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Space Science

Bigger Rockets For 'Heavy' Lifting 188

Posted by Hemos from the getting-it-up dept.
msslave writes, "A local news station in Dallas reported that a Texas company, Beal Aerospace has tested the second stage of its BA-2 rocket. Designed for the "heavy-lift" market, these engines are intended for increasing demand for satellite launches. And they have spent only a half a billion dollars to get this far. "
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Bigger Rockets For 'Heavy' Lifting More

Bigger Rockets For 'Heavy' Lifting

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  • Interesting... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The whole idea comes from Andy Beal, a banker who is spending more than a quarter of a bilion dollars of his own money

    and

    There's no government money in this project.

    And it's in Waco. No doubt this Beal guy is mixed up with some sort of ant-government astro-cult like everyone else in Wacky Waco is. Place is loaded with loonies.

    And 1/4 bn is a quarter billion, Hemos. Don't let the kooks tell you otherwise.

  • Re:So do we need the Saturn V? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Pulling out the plans for the Saturn V would be quite a trick. Supposedly all the mechanical drawings and all existing tool and die setups for building Saturn V's were destroyed on orders from Nixon as a political favor - to ensure that NASA got funding for the Shuttle.

  • Re:A Step Towards Mars (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Does anyone find it ironic that NASA is "throwing money away" on the ISS, but a manned mission to Mars is a necessity?

  • Re:Beal's Rockets Not For Mars Missions (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    None of the likely advanced propulsion systems fro a trip to Mars will lift their own weight in Earth gravity. You need big honking rockets to get your advanced engines into Earth orbit.

    Then, as Heinlein first noted, you're halfway to anywhere!

  • Beer and the BA-2 rocket are incompatible, due to their inability to perform "heavy lifting", or operate heavy machinery with too much beer. Sorry guys, no beer in space, you'll have to brew it on the Moon after you terraform it first!

    In other news, The A-Team is suing, for dilution of their "B.A." trademark. Their spokesman was saying, "I pity the fool who think he can lift more than Mr. T!"
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
  • Well #1 is nature as it regards the Earth. And I don't really enjoy having Skylab fall out of orbit either, although there are suprisingly few satellites that are likely to make it through the atmosphere, so it's not a *huge* deal.

    But #2 has nothing to do with nature - only people who want to exploit space find it to be a problem. Please don't go claiming that congested orbits are pollution or anti-environmental or something.
  • Now, now. There is IIRC a story about Oppenhimer which seems relevant here. Apparently during the early nuclear tests (probably the first - Trinity), just before the bomb went off, he espied a small parabolic reflector sitting around.

    He positioned it so that it faced the bomb, placed the end of a cigarette at the focus and retreated to the shelter.

    After the bomb was detonated, he came out and picked up the now-lit cigarette.

    So it's kind of apocryphal, and impractical, but you too can light cigarettes with nuclear technology ;)
  • I hate to break it to you, but there's nothing particularly nice about Nature outside of the Earth. Please don't say that you're worried about harming the environment on Venus or something. That's just ridiculous.


  • There have been lots of talks about manned mission to Mars.

    Do you know that we still CAN NOT do a manned mission to Mars? Unmanned, yes. Manned, no.

    To put a human being on the spacecraft, you have to add on lots of LIFE SUPPORT, and those things add to the weight.

    Add to that the duration of the flight - to Mars and come back, ALIVE - and you are talking about a HUGE VESSEL to put all the air, water and food.

    Let us not talk about manned mission right now, let us think of unmanned mission - more than the NASA's silly robot type of mission, but SERIOUS unmanned mission to explore the Red Planet.

    I have hope that within my lifetime something like that will happen, that is, of course, World War III doesn't happen first. :)



  • The one who hide behind the AC handle or the one who have put up a quarter of a billion dollars?



  • > They'd protest that for our polluting space with
    > deadly radiation.

    > Ahh, human intelligence.

    Sometimes I really wish I am not a human being, and _that_ one qualifies as one of those "sometimes".



  • >> make a big launchpad in Antarctica

    > But you would kill the penguins! Get ready to
    > change Linux logo.

    Silly Linus. Of all the cute animals in the world he chose the Penguins.

    I mean, he could have chosen the koala, or the dodo bird, or the bluefin tuna, or Willie, the-killer-whale-who-had-a-movie-to-his-name.

    Hmmmm.....

    Ah, well... move the penguins to the Artic, and damn the Antarctica ! :)



  • > Now, now. There is IIRC a story about Oppenhimer
    > which seems relevant here.

    > Apparently during the early nuclear tests
    > (probably the first - Trinity), just before the
    > bomb went off, he espied a small parabolic
    > reflector sitting around.

    > He positioned it so that it faced the bomb,
    > placed the end of a cigarette at the focus and
    > retreated to the shelter.

    > After the bomb was detonated, he came out and
    > picked up the now-lit cigarette.

    > So it's kind of apocryphal, and impractical, but
    > you too can light cigarettes with nuclear
    > technology ;)

    That would be way cool.

    I mean, to use a radioactive device to light a cancer-causing delivery system.

    Yeah... who says Humans aren't intelligent?

  • ...and Rotary have got that far on an amount of money about equal to the interest on the cost overrun of NASA's X-33 project. Which I believe has just about got an engine design that may work.

    Sigh. Anyone want to invest five million dollars in Rotary? That's all they need to complete the first prototype and do a manned launch. They'll probably give you a free trip up, too...

  • This is actually more important for its interplanetary implications.

    A heavy-lift booster in this class could throw a pretty good-sized payload to Mars for a "Mars Direct" type of manned mission.

    Actually, the BA-2 would be able to place only about 6,000 kg into geosynchronous orbit, on a par with existing "heavy-lift" boosters (like the Ariane 5) but far short of the requirements for a Mars Direct type of human mission to Mars.

    However, if the BA-2 can provide launch services at a lower cost than existing boosters (without sacrificing reliability) it may be able to capture not only a significant fraction of the commercial GEO communications satellite market, but become a viable option for robotic solar system exploration missions, such as Mars sample return and outer solar system spacecraft.

    Of course, Beal has to build the rocket and find a place to launch it first...

  • Most payloads, especially telecomm satellites, are under 7000 pounds. Unlike Beal's proposed vehicle, the Roton is reusable and manned. It takes off and lands on its tail, like God and Robert Heinlein intended :-). And not only can they deliver your payload to orbit but, unlike Beal, they can bring it back! Never throw away another satellite!

    Beal and Rotary (as well as other RLV startups, like Kelly and Pioneer) serve complimentary markets. The 7,000-lb. maxmium payload of the Roton C-9 is for low-Earth orbit, not GEO. That makes Roton useful for LEO satellite constellations like Globalstar (and Iridium if it survives!) but not for the GEO communications satellites, which are growing larger to accomodate additional, more powerful transponders. The HS 702, a new GEO communications satellite developed by Hughes, has a launch mass of 5,200 kg! This is a market for the BA-2 as well as other existing and proposed expendable launch vehicles. (Although some large RLVs, like VentureStar and Space Access' proposed vehicle, could also service the GEO market.)

    Small RLVs like the Roton might one day open the space tourism market, if they can get the price-per-kg (or price-per-pound :-) down dramatically. That's something the BA-2 will never do, although boosters like it might one day launch the structures in orbit that future space tourists could visit!

  • You forgot a big consideration:

    Hydrogen and fluorine combine to make HFl, also known as hydrogen fluoride. Mixed in water it is called hydrofluoric acid. It's very corrosive and after just a couple launches your launch pad would resemble modern art.
  • Hmm, apparently NW has its own share of
    rednecks. I understand distrusting gov't,
    but saying there ain't no environmental
    issues is quite extreme and naive. Go to
    big apple, walk along Fifth Avenue and take
    a deep breath. Now stop coughing and rethink
    your position.
  • I don't see quite how the factors in your post prevent manned interplanetary missions.

