I know a few engineers who either work directly for NASA or are contractors and all of them are frustrated as hell. One has spent the last 2 years working on a compact sewage processing plant for the space station or a Mars mission and is highly frustrated about the work rules that prohibit him getting it working properly and optimizing it's performance.

likely to be starved to death by funneling their funding down manned flight ratholes first...

later! OL JR

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The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!

You DO know that the F-1B project is actually being conducted by Dynetics, NOT NASA... they started the project on their own nickel and worked on it a year or so IIRC before they even got a dinky contract from NASA to help fund their work in reviving F-1 under the "advanced SRB" program for the SLS Phase 2 program. Even now they don't have enough funding to finish the job (that I'm aware of) but perhaps they can get "close enough" to attract interest or financing to complete the job on their own, in the likely outcome that they don't receive an advanced booster contract (which is almost politically assured to go to shuttle mafia member ATK solely due to its political and lobbying clout in DC). It'd be a h3ll of an engine to have available... if we'd had it back in the early 90's, there would have been no need to build Atlas V using Russian RD-180 engines... Even now it'd be a good engine for a new version of a twin-F-1B powered first stage vehicle like the Jarvis launcher... (which is what we SHOULD have built in the late 80's/early 90's... we would be launching our own astronauts into orbit NOW on board NASA rockets if we had!) The Dynetics team is getting help from NASA and use of NASA facilities, like the gas generator test firing for the turbopumps on F-1B from the old F-1's in storage in NASA facilities...

You're right, though... If it's going to happen, it won't be NASA at the head of it... it'll be someone else, one of the "nu-space" companies... NASA is simply a victim of its (insane) political overlords...

When SLS inevitably gets cancelled, it's fairly likely it may take all of NASA with it... ESPECIALLY if, by that point, SpaceX is flying regularly with manned vehicles and has demonstrated its HLV Falcon Heavy vehicle successfully, and at much lower cost than NASA would spend just to STUDY THE CONCEPT... At a minimum NASA will probably be reduced to a rump organization of itself...

Course, this might not be a bad thing... NASA is, as others have pointed out, a bloated bureaucracy too hamstrung by conflicting political interests and influences, usually 180 degrees apart from anything approaching making good operational sense, and seems incapable of even defining a mission, given the indecisive politicians and lack of clear direction, and conflicting priorities both within and outside of NASA... That's how we get "policy" like Congress insisting NASA build the SLS, but refusing to fund ANY missions for it beyond some demonstration "missions", while NASA tries to cobble up proposals for various "stunt" missions that they could afford "on the cheap" within the existing emaciated funding budgets...

Anyway, it's nothing new... it's a mess and has been a mess basically for the last ten years... many predicted the downfall of NASA with the collapse of the Constellation Program and its cancellation... but of course, so long as it serves as a government pork redistribution tool for the politicians to funnel money to the favored old shuttle contractors, keeping them reelected and successfully wooed with tons of lobbying money, regardless of whether it makes any sense whatsoever or serves the future needs of the civilian space program in any sensible way...

As for "flyback" as in "glideback" recovery of reusable stages... especially in relation to "vertical landing" flyback maneuvers like that planned for Falcon 9, well, both have their drawbacks... wings are heavy, and subtract from payload capability. Throw in the need to survive the changes in flight regime from vertically launching rocket, to supersonic expended rocket stage, and then the need to transition successfully into a glider reentering the sensible atmosphere at supersonic or hypersonic speeds, execute a turnaround and glide or fly under power back to a prepared landing site near the launching site, successfully approach and land, and all the avionics and equipment required to accomplish that flight paradigm, and you have a VERY complex craft that going to be difficult and expensive to engineer and get flying safely and reliably, and that will likely require a lot of turnaround maintenance and refurbishment to prepare for flight again... This is the "catch 22" that killed the shuttle's reusability advantages...

I really question the whole idea of reusability in this day and age anyway... When people rued the waste of Saturn rockets lifting off to go to the Moon, with a rocket 363 feet tall and weighing 6.5 million pounds only returning a burnt-out capsule 13.5 feet across and ten feet tall after the mission with its three occupants and a box of moon rocks, well, it was a different time... creating and fabricating highly refined parts for rockets and spacecraft was extraordinarily expensive-- there was little/no automation to speak of, and actually physically making the parts was super-expensive-- human labor, relatively speaking, was cheap by comparison. This was the paradigm the "savings" that shuttle would produce were predicated on-- reuse of the super-expensive components through "cheap" refurbishment after flight by numerous technicians. Problem is, #1 times changed, and #2, they VASTLY underestimated the amount of hands-on refurbishment necessary for reuse. At the same time, new automation processes and improved fabrication methods and techniques, new materials technology and new processes greatly simplified the fabrication of a lot of parts which had been extremely expensive to manufacture before... at the same time, highly skilled technical labor costs went through the roof, which made the refurbishment costs astronomical, with all that touch labor required.

Nowdays, with the increase of these automated processes and addition of new ones like friction stir welding and 3D printing of parts, with the application of "minimal touch-labor streamlined and highly automated production", in all likelihood it's cheaper to simply expend rockets than to go to the additional expense and design them with the additional difficulties and expense to be capable of recovery, refurbishment, and reuse. IF, and it's a BIG "IF", recovery and reuse can be achieved with relatively straightforward and minimal negative impacts to the design and its payload, with minimal expense and relatively little very straightforward and simple refurbishment required, then PERHAPS reusability can be achieved and make excellent economic sense. I think that still remains very much to be seen, however...

