Plasma Wind

Crazy Idea No. 318: Falcon 1E + Spaceshipone – tank – motor – wings = Manned Microlauncher

Crazy, yes, but so crazy…it…just….might….wooork…

If you want to build something quick and inexpensively, sometimes using what already exists can be a big help (and sometimes it isn’t).  In considering ways to build a small manned launcher in the shortest amount of time, the application of this principle would be to find an existing small launcher and an existing small space craft.  In this case, the existing small launcher would be the Falcon 1E.  The existing small space craft would be Spaceshipone, or more specifically, the front end of Spaceshipone, i.e. the pressure vessel part that carries the pilot, passenger(s), controls, instruments, air, RCS supply, et al, minus the wings, empennage, N2O tank and motor case.  This is handy, since SS1 has already demonstrated operational-capability in space with real-live people.

Turns out, this Front end part of Spaceshipone is small enough to fit within the payload fairing of the Falcon 1E:

Coincidence?  I don’t THINK so….

But would it work?  The first question that comes to mind is: would the fully-loaded capsule be less than or equal to the throw-weight of Falcon 1E?  Well, the stated orbital payload capability of the Falcon 1E is quoted as being about 2316 lbf, and that number seems pretty solid (certainly on a relative basis), although the 1E is still in development.

So, what about the use of a stripped-down Spaceshipone? Ok, from here on out, we get into wild, highly-speculative, unsubstantiated guesses about component masses.  I expect this to be fodder for endless postings, but here I give you my guesses at component masses.  

The empty (or dry) mass of Spaceshipone (no N2O, no fuel in the motor case) is stated to be about 2646 lbm.  So we need to come up with estimates for the N2O tank mass, motor case mass, nozzle, N2O valve, landing gear, wings/empennage, and intertank skin-and-fairing, then deduct these from the empty mass.  Assuming a roughly spherical tank about 60 inches in dia., operating at around 750 psi, and making guesses for material strength and density and a tank safety factor, I come up with a N2O tank mass of about 880 lbm (right? wrong? close? I don't know).  Doing the same thing for the motor case, I get about 465 lbm.  I guessed the nozzle mass to be about 40 lbm, the valve to be about 70 lbm, wings/empennage about 300 lbm, landing gear about 100 lbm, and the intertank skin/aft-fairing to be about 80 lbm.  Deducting these from the empty mass, this yields an operational capsule mass of about 707 lbm.  And by operational capsule mass, what I mean is that it contains radios, nav aides, ELT, instruments, batteries, controls and linkages, Enviro. cntrl system (ECS), basically everything that's currently in the SS1 pressure vessel.

Ok, but we’ve got other stuff to add to the capsule to make it space worthy.  In this estimate, I’ve assumed that there would be two occupants: a pilot and a passenger.  Here’s my shopping list:

2 occupants @ 200 lbm ea:       400 lbm

Upgraded RCS:                        200 lbm

Upgraded ECS:                          50 lbm

Parachute system:                   150 lbm

Re-entry Heat Shield:               200 lbm

De-orbit motor:                       100 lbm

Operational Capsule:                707 lbm

Misc:                                       100 lbm

Total:                                     1907 lbm

So, for this first WAG, it looks like this loaded capsule mass is less than the orbital payload capability of the Falcon 1 vehicle by about 409 lbm, giving a mass margin of about 17%.  That’s not a bad margin to start with, given the great uncertainties of the mass estimates provided here.  Have I missed some important items?  Probably.  I can't wait to hear about it.

But, even if the mass numbers work out, (and to be perfectly frank, one should be quite skeptical), there are many other issues that would need to be worked out:  safety (I’m confused about the concept of “man-rating” something, so I’m just going to leave that to others to speculate about), ride comfort, emergency abort procedures, etc. etc.

However, something to keep in mind, even if the resultant mass is still heavier than the Falcon 1E capability, it still might be interesting as a suborbital ride, though perhaps a bit pricey.