    Essentially, when it comes to sending things between planets, it all boils down to propulsion. What you take with you is largely irrelevant. In other words, the real problem is getting things moving at a desired rate. Everything else is relative child's play.

    Since a Mars Direct mission utilizes generic forms of propulsion in the launch for Mars, what the astronauts can bring with them is really only limited by the type of rocket(s) that fires them into space. The more powerful the rocket engine, the more mass that the astronauts can tote. It doesn't matter whether that mass is in the form of food, air, water, fuel, biological material, or porno mags. The rocket doesn't care. It's just going to push it.

    Once they're in space, again, it's simply mass to push for their engines. All you need is an engine that can accelerate the spacecraft's mass to the desired speed.

    Using a Mars Direct plan, only the air, food, water, and other materials that the astronauts need to get *to* Mars is actually carried with them. Prior to the launch of the human beings, the necessary raw materials and machines - including atmospheric chemical processors that will create air, water, and rocket fuel on the planet's surface - will be launched and landed on Mars. As a result, the amount of weight and machinery carried on the trip there is drastically reduced.

    As a result, all you really need is enough air, food, and water to last for six months. Contrary to popular belief, there are ways to carry this stuff such that it serves multiple purposes. For instance, the water that the astronauts would need could be carried between the hull of the ship and the living quarters, and would provide protection against solar radiation (much like water, in various forms, provides insulation for the radioactive material in nuclear power plants). Food could be stored in much the same way. In addition to providing a valuable resource, using the water as shielding also means you don't need to carry separate shielding - reducing the weight needed if you were to carry both water and separate shielding.

    Air is really the trick, but with a moderately large reserve, good recycling systems and some other tricks, you could have enough to last you the six month trip to Mars. You don't need to carry over that amount, because the chemical atmospheric processor can generate it for you while you are on the planet.

    So what you have is a single mass you need to move (the habitation capsule/landing craft), without having to push all of the material they need for living on the planet's surface and leaving it (because they've already put that stuff there on previous launches). Using *current generation rockets* (most likely of Soviet origin, because they have the most powerful ones) connected together, we could send a crew of four astronauts with all of the necessary life support.

  • What they could do with their first two launches, which are sending up dummy payloads, is to launch tanks filled with water. They're going to have to pay the launch costs anyways, so they might as well put something up that has a low cost on the ground; but, a high value in orbit. The International Space Station will need a lot of water once it's operational, Beal could have the water waiting for them.
  • The specific impulse of various propellants in seconds in vacuum is:
    compressed nitrogen 80
    compressed steam 130
    hydrogen peroxide 190
    kerosene / hydrogen peroxide 310
    kerosene / liquid oxygen 375
    liquid methane / liquid oxygen 445
    liquid hydrogen / liquid oxygen 520
    liquid hydrogen / liquid ozone 600

    Hydrogen peroxide information:
    http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/SSC/H2O2CONF/jgay.htm
    http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/SSC/H2O2CONF/jwhitehe ad.htm
    Space links:
    http://msia02.msi.se/~lindsey/spaceLinks.html
  • This is really off topic now, but I wish they hadn't quit putting radium into watch faces.

    As far as I know, the radiation risk to the wearer was insignificant. You see, I have a really cool automatic mechanical watch (self winding) with no batteries or electronics at all. The only problem is reading it in the dark. It uses some sort of glow-in-the-dark paint that "charges up" in bright light, but that doesn't last long enough to be really useful.

    Bring back the radium watches!

    Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
    Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
  • Just wanted to point out - The Beal engine they were discussing was for the *second* stage... The first stage engine is supposed to be 5 times as powerful. That would be ~4 million lbs of thrust. Very large indeed, and that would probably allow a first stage with 3-5 engines with some pretty hellish lifting capacity.

    And while I agree in part about funding Energia restart, they weren't exactly known for reliability.

    However, I do have to concede the point that the scalability is unproven, but I *hope* the first stage tests go well - it would be nice to get beyond the shuttle's lift capacity for a lot of things.
  • The two low estimates are http://www.sciam.com/2000/0300issue/0300alpert.htm l">$20-40 billion (US). That's one-third of last year's US budget surplus (or pick a favorite number [gpo.gov] yourself).
  • The two low estimates are $20-40 billion (US) [sciam.com]. That's one-third of last year's US budget surplus (or pick a favorite number [gpo.gov] yourself).

    (Hmm.. I aimed at Preview but hit Submit? Ouch.)

  • Actually it's several races.

    Some people are racing to orbit, to be the first stop to space. Some people are racing to the moon, where there are convenient solid surfaces to fasten things which like vacuum or low gravity. Some people are racing to be first to mine an asteroid, while driving accounting experts nuts trying to figure out what the market price for gold might be with double the supply. Some people are just racing to get some of our eggs out of this basket.

  • Look at the March issue of Scientific American for "How To Go To Mars" [sciam.com]. Summaries of several manned Mars mission studies.

    And yes, we can go to Mars, right now. We just prefer to not build, and use, an Orion drive [webcreations.com].

  • >> Also, usually several smaller engines is better, because this way you can stabilize using rotation along the main axis.
    Ah no. Spin stabilization is only practical on sold fuel rockets. The liquid fuel would tend to be drawn to the side of the the tanks and would not feed correctly. Delta, Atlas, Titan, Saturn, and Proton do not spin.

    >>Also, on the space shuttle, during launch if one (or even two) engine fails, they can still land safely -- provided it is after the short risky period immediately after launch. Imagine if you had one huge engine instead and it failed

    Again on the Saturn and the Titian. If you loose an engine on lauch you where doomed. That is why they had an escape tower on Saturn and ejection seats on Titan for maned launches.

    Using one engine makes so much sence for unmaned launches. It means the rocket is more reliable, Cheaper to build, and lighter.

    >>Basically your booster will just fall on the ground and explode. This will not be safe for astronauts or bystanders.

    I wonder if you have ever been to the cape. Safe for bystanders, ha ha. Why do you think that we watch the lauches from miles away. Big rockets can make big booms. And yes I have seen boosers fall to the ground and make a mess. They usually had more than one engine also :)

  • are you for real?

    well, don't ever come to New Zealand. you'd hate it here.. we're completely anti-nuclear. everything's green and fresh, lots of forest left that's not getting cut down, lots of native animals that aren't extinct yet, and the green party is part of the ruling coalition.

    please do stay in your own stinky, sick, stripped naked, land.
  • There are two basic problems getting people to Mars, or L4/5 or the moon or even the Space Station. One, getting people there, getting the stuff to support them there. If you want efficiency they should primarily be done on seperate systems. The Shuttle does little better than the Saturn for a hybrid system. People need fewer Gs and a generally safer ride. Stuff (a general other category) could most efficiently be launched via a linear acclerator. Bucket size is restricted and you need a system for catching in space but if Quark could do it why can't NASA.
  • Yes. The Saturn V's F1 engines used liquid oxygen and plain old jet fuel (kerosene). It's almost the same fuel combination that the Beal rocket will use, except that LOX is cryogenic and hydrogen peroxide is a room-temperature liquid.

    One of the big advantages of using cryogenic propellant is that it doubles as a coolant. All of the liquid oxygen flowing into the F1 engines of a Saturn V first passed through pipes that wrapped around the nozzle and combustion chamber . . . to keep it cool.

    The F1 engines even went one step further and injected raw liquid oxygen along the boundary layer of the nozzle. That way, a narrow layer of very cold (but soon to be very hot) fluid shielded the nozzle from the hot exhaust gas.