Later! OL JR

__________________
The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!

Two technologies are inaproprtiately fixated on. Reuseability and SSTO. By simply going TSTO and recovering ONLY the combustion chamber and turbo-pump, and explosively destroying the remaining unneeded un-reuseable mass solves 100% of the addressable problem.

I have physically been to DARPA HQ for an individual presentation BTW. I was instantly approached by four lobbiests.

Jerry

It is interesting, and perhaps significant, that NASA unmanned planetary missions (such as MESSENGER, only the second probe to visit Mercury and the first to orbit it [a planned included mini-lander fell to the budget axe]) are no longer the exclusive domain of JPL, but are also being managed by other institutions such as Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory.

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There are so many inter-related factors involved (the vehicle's size, payload mass, desired flight rate, desired launch and recovery logistics, acceptable procurement and recurrent costs, among many others), that there is no *one* "best" way to go. For the very smallest payloads (one or two cubesats, on up to 10 kg - 100 kg or so), the smallest practicable -expendable- SLV--ground-launched or even air-launched--always seems best according to analyses. Winged air-launched SLVs (whether expendable like Pegasus, or reusable like Dan DeLong's air-launched spaceplane designs) make sense at certain sizes, but not at other, smaller or larger sizes (as Dr. Antonio Elias at Orbital Sciences Corporation found when conducting optimization studies for larger winged air-launched boosters than Pegasus). Likewise, your proposed solution has a certain range of overlapping parameters (a "sweet spot," to put it colloquially) where -it- is most advantageous to use.

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NAR #54895 SR

Yes, I do. While this is likely premature, I'd love to see Dynetics become an "extra-Old Space" (outside of the traditional circle of rocket engine suppliers to the goverment) engine contractor for the New Space industry sector (when engines and other critical components become available, entrepreneurs in other companies can see other ways forward for *their* vehicles). I was hoping you would mention the Jarvis SLV--who knows, it might yet appear in updated form at some point (built by someone else, of course), as the F-1B would make it an even more attractive option than the original F-1 would have. Also:

The fundamental problem with NASA is that unlike its predecessor agency, the NACA, NASA was "born rich -and- privileged" (and soon became even more so after JFK's Moon landing goal was accepted by Congress). The NACA *never* thought in terms of a grand and lavishly-funded government "national aviation program" (an analog of the space program, as it came to be later) in which they would lead the way; instead, they did theoretical and research work that the aviation industry could use (NACA airfoils and NACA air inlet duct designs are still in universal use today, even on cars). Like the NACA--which did *not* develop operational aircraft or rockets, but instead conducted high-risk (and high-payoff) cutting-edge research that was made available to industry--NASA should do the same in the space field. In fact, the "first A" part of NASA (Aeronautics) has always operated as the old NACA did, and still does today, developing experimental "X-planes" and conducting basic research. Now:

The "second A" part of NASA should also operate on this model, doing the high-risk/high-payoff research and development work on advanced propulsion systems and other space system, and making the data available to industry. They should also conduct space missions (such as unmanned planetary probes) that have no immediate commercial value (within the normal return-on-investment periods used in industry), because such "economically worthless" knowledge often does, down the road, become very valuable (the MESSENGER orbiter has already found the planet Mercury to be richer in some elements than was previously thought [as well as being, surprisingly, quite hospitable in its polar regions], which could be very helpful to us in the future). Also:

SpaceX may very well help trigger such a change in NASA, as you wrote. I can see Congress (or at least enough members to make a difference) saying, "Why is it now that we're giving you $40 billion to do what those folks are already doing for about a tenth of that??"

Winged is definitely not my first preference. I think Philip Bono's reusable VTVL concept for aerospike engine-powered SSTOs (which could also be done in a TSTO design, for lower technical risk and more generous dry mass margins in both stages) should be evaluated using small test vehicles (essentially, reusable sounding rockets) that could be scaled up for orbital attempts. (The autogenous [self-pressurizing] LOX/CH3 aerospike engine being developed for the new Firefly two-stage small SLV [see: http://www.fireflyspace.com/ ] might be perfect for such test vehicles.) Bono's design concept motivated MBB in Germany to conduct a design study for such an SSTO vehicle of their own, which they called Beta (only ELDO's small budget back then prevented Beta's development), and Chrysler was completely confident in their SERV SSTO design, which was actually quite conservative (unfortunately, NASA wanted a shuttle with wings...). Gary Hudson's SSTO designs are even more refined than these. BUT:

Since there is more than one way to low-cost spaceflight, I see your "Continental Can" rockets idea (which is the MCD [Minimum Cost Design] approach) as being equally viable--indeed, the Russian launch vehicles are designed based on trade-offs that are similar to the MCD criteria. If SpaceX's fully-reusable Falcon doesn't pan out (recovering the second stage intact from orbit, with a worthwhile LEO payload capability, will be quite a challenge), perhaps a variation on the MCD theme would work. Since a big piece of rare niobium metal (the second stage's Vacuum Merlin engine's nozzle skirt) is currently irretrievably lost on each Falcon 9 flight, it might be practical--at least for LEO missions--to bring the whole second stage back in a non-reflyable but recoverable condition (rather like a dented but floating metal can). In this case, it would be a recyclable rocket (even the Russians reuse undamaged small internal components of spent stages that land at well-known downrange areas, as they tend to accumulate in those places).

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Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see:
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http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511
All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com.
NAR #54895 SR