John Bossard | March 04, 2010 at 02:35 PM