    Did you ever wonder why in some photos and movies, the exhaust plume from a Saturn V's first stage is _dark_ for a few feet as it exits the nozzle and then suddenly becomes brilliant? That's partially because of the cooling layer of cryogenic oxygen that gets injected into the boundary layer halfway down the exhaust nozzle. If you're ever in Huntsville or Houston, take a look at a real Saturn V. They're really awesome

    Here's a listing of some of the propellants used in the first stages of various rockets:
    V2: LOX / alcohol
    X-15: LOX / ammonia
    Redstone: LOX / alcohol
    Atlas: LOX / kerosene
    Delta: LOX / kerosene
    Titan: nitrogen tetroxide / aerozine-50
    Saturn: LOX / Kerosene
    Proton: nitrogen tetroxide / usymmetric dimethyl hydrazine
    Soyuz: LOX/ Kerosene
    Ariane 4: nitrogen tetroxide / unsymmetric dimehyl hydrazine
    Ariane 5: LOX / liquid hydrogen

  • You are right. The fuels I listed are only for the first stages.
  • What's the best fuel for a rocket?

    flourine and hydrogen.

    Why does no one use it? cuz it's toxic and hard to store. So it's not always about pursuing the theoretical best. liquid oxygen and hydrogen is a good trade in terms of specific impulse for a shuttle-type launch.

    I would question NASA's rockets costing an order of magnitude more than Russia's. Sure, Shuttle is expensive, but even with all the extra overhead in that over a proton launch, it's not an order of magnitude more...
  • At last. A privately funded means of getting the space race off the ground again. Moon shots hera we come.
  • No, wait, it says we need DirectX 6.0, but we're running NT! Where's that 486 I saw the other day....
  • There may be an cost factor here. It may be significantly cheaper to use a less efficient rocket design if you don't plan on reuse. The cost of building multiple engines maybe prohibitive verses the cost of using more fuel. Not only that but there may be an issue with decreasing reliability as they complicate their somewhat simplified rocket design.

    Oh, look at their job's page! They are looking for a Vx/Works software guy with Linux experience.
  • Oh, I see, so we shouldn't put anything into space (for cheap) because eventually it will become floating space debris and... get in the way of putting more incredibly useful stuff in space?

    Honestly, cheap heavy lift is part of the solution to this because now you can afford to put something up in orbit to CLEAN UP THE JUNK!!! Of course, who pays for it becomes another interesting question - but if you really want to put something up there, you sure can afford to clean up anything that's in the way...

    And... when did mother nature move up above the atmosphere???

    Cyano

    The Wheel Weaves as the Wheel Wills
  • Talk about Mars. I am waiting to see that new movie I think it's call "Mission to Mars" now that in my opinion would be better than Phantom Menace. I love SCI-FI but Star Wars has lost it's flare.
  • Nuclear-powered Watches (They used to mix Radium with the glow in the dark paint on the dials so they would glow all night)


    My high school physics teacher used to talk about this. He once owned one of these watches. He said he once had rather red inflammed skin directly underneath the watch after he wore it for a significant amount of time...
  • For anyone out in the Los Angeles area, Boeing (formerly Rockwell Internation/Rocketdyne) has an F1 on display out in front of the Rocketdyne facility. It's on Canoga Avenue between Victory Blvd. and Vanowen Street.

    Take the 101 into the San Fernando Valley and go north on Canoga.

    Those F1's sure were big suckers.

    I just thought that people might like to see one of these puppies!
  • Didn't the Saturn V use Kerosene and LOX?
  • I'm worried that the same physics that are sending rockets into orbit could cause earth's orbit to be altered. Already we have calculated a small but measurable change from the sling-shot effect of sending our deep-space probes out by near-earth fly-bys. If we do it too much we're going to fall into the sun. Also, the proposed "rail gun" launch technique of achieving orbit applies a force at an angle that could alter our rotation period. I suggest that all future launches be coordinated to have a net zero effect on the earth, maybe by launching only in pairs from opposite sides of the earth. (Even then we're changing the earth's mass, but maybe the constant barage of meteorites we get is making up for it.)
  • In Alaska's panhandle, the 17 mil acre Tongass National Forest is the continent's last resovoir of ancient timber. Fifty year contracts signed in the 50s guarantee two companies (one Japanese owned) access to large quantities of timber for avg. $1.50 per board foot. The wood is worth $700 per thousand board feet. The Tongass sells more timber and loses more money than any other national forest, forty to sixty million dollars a year. In some years, it has lost 99 cents on every dollar it spent to sell trees." In other words, it short sells ancient timber from parklands (public land) at a loss to private corporations. Ho hum.

    Actually, from the figures you just posted, they're selling the wood at twice it's actual value. Your figure for a long term contract ($1.50/board foot) works out to a total of $1500/thousand board feet. If the wood is actually worth $700/thousand board feet, where's the problem?

    Care to elaborate? Or post correct figures?

  • Thanks Zack. I made a serious typo which completely distorts the information. Directly from the book now, with no extractions: "... access to large quantities of ancient timber for an average price of a dollar and a half per thousand board feet." So, the wood is sold to the privatized corporations for $1.50 per board foot, when the worth is $700 per thousand board feet. I didn't actually how shocking that was until you made me correct it. A dollar and a half spent for roughly $700 worth of raw materials... Damn.

    On the surface, that's downright horrifying, and tends to speak of the mismanagement our government has been engaging in for most of the century. However, to be fair, there are two points that need to be made.

    1) The 50 year contracts were signed in the 1950s, which means they are due to expire in this decade. Any idea exactly when they were signed? This tends to limit the actual future damage implied by the author's choice of words. However, something to look at would be whether or not there are plans to renew this contract, and at what cost. If the plan is "as is" then publicizing this widely before it can happen is necessary. I am not a tree hugger, but the public should receive fair value for the private use of public lands.

    2) What was the going rate for timber half a century ago? It's distinctly possible that when you take into account inflation, higher demand, and any other possible economic factors, $1.50 per thousand board feet was actually a reasonable price.

  • The last words Dan Goldin will hear Andy Beal say before NASA is disbanded are:

    Hey Dan Bob, watch me while ah do this!

  • Yes, Control we have entered the new coordinates but a dialog is asking me if I want to "restart" for the new settings to take effect...
  • for the Windows 2000 product launch! If Microsoft could put a copy on a BA-2 and send it hurtling towards the sun. Then, they can honestly say it finally got off the ground, really flew, and had blazing performance!

  • And isn't HFl the acid that doesn't feel like it's "burning" you, but instead it gets absorbed into your skin, and hours/a-half-day later as your bones begin getting their calcium burned out of them you experience severe amounts of pain?
  • Ummm, everything else being equal, Mr. Walker is probably correct. But, analogously, I sure building Volkswagens is more efficient, but sometimes you need a truck.
  • Complementary market niches. Think of Rotary Rocket as a taxi-cab service and Beal as a long-haul trucking company. We're going to need both if we're seriously going to get off this rock.
  • Why do some people seem to think satellites are the only application space is good for?

    Think space stations (big space stations). Think lunar colonies (plural). Think Mars colonies. Think asteriod mining. We're going to need cheap, heavy-lift boosters.

    It reminds me of the elderly woman who said, "Man wasn't meant to fly. He should stay home and watch TV like God intended".

  • IIRC, and if I'm thinking of the right project, Orion was basically a spaceship with a big flat plate in the back. Blow up a bomb behind it. Ride the shock wave. Pretty simple.

  • Nyet, 4-5 million lbs isn't impossible. Remember, the first stage of the Saturn V put out 7 million lbs thrust.