Notice that there has been no docking features or airlock included in this concept.  So how do you get out of the vehicle if you want to want to visit some orbiting space facility?  Because of the vehicle’s small size, what I would envision is that you would simple pull the whole vehicle into a “garage” attached to the facility.  This garage would, in fact, be the airlock.  After entering the garage, it's pressure door would be shut, the garage re-pressurized, then the occupants could open their hatch into a shirt-sleeves environment, float out and head over to the garage’s inside airlock hatch.  At first glance, it looks like this “garage” would be about the size of the payload fairing on the Falcon 1e, so maybe you could launch your own garage before you get up there.

Anyway, there you have it, another crazy idea.  I leave it to you readers to thrash through the mass numbers, logistical issues, ratings, FAA/AST licensing, and all the other issues that have not been covered.  But do me a favor: at least try and come up with a decent name for the thing, for cryin’ out loud!  (Falconite?  SpaceshipF?  Musktang? Rutanbega?  )

Plasma Wind's Contribution to the Space Settlement Blog Day

The Space Movement has dedicated today, July 20^th, as a commemorative day in which bloggers have been asked to provide a blog post relating to the Settlement of Space.

Well, we here at Plasma Wind are all about Space Settlement.

In fact, Space Settlement is a necessary condition for the survival of terrestrial life, and certainly for human life.  If we fail at this task, it’s just a matter of time before we become extinct.  And even if we succeed, there are no guarantees, either.

As we consider settling space, or as I like to think of it in more general terms, as we consider carrying life off of Earth and out into the Cosmos, there’s a few points I think are worth reiterating.

First, when we think of space settlements, I think we tend naturally to think of settlements that sit on a planetary surface, like Mars, or the moon.  But in many important ways, planetary surfaces are some of the worst locations for space settlements.  Large Gravity wells, planetary atmospheres, possible indigenous life forms and ecosystems to disrupt and contend with, non-continuous sunlight, et al.  Although certainly not the first, Dr. Gerald K. O’Neil advocated for the fabrication of space settlements as free-orbiting, manmade structures, with artificial gravity supplied by rotating the axi-symmetric structures.  These notions were articulated in his seminal book, “The High Frontier”, which explained how such space living structures could be built, and providing a development pathway by which we could finance and grow these types of settlements.  Dr. Isaac Asimov, the great science fiction writer, referred to the notion of having to settle on the surface of planets as “planetary chauvinism”,  which seems in some ways apt.

The second point I was to make, is that human beings are precious and valuable, and are worth saving.  As living creatures we can and should be allowed, yea encouraged, to thrive and grow.  And we should not be trifled with.  This notion is not universally popular, and in fact, the opposite notion is much more familiar and bandied about.  Because of the continuously-increasing constraints on our civilizations here on earth, we’ve come to imagine ourselves as the great and powerful beings, with little restraint to our enormous powers to create chaos and destruction.  Yet from the perspective of the solar system, and even the Earth itself, we’re tiny, fragile, and barely hanging onto life.  My  image of humanity is that of a small flower, tenaciously clinging to a bit of soil on a volcanic island, whilst all around us molten lava flows, great gouts of steam and gas vent forth, and a powerful ocean pounds the lava into sand.

Lastly, I think we need to be reminded that, whatever we create, to whatever heights of technological prowess we climb to, whatever great knowledge and wisdom we come to grasp, eventually all of it, and ourselves as well, will all pass away.   Someday we will be gone.  We like to think that we, as a species, as a civilization, will go on and on.  But if we’ve learned anything about civilizations here on Earth, it's that even the greatest, perish in the end, and crumble to dust and memories.  Yet it is this very perishability that makes life, terrestrial life, so previous.  We will have our day in the sun.  We will grow, reach our zenith, and then we will die out.  This is perhaps the most natural cycle there is in the Cosmos.

In closing, I will mention that, In the past several years, I have come to believe that these, and related notions and philosophies can come under a general umbrella philosophy which, for lack of a better term, I call “Exvironmentalism”.  The word environment comes from the word “environ”.  Your “environs” would be the places in you immediate region around you.  It comes from the old French word which literally means “to turn in a circle inwards” (en- in, viron- a circle or circuit, virer- to turn).  So the environment is the firmament in which you circle around in, inwards.  Thus, the word exviron would connote “to turn in a circle outwards”.  The exvironment would thus be the firmament that we would circle out into.