    For cheap heavy lift, check out the Shuttle-C. It's the external tank from a space shuttle with two solid rocket boosters mounted to it, again, just like a space shuttle. But instead of the shuttle itself, you have a cargo pod w/ 2 SSME's. You can boost over 77,000 kilograms to a 28 degree orbit, and even though the cargo pod never comes back, the launch still costs less then a single space shuttle launch (shuttle costs $500 million to launch, while Shuttle-C could cost maybe $200 million (all while putting 3-4 times the cargo into space!)

    http://www.friends-partners.org/~mwade/lvs/shutt lec.htm
  • This is an interesting thread, and I assume that most of you have read the current issue of Scientific American or are just familiar with interplantery travel. It's nice to see interest in what must be done to assure adequate resources for the future. [sciam.com]

    At the risk of souring public opinion, we should be advocating nuclear propulsion. Chemical propulsion has it's limits in terms of specific impulse and those limits will tell on the missions. More is better. The NERVA project proved the viability of a simple and direct application. The Scientific American article "How to go to Mars" had a nice write up on interesting electric propulsion engines, but they would of course require a power source.

    Nuclear power must be de deamonized if advancements are going to happen. The risks have to be clearly stated and put into persective. The current irrational fear of all things radioactive will prevent utilization of all these propulsion sources.

  • I've never seen a good refutation of this argument. I really wonder why Andy Beal et al chose the big booster approach. What were they thinking?

    I disagree to an extent. You are right about lots of small lauches being more efficient for putting large numbers of small payloads (like single satellites) in space. That's pretty much what we are doing now. Howver, here are some reasons why I think this company has a prayer of succeeding.

    First, I suspect that Beal's eventual goal is acheiving lots of big launches. I.e., acheiving a similar rate of launches per site as the smaller rocket competitors. That makes the economics work out. Second, he's the only commercial company in that niche. It's much better than being one of the crowd, especially with more skilled competitors out there. Many of them are probably going to come out with a big rocket at some point. By developing large rockets now, Beal has a chance of beating the competition to a big market.

    Finally, there will be a trend towards much larger structures in space than we currently have. Putting lots of small things up there is a job for small rockets, but big things like space stations are going to need a mix of big and small launches. The problem is that construction in space currently is vastly more expensive for this type of project than any other part including launching costs. Launching big components means less work putting it together. You'll need small launches for resupply missions.

    Here's why construction in space is expensive. First look at the direct costs of building the Internations Space Station in space. Many teams of astronauts will need to go up there to complete the station. I couldn't figure out how many trips are required from the NASA website. Maybe 30? more? I'm not clear on the training that an astronaut goes through for a *single* mission but it is tremendous, possibly up to a year in length.

    Add that the station now has to be *designed* to be put together in space by people in bulky, inflexible spacesuits who can only stay there for two weeks at the absolute maximum and you can see how come the price tag for the station is so steep.

    Currently, the biggest heavy launch competitors are governments (US, Russia, and the ESA at the moment). I believe that these will fade as private companies take over. By 2050, we'll see the vast majority of lift capacity in private hands.

    Sure, various militaries will maintain a "merchant marine" ability (i.e., the potential to lift lots of stuff from earth to orbit), but this won't have a commercial impact. And if we're stupid as usual, we'll have a military arms race in space as well. But most lift will be in private hands. On the other hand, most launch sites probably will be government-owned.

    What this digression means is, that whoever can get a piece of the earth-to-orbit market and stay in business, can be a player in one of the emerging markets of the next century. Dare we invoke "millenium"? :-) This could be bigger than single-click shopping!

  • I've got a friend who will soon be interviewing for a job at Beal Aerospace. He's an MCSE (pity the fool) and they want him to play NT for them. I suspect the real story is they need test pilots. PETA won't let them use monkey pilots anymore. MCSEs are plentiful and expendable.

  • Their employment section mentions they need a software engineer. Here is a copy of the Req's:

    SOFTWARE ENGINEER

    • A minimum of one year experience developing real-time, embedded software using a commercial RTOS is required.
    • Experience with VxWorks/Tornado on a PowerPC target with VME 64 computer bus architecture is preferred.
    • A minimum of 4 years of C and 2 years of C++ programming language experience, or equivalent, is required.
    • Applicant should have experience developing software for serial communication applications using protocol such as HDLC/SDLC.
    • Applicant should be capable of developing command/response serial communications software on WinNT using Visual C++.
    • Applicant should be experienced in developing software design specifications using OOA&D modeling techniques and UML.
    • Job responsibilities will include participation in design and code reviews.
    • Applicant should have significant experience in software testing including test case development.
    • Applicant must be comfortable in team-based development environment and be self-motivated with strong learning skills.
    • Device driver and board support package (BSP) development
    • MIL-STD-1553B bus controller software
    • Real-time performance analysis
    • Software requirements analysis
    • Flight-related software applications
    • Linux
    • Real time, integrated hardware in the loop simulations development
    • Graphical user interface design and development for WinNT platform
    • Telemetry software applications
  • > we speak American. So, just to name a few
    > differences:

    > humor instead of humour.
    > color instead of colour.
    > favor instead of favour.
    > behavior instead of behaviour.
    > honor instead of honour.
    > center instead of centre.
    > flavor instead of flavour.
    > neighbor instead of neighbour.

    I'm afraid you are not quite right. The REAL AMERICAN speak sounds something like "Darn !" or "Howdy y'all !!"

    :)
  • <I>How exactly would a large satellite "clean up the junk?" Would it eat the dead satellites? You can't just clean them up. They have mass, they take up space. The only way you can get rid of them is to push them into the atmosphere. However, do you want to be the president of a company that starts pushing 17-ton satellites into the atmosphere hoping that they burn up on reentry or land in an ocean?</I>
    <P>The best two methods for long-term cleanup of Earth orbit are Solar Thermal Rockets for large junk and an "Orion"-type pulse laser for the paint flecks and other small stuff. Instead of "getting rid of" the junk, it should be melted down, and either placed in commonly agreed-upon parking orbit, or smelted and solid as raw material directly. A well desinged STR should even be able to pick out the electronics and tankage for later reuse without melting it down.
    <P><i>Why does everyone insist that Nature exists only on Earth? </I>
    <P>"Nature" in the sense of a working ecosystem, does only exist on Earth, as far as anyone knows. Space is DEAD, there's nothing there except radiation and raw materials. We should use those materials (and energy) to improve the lives of people on Earth. The corollary of this is that, by improving standards of living on Earth, using space-based resources, we can radically reduce the impact of human existence on the biosphere.
    <P>J05H
  • A heavy-lift booster in this class could throw a pretty good-sized payload to Mars for a "Mars Direct" type of manned mission.

    Ehhhhm. One problem: The "heavy lift" of these guys lifts around 37400 pounds into LEO (low earth orbit). That's almost 17 tons.

    Compare that to space shuttle: 23 tons, magnum: 80 tons (The rocket they are developing for mars direct), and Saturn V: > 130 tons (the requirement for a mars-direct type mission).

    Roger.
  • Can you expand on that? I've never heard of nuclear propulsion for rockets.

    ObTopic: Heavy lift is great except when it all goes to shit. Loral tried to use a Russian heavylift to save a few bucks on sattelite launches, but they looked pretty dumb when the rocket burst into flames, destroying all six birds.

    -jwb

  • Yabut (Score:2)

    by tilly ( 7530 )
    IIRC the scientists involved estimated about 1 person dead somewhere from fallout per launch. I call that unacceptable.

    I note also that Freeman Dyson, one of the strongest supporters at the time of Orion, later admitted that he thinks that it was probably right to stop the project.

    Regards,
    Ben
  • What worries me is that this thing could seriously reduce the demand for a better surface-to-LEO RLV than the Shuttle, and that is something that we really really need much more than yet another giant booster.

    Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
    Thought exists only as an abstraction
  • You forgot Proton (30 tons low orbit, maximum elevation - stationary orbit), Energy (above 100 tons low orbit) and the unimplemented 4xEnergy - above 400 tons low orbit.

    The only merit the project has is that it is private. And that is about it.

    Otherwise I see no merit whatsoever. It has been proven mathematically and experimentally a number of times that above a certain size a set of Nx engines is more effective than a single booster. Increasing the engine ad finitum size is trying to climb up a staircase leading down.
  • When the government asks the question:

    What's the best fuel for a rocket?

    The answer is: "Hydrogen, because it has the most energy per weight." So they build huge complex engines with tanks to keep the liquid hydrogen (EXTREMELY EXPLOSIVE) and liquid oxygen safe. The engines are also extremely complex because they have to handle liquid helium temperature liquids at one end and blast furnace temperatures at the other end. And engineering difficulties and complexities that continue on and on. Always adding weight. All because hydrogen was the best fuel in theory.

    When an entrepreneur asks this same question, the answer comes back: "What do you want to do with it?". "Well, I want to put it in a rocket to launch satellites with." "Well, if you use H2 you'll have all those temperatures to deal with...jet fuel is much better than H2 in every respect except for power/weight ratio. But with all of the weight we'll save in the engines and the tanks and the handling, it'll more than make up for it..."

    Outlined above is the type of reasoning that leads to NASA's rockets costing an order of magnitude more than Russia's. It also shows why, IMHO, Beal Aerospace Technology has a pretty good chance of revolutionizing the satellite launch market.

    Daniel Lee

    There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself

  • Oh, like wow. Not.

    We had "HEAVY" lift capacity decades ago, not in chemical but in nuclear rockects. Capacity which never got past early tests (despite the simplicity and robustness of the drives) because of the Neuclear Test Ban Treaty that Kennedy signed. (They Qualified)

    With those babys, we could have gone to Mars in the '80s, but you'd have a hard time even lifting one, let alone launching one, in the current political climate.

    The treaty also stopped Project Orion, which was REALLY cool, but probably impractical for lift/landing, though it'd be great for interplanetary thrust.
  • Average possible or acheived, I wonder? Not that many people bother trying to run a 9x box 24/7, IME.

    I did last year, though. As we all know, it can aoccasionally get in a strop and crash repeatedly, they taking down the mean. But when it was running, it'd usually run for a day or so before it (or an unprotected application) did something silly and forced me to reboot due to substantially degraded performance.

    I'd love to know how to get 9x stable enough to produce an average possible uptime of 2.1 days.

    Greg
  • I don't think that's even the dominant form of humour here, TBH - though it does come up relatively frequently.

    Work with MS products for any length of time, though, and you'll discover fairly rapidly that the system crashes - or degrades performance far enough to force a reboot - fairly frequently. They can blame the third parties or the device drivers all they like, but neither should be capable of doing that much damage and the main reason they play up is the daft DLL problems.

    Yes, some of it's exaggerated but you realise how bad it can be when you have to live with it. It's not that far from the truth IME.

    Greg
  • This is only a second-stage engine. I would assume that the stage 1 engine this one will hitch a ride on will be even bigger and more powerful. This sucker's gonna be HUGE when it launches.

    Maybe these guys should hook up with NASA and get the ISS launched a little quicker (rather than one piece at a time in the shuttle).

    I sure hope they have some better real estate than what they have in Texas, though. I don't think they'll be making any launches from there, and the FedEx bill to ship a rocket to Cape Canaveral of Vandenberg is a bit steep.

  • Supposedly all the mechanical drawings and all existing tool and die setups for building Saturn V's were destroyed

    Nope. They're all on microfilm at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

    We simply do not have the infrastructure to build any more Saturn rockets. It's like asking Chevrolet to suddenly convert their assembly lines and start making 1965 Impalas again. Yeah, there's nothing stopping us technically.

    Also, all of the maintenance and launch facilities for the Apollo program have been abandoned or converted for other uses. We use the old Saturn launch pads to launch the Space Shuttle now. It would actually be much cheaper and more efficient to design a brand new heavy lift vehicle

    The Apollo program was a rush job and despite all of the amazing achievments, there were also a lot of cut corners and dust swept under the carpet. Ever wonder why the use those gigantic crawler-transporters to carry Saturns and Space Shuttles from the VAB to the launch pads? It's because in the 60's there wasn't enough time or manpower to lay railroad tracks or dig a barge canal. And so, to this very day, we use funky Jawa sand crawlers to move the Shuttle around at the Cape.

    There's a lot more to launching rockets than just the rockets. You also need huge dedicated facilities and people to support the operation.

  • Again on the Saturn and the Titian. If you loose an engine on lauch you where doomed. That is why they had an escape tower on Saturn and ejection seats on Titan for maned launches.

    Actually, they did loose engines on launch, for example Apollo 13's centre engine on the SII stage shutdown 2 minutes early, on a 7:30 minute planned burn.

  • A heavy-lift booster in this class could throw a pretty good-sized payload to Mars for a "Mars Direct" type of manned mission.
    It would seem that conventional chemical reaction engines will be used to push hardware in to space. However, once there, other technology will probably take over.

    One such technology being worked on right now is plasma engines. A proposed 2002 mission that would test this type of engine is mentioned at http://www.qu est.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/journals/petro/01-29-9 9.html [nasa.gov]. Also mentioned is an ion engine. A bit more about the plasma (or RF) engine can be found at http://www.ornl.gov/orcmt/success/rf- eng.html [ornl.gov].

    I've heard engineers at NASA refer to the plasma engine as the engine that'll take us to Mars.

  • Augh!!!!!

    Pulling out the plans for the Saturn V would be quite a trick. Supposedly all the mechanical drawings and all existing tool and die setups for building Saturn V's were destroyed on orders from Nixon as a political favor - to ensure that NASA got funding for the Shuttle.

    Supposedly, a semi-intelligent /. reader could use something called the World Wide Web to research an urban legend [urbanlegends.com] before posting it. The plans for Saturn V exist on microfilm. The tool and die setups may have been destroyed, but how many tools and die setups from other products of the 1960's still exist?

    To summarize from the sci.space.FAQ, the microfilm plans exist, the launch pad and Vehicle Assembly Building have been converted to shuttle use, and much of the specialized hardware (they mention guidance equipment) would have to be built from scratch.

    George

  • Actually, a complete Ku-band satellite, including parts, assembly, and launch, is about 250 million. This goes for NASA, or the French, or the Russians. So a quarter of a billion dollars for startup costs is not that much money in perspective.
    Telecom satellites are cheaper, but they're also in a much lower orbit - a few hundred miles up as opposed to 23,000 miles up. But they are launched in clusters, because they are not geostationary. So the payload is generally larger than the weight of 1 satellite.
    I am a strong believer in unmanned satellite launches. They are safer, just as accurate (because once you're in the ballpark, you fly satellites with telemetry anyway), and in the long run, are cheaper.
    As far as satellite recovery, it almost never happens. If a satellite doesn't deploy properly, you sell it to the insurance company that insured the launch. The insurance company doesn't have any repo men for satellites, so dead satellites generally become space junk. It may not be the utopian approach, but that's the way it works in real life.

  • That was an impressive picture you provided...

    However, the dot representations aren't quite to scale, are they? If they were, you wouldn't be able to see them. All your picture illustrates is that with a crude enough scale, you can make anything look alarming.

    I would say IMHO that the overerlming majority of the actual useable volume that we are talking about is empty, not filled with debris like your picture indicates.
  • Nuclear-powered toothbrushes (removes plaque... and everything else).

    Nuclear-powered cigarette lighters (I don't understand this one - you'd probably get cancer anyway!)

    Nuclear-powered cell phones (ditto)

    Nuclear-powered laptops (Uranium is just a tad too heavy... but the battery life is good).