We can use the definitions to reframe our considerations, to open up the notions life-expansion and life preservation, and to use the best of the ideas of environmentalism and the transition of mankind off the planet and out into the cosmos.  We can positively combine these ideas, these philosophies, to make something better than the sum of the parts.  This then, is the essence of Exvironmentalism: the synergy of the space movement, the environmental movement, and perhaps many others, to productively encourage, identify, and promote the expansion of life outwards from the planet Earth, and into the Cosmos.

Recently, the first International Exvironmentalism Conference was held outside of Cayucos, California, USA. Despite it’s invitation-only format, there was good participation, and a number of interesting presentations.  Perhaps the exvironmentalism movement will take off, and more conferences will come to be.  And perhaps, that’s something that could be a big boost to Space Settlement.

A copy of the Keynote Speech from the First International Exvironmentalism Conference can be downloaded here:

Download Opening Keynote Speech

The Space Movement and Environmentalism

Over at linkedin, they have a group you can join called the Space Movement.  Sounded like my kind of group, so I joined.  The term "The Space Movement" has a good, general kind of sound to it, which may allow it to accommodate all sorts of space-related types of interests.  Interests like Space Habitats, low cost space access, propulsion technology, Space Science, all sorts of things. 
I think there's another group that should be interested in the Space Movement, and that is the Environmentalists. If an environmentalist were to give it more than just a passing thought, they might well discover that the Space Movement not only could accommodate their goals, aspirations, and visions for a positive future, but may offer much more than they can even imagine. 
This notion of the Space Movement being able to embrace environmentalism is, I think, under appreciated, and deserves greater attention.  And so, I will be giving it greater attention in future posts. Oh yes, my friends, so much more attention..Stay Tuned!

Lessons from Space Camp

Well, my youngest son graduated from Space Camp Friday.  When you live in Huntsville, Alabama, going to Space Camp at the end of fifth grade is simply part of the curriculum. The fifth graders are divided into several teams, and then are assigned roles for a subsequent shuttle mission simulation.  There are CAPCOMs, ground controllers, mission specialists, just like a real shuttle mission.  My boy got assigned as pilot, which was the position he was seeking (schweet!), I was way proud.  If I had been in fifth grade going to space camp, that would have been the assignment I would have wanted. 

After the graduation ceremonies, we had a chance to walk around the museum, the rocket garden, and the Davidson Center , which houses one of the last remaining Saturn V's.  Its familiar territory, and always interesting.  In one of those moments where the time is right to have a real conversation, when there’s no pressure to have a “teachable moment” or try to convey some gem of wisdom, we just talked about whatever was of interest right then, whatever was right up front in our thinking.  So we talked about rocketships versus spaceplanes, about being an astronaut versus being a pilot.  We compared launching vertically versus taxing out to the active runway, advancing the throttles and taking off.

Without no malice towards vertical launch vehicles, we were in agreement that flying a spaceplane into orbit, returning and landing on a runway was just way cooler than blasting off, then floating down on parachutes.  As the pilot of a spaceplane, you get the fly the thing, control its directions, experience the freedom that only piloting a ship can bring, as opposed to riding in a ship, to being a payload.  From that standpoint, the space shuttle gets full marks, even though it launches vertically.  The Space Shuttle is cool.  It is the one and only spaceplane around.  It is one rockin’ machine.  And this got me thinking about the STS: the Space Transportation System.

The Shuttle certainly has it’s warts.  It’s way too expensive.  There are a number of reasons for this, but that’s for another post.  Next, it’s got reliability issues.  Jokes about what the acronym NASA stands for aside (and again, for another post), there are a number of reasons for this, as well.  And then there’s the fundamental issue that the Shuttle is a government-owed/operated/governed/regulated space transportation system and the only one used by the US of A to transport people up into space.  This has a whole host of ramifications regarding its impact on the development of a commercial space industry.

Yes, the shuttle has many issues and shortcomings, many things have been a great disappointment to a lot of us that had hoped it would open up the space frontier, rather than delaying its emergence by decades.  But for all these laments, the STS has something fundamental going for it: it is flying now.  Not five or seven or ten years from the present, but now.  