    Nuclear-powered Minivans (you could just *laugh* at all the people paying $1.50/gallon)

    Nuclear-powered Linux installer (if you screw up, not only does it trash your Windows partition, it trashes your house... but don't worry Corel is working on a user friendly front-end for it: Selecting this option will destroy your neighbourhood ).
  • Unfortunately X-33's turning into same-old, same-old NASA project, over-time, over-budget. It's already late, it's so overweight it can't met it's original design objectives. Lockheed's talking about X-33A, which will be "New and Improved" (and lemon scented, presumably).

    If I were a cynic I might point out that Lockheed has the Shuttle maintenance contract, which is a cash-cow for them. Arguably they might not want a cheaper, easily maintained replacement for it. Being paid to make it fail is just a bonus.
  • Just wanted to point out - The Beal engine they were discussing was for the *second* stage... The first stage engine is supposed to be 5 times as powerful. That would be ~4 million lbs of thrust. Very large indeed, and that would probably allow a first stage with 3-5 engines with some pretty hellish lifting capacity.

    I must have missed that.

    Man, 4 million pounds of thrust would be an amazing.... AMAZING accomplishment, but it sounds impossible to me! :-)

    Man! I don't know if we have materials that are up to those levels of performance. It would certainly be an amazing engineering accomplishment. I've been waiting for a new heavy lift vehicle to incorporate the latest materials and technology, maybe this will be it.

    I remember in the late 1960's some crazed NASA engineer drew up simple sketches and ideas for a super-heavy-lifting vehicle that essentially clustered together 5 (!) Saturn V 1st stages (S-1C) to make up one first stage!

    I remember that they initially planned to keep the launch pad 20 or 25 miles away over the horizon so that shock waves wouldn't destroy EVERYTHING. A vehicle with 5, 4-million pound thrust engines might require something similar.

    I would be something to behold, wouldn't it? :-)

  • Nyet, 4-5 million lbs isn't impossible. Remember, the first stage of the Saturn V put out 7 million lbs thrust.

    Right... with five engines. These guys were talking about putting out 4 million pounds of thrust with one engine. To me that sounds unlikely.

  • Yeah, Zubrin's Mars Direct calls for either the resurrection of the Saturn V, something rather impossible given the lack of necessity/space race today, or the use of the russian Energia.

    I thought I remembered that. I'll have to re-read the book.

    I have chatted with the man about lecturing at a local community college. He seems like a nice guy.

    A privately funded Mars mission would, with the cost of reviving and using two Energia launches, plus the various other necessities, weigh in at about 4-6 billion dollars -- 35 Billion less than a NASA venture.

    The OLD NASA, yes. :-) But I do know that in the back of Director Dan Goldin's mind, he's thinking about building Mars rockets. And he has looked at Zubrin's ideas and even funded some small studies for in-situ propellant manufacturing, among others.

    It'll probably not happen for a while, but it's nice to see that he seems to care about exploration, and doing it cheaply.

    Beal's booster seems more of a satellite launch vehicle than anything, capable of high capacity launches to LEO and HEO...

    Absolutely, since we prove that you don't need heavy lift to launch LEO satellites every time we use a Delta to place a satellite... or launch a small vehicle to Mars.

  • Who knows, this may be redundant by now (I didn't read the follow-ups), but here goes.

    We had "HEAVY" lift capacity decades ago, not in chemical but in nuclear rockects.

    Actually our "HEAVY" lift capacity had a limiting effect on our space programs. This was one reasons why the Soviets kicked our butts in the space race for quite a while. You see, the US just has these kick butt scientists who where able to build outstanding nuclear weapons. In fact, these weapons were much smaller in size than the Soviets(but they carried a much bigger punch). This allowed the rocket scientists(people like me) to not waste as many resources building big rockets. They were able to get the same effect out of smaller rockets, due to a smaller payload.

    Unfortunately when it came time for the US to go to space, our rockets weren't powerful enough to get us into orbit. We had to make bigger rockets. The Soviets already had these rockets. In the end our obvious mastery at technological superiority allowed us to put a man on the moon.

    Wigs

  • From what I've heard, the Russians tested nuclear propulsion rockets way back then in the 1950/60s. Nuclear performed slightly better than chemical propulsion, but they probably didn't push the technology too much.
    Myself, I have nothing against nuclear propulsion, I mean they could make a big launchpad in Antarctica or somewhere and launch from there. Many radioactive particles would get caught in the magnetosphere which is strong around the poles. Gamma rays would kill humans in long range, but there are not too many humans in Antarctica. There would be not much radiactive dust because most of it would remain frozen there.
    Of course I know the above idea will never happen, because most people wince when they hear "nuclear" anything.
  • Let's talk facts, coward, since you wouldn't like to supply any. This is offtopic, and you are a troll, but the notion of environment vs. advancement has come along and let's discuss our ingenuity vs. being smart enough to realise our actions determine the future with some facts. Your insights seem to bespeak a Great Northwesterner who works at Microsoft, sure you're liberal, but hey...

    First, as someone who grew up in the Great Northwest, I suggest you take a flight over the state of Washington sometime. You'll see what no statistic can ever show - that the majority of forest land is GONE. There is a three foot buffer zone around highways to give the appearance of forestry, but an aerial view does much to bring it all home.

    In British Columbia, clear cuts have stretched 180 square miles. It is a bald patch visible in SPACE. Ever wonder why the salmon industry vanished in the Northwest? Because clear cutting effects rivers and rivers effect salmon and thereby 5 million people lose their jobs when the natural salmon runs vanish. Ho Hum.

    Here's a short excerpt from Carl Safina's (a director of programs for the National Audobon Society and professor at Yale) book Song For The Blue Ocean, a year long study to examine the truth behind ecological warnings. Bear in mind that Safina is an avowed fisherman who is concerned about people keeping their jobs, not a hippie tree hugger by any means. A read of this book will prove so. He examined such issues as the spotted owl and deforestation in the Northwest with as open a mind as possible, interviewing people representing all viewpoints, in order to assest in hindsight the truth behind these issues.

    "In Alaska's panhandle, the 17 mil acre Tongass National Forest is the continent's last resovoir of ancient timber. Fifty year contracts signed in the 50s guarantee two companies (one Japanese owned) access to large quantities of timber for avg. $1.50 per board foot. The wood is worth $700 per thousand board feet. The Tongass sells more timber and loses more money than any other national forest, forty to sixty million dollars a year. In some years, it has lost 99 cents on every dollar it spent to sell trees."

    In other words, it short sells ancient timber from parklands (public land) at a loss to private corporations. Ho hum.

    Here's some facts for you:

    "In nice round terms, a century of logging eliminated 90 percent of the ancient salmon forests of Oregon and Washington. About 5 percent is protected. All the remaining ancient forest on US soil in the Pacific Northwest will be gone before 2010 unless specifically protected."

    As for the basis of these facts, I urge you to read the book and check his biblography, which is more than esteemed, all information coming from eminent scientific publications and journals. As for yours, where do they come from?

  • How exactly would a large satellite "clean up the junk?" Would it eat the dead satellites? You can't just clean them up. They have mass, they take up space. The only way you can get rid of them is to push them into the atmosphere. However, do you want to be the president of a company that starts pushing 17-ton satellites into the atmosphere hoping that they burn up on reentry or land in an ocean?

    Why does everyone insist that Nature exists only on Earth? Does it not bother anyone that the 10,000 pieces of man-made debris surrounding the earth looks like this [nasa.gov]? That the University of Chicago and NASA launched a satellite [apc.org] in January 1999 to monitor the debris? That an international committee(the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee [spacedaily.com], of which NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Chinese Space Agency are a part) has been formed in order to manage the garbage? That each piece of debris, moving at tens of thousands of km/h, poses a threat [galileonet.it] to future satellites? I'm sure people would care if we started trashing the moon, but that's even farther away. Just because it's vacuum doesn't mean it's not worth taking care of.

    enmity.
  • It seems to me that we should be thinking smaller, not heavier, when anticipating future satellite demands.

    According to the Goddard Space Flight Center, over 3500 satellites (active and dead) are already in orbit. In April 1991, the Atlantis shuttle carried the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory satellite into orbit, which, weighing in at 17 tons (38,000 pounds or 17,273 kilograms), was, at the time, the heaviest shuttle payload ever launched. The full BA-2 rocket, according to Beal's site, has the capacity to carry a 37,400 pound payload into low earth orbit or 13,200 pounds to geostationary transfer orbit.

    As Donald Robertson states in a 1995 article on commercial satellites [hooked.net],
    ... you have a market for satellites, and the rockets to launch them, that could reach into the thousands -- all paid for with private money. All of a sudden, satellites and launch vehicles are no longer a glorified hand-craft, turning out a dozen or so literally hand-made models a year. They are a real industry mass-producing commercial products on assembly lines... [but] no matter how many satellites are launched and how much data each satellite can transmit, supply simply cannot catch up to demand.
    What's going to happen when media conglomerates decide to upgrade their orbiting infrastructure with a new, 2000-era mindset of "bigger is better, and hell, now it's cheap too?"

    It's long been known that large companies care little about such problems. Many agricultural companies care little for the land they desecrate, and I doubt that media companies will show any more compassion toward the limits of Nature (whether terrestrial or in orbit). It seems our only hope lies with governmental regulations, but I fear that in the future the mighty dollar may prove to be greener than Nature.

    enmity.
  • This article doesn't really have much detail on their project, but I know that Lockheed Martin has been working on a whole vehicle for delivering things into "outer space".

    It's called the X-33 Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) and information is available here [lmco.com]. This page is slightly out of date, but it has more technical detail than that article.

    Jesus may love you, but I think you're garbage wrapped in skin.
  • I used to work for the Rotary Rocket Company; I was part of the team that was developing the main engine. It was one hell of a cool company and one hell of a cool project. And, most significantly, we had a great team that included the best engineers that I have ever had the privilege to work alongside.
    SSTO is a very ambitious goal -- there are "experts" (mostly in NASA) who still say that practical SSTO is impossible -- but that team had the Right Stuff and might have actually pulled it off. Unfortunately, the company ran out of money and has cut staff back to a bare skeleton crew. In particular, the entire engineering team is gone.

    As somebody who was on the inside, I can tell you this: the main problem was, as always, a lack of money. But lack of management at the very top was a close second. Gary Hudson (Rotary's CEO) is a great visionary, but the man does not know how to manage an engineering project. Alot of the progress that was made at Rotary occurred despite Gary, rather than because of him.

    The current state of affairs is that Rotary has a whole lot of hardware, but nothing in the way of a team. Hudson got more seed money -- by at least two orders of magnitude -- for this project than any cheap space advocate has ever seen in one place before. Unfortunately, he blew it. Rotary Rocket is, I am sad to say, effectively dead, and no amount of money is going to revive it, unless that money comes along with a major reorganization (i.e. get a new CEO). And Gary will not allow that to happen.

    However, work continues. The former head of Propulsion, the chief engineer, and a couple of my ex-coworkers have created a company, X-Cor Aerospace [hughes-ec.com], to develop rocket engines for commercial applications. Currently they are seeking customers and/or investors who want to support their work. And they have built a small rocket engine, literally in their garage, using their own money. Their ultimate goal is to gather the resources necessary to build a cheap commercial launch vehicle, and succeede where Rotary failed. But at the moment, they are struggling to survive.
  • Everyone has been commenting about the importance of these rockets for possible Mars missions. As an astronomy major, I can say Beal's new rockets mean very little.

    Beal's BA-2 rockets use iquid hyrodgen as fuel. However, there are diminishing returns for the amount of fuel you pack into a rocket. The more fuel you have, the more thrust you need to lift it off the ground. Now this isn't too much of a problem for lifting sattelites into orbit. But for a Mars mission - you have to pack along a hefty amount of fuel for the return trip. Chemical reactions are not efficient enough to make this a reality.

    NASA's got lots of issues with the Mars mission. Check out these numbers:
    * The Mars trip would take 259 days - ONE WAY. There's no getting around this. It's called a Hohmann Transfer Orbit, and it's just not worth getting there any different way.
    * Being a science major, I work in metric units. So for all you nerds out there - it would take 2.11x10^11 Joules of energy to get a 1000kg shuttle to Mars. Now, I'm not sure how long the Beal rocket can sustain it's 810,000lbs thrust (stoopid Standard units), but that's A LOT of energy. That's not to Mars & back, just to Mars. And let's face it, they're going to have to carry a lot more than 1000kg (about 1 ton) of fuel for the return trip.

    My guess is that alternative fuels will be used to travel to and from other planets. Ion drive technology may actually become a reality for large-scale projects in the future. Who knows. But I think it's safe to say that Beal will be using their rockets as advertised - for commercial sattelites, not for Mars.
  • Seems not to be well known that Beal may be launching from Guyana - a small English-speaking country in South America just south of Venezuela. We are just 5 deg N of the equator and the site they have been testing would allow lauches N and E over open sea. Manufacturing would take place elsewhere. Would be great for us here in my opinion. They seem willing to help develop local talent where feasible - not many rocket engineers here right now... ;) For the eco-concerned there is a functioning EPA here & there will be an EIA etc. Has been quite a bit of discussion in the local press. The identified area is a small part of a large area of sparsely inhabited swamp. For links to local press see: http://www.sdnp.org.gy/guylinks.html If the pages are a bit slow have patience with us - we only came on the net in 1996.

  • A Step Towards Mars (Score:3)

    by Skyshadow ( 508 ) on Sunday March 05, 2000 @08:08PM (#1224074) Homepage
    This is actually more important for its interplanetary implications.

    A heavy-lift booster in this class could throw a pretty good-sized payload to Mars for a "Mars Direct" type of manned mission. The fact that the boosters exist will probably give an extra push to the manned Mars project (if NASA can ever stop throwing money away on the Space Station).

    I hope to see colonists on Mars before I die, but at this rate they need to get moving -- the space program hasn't done anything really visionary since Neil Armstrong walked out onto the moon.

    In any event, it's good to see that a less expensive heavy lift booster is making it to the market. I wonder what NASA has planned next -- maybe toss a few dozen comm satelites into orbit with one big booster to facilitate talking to earth....

    ----

  • Nuclear-powered Watches (They used to mix Radium with the glow in the dark paint on the dials so they would glow all night)
    Nuclear-powered souviners (The Atomic Bomb museum in Oakridge had a cool machine, you put a dime in it, and it bombarded the dime with Neutrons, Creating a souviner Radioactive Dime.)

  • Re:Heavy lift, maybe. (Score:3)

    by gizmo_mathboy ( 43426 ) on Sunday March 05, 2000 @09:14PM (#1224076)
    Did anyone really read the article and Beal's site?

    This engine is going to be used for the second stage. I would say that 810K lbs. of thrust is very good for a private launch firm.

    Their first stage engine is targeted to produce 4.1 million lbs. of thrust. It will be interesting to see how those tests go.

    They look to be targeting LEO/GEO satellite orbits instead of something as ambitious as interplanetary exploration.

    On a side note, I've some experience with hydrogen peroxide. As an undergrad (I have a BS in aero engineering from Purdue) I worked with some grad students on a project of theirs. They were doing some testing with a H2O2/styrofoam and H2O2/polyethylene engines. It was awesome to say the least. Peroxide is a very safe propellant, we were using it for over a year and still have all our fingers, eyes, and toes. :-)

    One of the guys happened to work at Beal for a bit as their chief propulsion dude. He has since left and is working elsewhere.