That’s something my fifth grade son understands.  He piloted a simulated spaceplane mission for a vehicle that’s flying now, not some vehicle that may or may not make it through the funding vagaries of multiple administrations. 

The STS may indeed have it warts, but when compared to replacement systems currently under consideration, it is a thing of beauty.  It is infinitely more capable (Shuttle capability divided by proposed capability which equals zero, goes to infinity), and if we invest in shuttle improvements, we have high yields for our taxpayer dollars.  Maybe instead of starting from scratch again on a brand new vehicle design, we should learn to work with what we have now, and grow that capability.  That seems sensible.  Those fifth graders got it.  Are we as smart as fifth graders?

A Lexicon for Aerospace Vehicles

Let's define a spaceplane as a horizontal takeoff/horizontal landing (HTHL) aerospace vehicle that takes off from a runway, flys up out of the atmosphere and into Low Earth Orbit (LEO), reenters the atmosphere, then lands like an airplane.  I define a rocketship as a Vertical Takoff/Vertical Landing (VTVL) aerospace vehicle that launches vertically, flys up out of the atmosphere and into Low Earth Orbit (LEO), reenters the atmosphere, deploys parachutes and drops down onto the land or into the water. 

When you compare spaceplanes with Rocketships, sometimes it requires some translation between the two. Here then, is a little help chart for making that translation:

Spaceplane                   Rocketship

Pilot                             Payload

Take-off                       Blast-off

Landing                        Splash-down

Cargo                           Payload

Ejection System            Abort System

Landing Gear                Parachute

Crash                            Crash

As you get into the spirit of this lexicon, I hope you'll suggest other terms for translation.

The Evolution of Acceptance

Technology, ideas, social customs, and other related things, often are not immediately accepted.  In fact, they are as often as not rejected initially.  However, as they stay around long enough, their acceptability changes, ripens.  There is an evolution of acceptance.  This evolution of acceptance has been articulated previously, as a sort of saying, or set of quoted phrases, composed of several stages. I’ll expand on it with the addition of an additional and final stage, which has some truth, but mainly because it’s just funny.  Here is, then, the Evolution of Acceptance:

 1.  “That’s Impossible”

 2.  “That may be possible, but it’s Impractical”

 3.  “I said it would work all along”

 4.  “That was my idea”

 If you look up the history of ideas, concepts, technologies, you can often map these stages onto their evolution.  I give you, for example, the personal computer:

1. Impossible:  “Computers require a room sized space.”

2. Impractical:  “The worldwide need for computers might be around five or six”

3. Obviously Practical:  “the IBM PC”

4. My idea:  “Windows”

One can also map these stages onto current technology, that hasn’t progressed yet through all the stages.  My example, personal spaceflight:

1.  Impossible:  “It takes an entire nation to create a suborbital flight vehicle”

2.  Impractical:  “Ok, so the Spaceshipone worked, but who cares about suborbital flight”

That’s where we are right now, on stage two.  Soon, we will progress to stage 3, and then onto stage four.  Here’s what they will look like:

3.  Obviously Practical:  “I’ve been working for years on suborbital spacecraft.  Why, we had a design for one back in 1965 that we designed with slide rules and ham sandwiches”

4.  My Idea:  “I am generally credited for having created the suborbital flight market”

The difficulty level is inversely proportional to the stage number:  the first stage is harder than the second stage, etc.  

Often when starting on a new idea, concept, project, the weight of evidence is against you.  Conventional wisdom and experience have been wrung from what has gone before, and, if it’s worth much of anything, has been hard won.  So starting new requires something more.  It requires belief and vision; it requires a superlogical rationale for continuing.  And by superlogical rationale, I don’t mean extremely, extremely logical, I mean a rationale that transcends logic; a rationale that is consistent, but relies upon propositions which may be true, but cannot be proven within the given system of knowledge. 

I encourage each and every one of you who read this, to embrace your superlogical rationales for doing what you do, even when you are the only one convinced by your arguments (maybe your arguments don’t even convince you).  This is how advancements are made, large and small.  Since this post opened with an old saw, I’ll close with one:

"those that say it cannot be done should not interfere with those who are doing it"