  • Re:It's the SUV of rockets! (Score:3)

    by purefizz ( 114470 ) on Sunday March 05, 2000 @08:38PM (#1224077) Homepage
    Well... this may not be too far off the mark with lobbyist of various countries vying for their rockets and launching facilities. Cellular phones, pagers, etc. are definately raising the competition in this space. I'm just suprised Amazon hasn't patented the idea of a large cone shaped object using highly combustible fuel designed to carry payloads into space, yet.

    Visit uMoo - http://www.uMoo.com/ [umoo.com] - Talk about Bull...

  • Talk to These Guys Instead (Score:4)

    by ewhac ( 5844 ) on Sunday March 05, 2000 @11:14PM (#1224078) Homepage Journal

    A quarter of a billion dollars? Why is this guy trying to recreate NASA? You don't need Saturn-V-class vehicles to get the majority of payloads to orbit. What's more, it looks like his vehicle is disposible, which is an unnecessary waste. And that launch site looks ridiculously impractical; how are you going to get what might be an extremely delicate, sensitive payload to that island?

    Check out the Rotary Rocket Company [rotaryrocket.com]. They have a working prototype, the Roton, undergoing tests in California's Mojave desert.

    Maximum payload capacity: 7000 lbs.
    Estimated cost per launch: $7M
    Price per pound: $1000
    NASA's price per pound: ~$5000

    Most payloads, especially telecomm satellites, are under 7000 pounds. Unlike Beal's proposed vehicle, the Roton is reusable and manned. It takes off and lands on its tail, like God and Robert Heinlein intended :-). And not only can they deliver your payload to orbit but, unlike Beal, they can bring it back! Never throw away another satellite!

    Right now, all they need is investment capital. For half of what Beal has spent to date ($120M), they can complete the Roton and start delivering payloads to orbit. Unfortunately, Rotary Rocket has had difficulty securing investment capital. Unlike most .coms -- which typically get twice what Rotary Rocket needs -- they have an actual working prototype, and they will make money.

    Schwab

  • acme rocket co. (Score:4)

    by romco ( 61131 ) on Sunday March 05, 2000 @08:18PM (#1224079) Homepage
    I noticed this in the employment section of there website...

    "Applicant should be capable of developing command/response serial communications software on
    WinNT using Visual C++.

    "Roger, we have lift-off, hold on I have a blue screen, abort! abort!"
  • Beal's analysis concluded that a new vehicle should be many times larger than those vehicles. The industry consensus was that small rockets were substantially simpler and cheaper. But Beal did not agree with the common consent and reasoned that if he built his own factory and was vertically integrated, that a large vehicle was clearly the best choice.

    John Walker wrote a piece on the economics of launch systems [fourmilab.to] that says, basically, it makes more sense to launch a lot of little rockets frequently than it does to launch a few big rockets occasionally. The argument is that recurring costs of industrial processes go down with volume more than enough to make up for any economies of scale that might be lost by launching only one satellite per rocket. Certainly microelectronics in low earth orbit requiring frequent "on demand" replenishment launches is at odds with the large booster approach.

    John Walker isn't the first to make this argument. Since the early 80s aerospace professionals know have been pointing out that rocket engines have materials limits and tolerances no more demanding than a VW engine made in Brazil costing under $1000 per unit. The big difference is volume production. So this seems obvious to a number of very intelligent folks.

    I've never seen a good refutation of this argument. I really wonder why Andy Beal et al chose the big booster approach. What were they thinking?

  • So do we need the Saturn V? (Score:4)

    by SuperG ( 83071 ) <garth_eNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Sunday March 05, 2000 @08:36PM (#1224081)
    Every now and then someone mentions that at the moment it's not actually possible for man to land on the moon - and to do so would mean getting out the old Saturn V plans, and rebuilding 30 year old technology.

    Now with this series of rocket being developed by these guys, despite the fact that they are being built with the main objective of deploying satellites, could they be modified to perform moon-landing-type missions? It would mean that a) development of the necessary hardware wouldn't have to start from the ground up, and b) it isn't being built using 30 year old technology (based on maybe, but you catch my drift.)

    I realise that the base model of rocket would have to be modfied to stick on the lunar module etc. but is this conceivable? I would just think that this would perhaps make any NASA, or any other space agency for that matter, prick up it's ears regarding picking up moon development where we left off a quarter-century ago.

  • Heavy lift, maybe. (Score:4)

    by Crixus ( 97721 ) on Sunday March 05, 2000 @08:43PM (#1224082)
    Beal claims a thrust of 810,000 pounds for its heavy lift engine. That's not bad, but the F-1 engine, 5 of which fired the first stage of the Saturn V developed 1.5 million pounds each, and those were still undergoing R&D. I think Rocketdyne was up to F-1g by the time they cancelled the program and those were putting out 1.75 million pounds each.

    Bottom line, I think they've done a great job so far, but to do any real heavy lifting you need more thrust. They claim this engine is scalable, but we'll see. Getting more thrust out of it now will probably require massive investment, if the engine is capable of any more.

    I may not be remembering correctly, but even Bob Zubrin's Mars Direct plan called for some serious heavy lifting. And I think he mentioned the Energia Booster.

    You can cluster more engines to get more thrust but the Soviets learned that that isn't always the best solution. I think the first stage of their Saturn V equivalent (sometimes known as the G-1, but also know as something else, N1?) used 30 engines, and they had problems keeping them all working. They even managed to blow a few of them up.

    So I question whether these are up to the task of real heavy lifting. I hope they prove me wrong.

    Heck, just bust out the plans for the F-1 and start making those again. Sure, all of the tooling is gone but you could probably re-start the production of that engine for very little.

    OR, get with the Soviets and re-start their Energia Heavy Lift program. THAT was the most powerful heavy lift vehicle ever built.

    Just because those were government sponsored programs doesn's mean private industry couldn't take over (though I don't buy the whole argument that the private sector necessarily does things more efficiently than does government).

  • NERVA (Score:4)

    by CrazyD ( 125427 ) on Sunday March 05, 2000 @08:31PM (#1224083)
    Nuclear Rocket Page [roadrunner.com]
    http://www.roadrunner.com/~mrpbar/rocket.html

    Basically, as an alternative to chemical rockets, we were developing a nuclear rocket called NERVA.
    By the time the project was terminated, their prototypes were giving about 850 seconds of specific impulse, and the engineers believed it wouldnt be too difficult to raise that to about 1200. The theoretical maximum for chemical rockets, however, is something like 400 seconds of specific impulse. If the project hadn't been canned, it is quite possible that our rockets would be three times as efficient as they are today.

    The downside was that if a rocket failed during launch, it would be pretty catastrophic. But, as was already mentioned, rockets like this would be great for interplanetary travel.

  • Re:A Step Towards Mars (Score:5)

    by Maurice ( 114520 ) on Sunday March 05, 2000 @08:26PM (#1224084)
    Actually the article was not specific at all. There was no technical info apart from them saying that in the future they will build the largest rocket engine ever. The size of the rocket engine is not the only factor in determining the maximum payload the rocket could take into orbit. Also, usually several smaller engines is better, because this way you can stabilize using rotation along the main axis. For example the Russian N-1, that was really the biggest *booster* ever built had 31 engines I believe, some of which were small and on the periphery to provide spin stability. The space shuttle has relatively small thrust vectoring engines to maintain stability, because it can't spin-stabilize (astronauts will start puking). Also, on the space shuttle, during launch if one (or even two) engine fails, they can still land safely -- provided it is after the short risky period immediately after launch. Imagine if you had one huge engine instead and it failed. Basically your booster will just fall on the ground and explode. This will not be safe for astronauts or bystanders.
    Another factor is the design of the booster (the big cylindrical thing we usually call a rocket) itself. The payload capability depends more on that than the size of the engine(s). IIRC the overall acceleration depends more on the engines.
    I think this article is misleading, or at least naive.

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