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CHANGING THE LOW-COST LAUNCH GAME Elon Musk does not want to leave the planet; he just wants to make the trip more affordable and reliable for those who do, and make a profit in the process. His lofty ambitions could come one step closer to fruition in March, when his company, Los Angeles-based Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, attempts to launch its first rocket, a 70-ft-long two-stage liquid-fueled ship called the Falcon. If Musk can claim success—recovering his first stage and putting the U.S. military payload into the correct circular low-Earth orbit after a Vandenberg launch—the company will have set a new low in cost-per-pound to LEO for a commercial venture. Such a reduction will be necessary for any viable future civilian endeavors in space, manned or unmanned. Musk’s Falcon, priced at $6 million, can deliver a maximum of 1,400 lb to a 200-km circular orbit at launch site inclination, yielding a $4,000/lb-to-orbit cost. The entrepreneur notes that the nearest U.S. competitor in this booster class is Orbital Sciences’ Pegasus, with a ride he says is priced at $20 million. For an equivalent payload, the Pegasus would cost $14,000/lb to LEO—a difference of more than 70%. A new equation? The company has sold two vehicles so far, one to the U.S. military for the March launch, and the other to a foreign government, with launch likely in the fourth quarter of this year. While one should not count the Falcon’s “eggs” before
they are hatched, Musk has stacked the deck in his favor. An Internet
mogul turned spacecraft builder, he does not claim to have a secret formula
for drastically lowering launch costs, just sound business and engineering
skills and the ability to choose and lead the best team money can buy.
His two previous ventures, Zip2 and PayPal, netted Musk and his business
associates untold millions—the first company was bought by Compaq
for $307 million in 1999 and the second by eBay for $1.5 billion last
October. Satisfied with the potential, Musk created SpaceX in May 2002 with his own money, starting with seven employees who went to work immediately designing the Falcon from scratch. The company now has 30 employees who work about 50-55 hours a week, says Musk. He will probably need 10 more in the near future, but only the best need apply: Musk says he will hire only the top 1% in the profession—those with “the capabilities to get things done.” Design drivers and results From the standpoint of lessons learned on reliability, the company took to heart the findings of an Aerospace Corporation study that said 91% of launch failures were due to either engines, stage separation problems, or avionics. The trick was to maximize reliability in those areas while minimizing spending for the propulsion system, structure, launch operations, avionics, and general costs of running a business. The result is that Falcon has, for example, only one stage separation “event,” ablative engine cooling, no external control surfaces, redundant avionics, and an Ethernet digital backbone. The Falcon’s first stage is propelled by a SpaceX-designed turbopump-fed Merlin engine that burns liquid oxygen and RP1 for a specific impulse of 265 (72,000 lbf thrust) at sea level and 310 Isp (85,000 lbf thrust) in vacuum. First-stage attitude control is achieved via thrust vector control using pressurized RP1 directly from the turbopump, an option that Musk says is lighter than adding hydraulic steering controls for nozzles or fins. The stage is made of space-grade aluminum and features a common bulkhead between the tanks, helping to achieve a 94% mass ratio. Stage 1 is “flight pressure stabilized,” meaning the tapered monocoque structure does not attain its required stiffness until loaded with fuel. To handle the unfueled condition, SpaceX uses a launch erector system to rigidize the booster, though Musk says the vehicle is sufficiently stiff to hold its own weight without the erector in no-wind conditions. As of mid-September, SpaceX had tested the thrust chamber assembly at flight efficiency and the turbopump to 100% flow at the company’s engine test facility in Texas. Falcon’s expendable second stage uses aluminum lithium tanks and a common bulkhead, resulting in a mass ratio of 91%. The company-built Kestrel second-stage engine has 325 Isp in vacuum (7,500 lbf) and uses a hot helium attitude control system. The avionics, which are housed in the tapered section between the second stage and the 5.5-ft-diam payload fairing, include a Honeywell inertial measurement unit, Ashtech 12-channel GPS receiver, S-Band telem-etry and video downlink, C-Band transponder for tracking, and an Ethernet bus. The avionics, flight termination system, and flight software were 80% complete as of mid-September. To save on launch costs, the first stage, which burns to an altitude of 80 km, deploys a parachute and floats down for an ocean recovery roughly 600 mi. downrange. Musk, while adamant that reusability is the key to keeping costs down, is not sure how many times his first stage will be usable. “We will only know the answer once we’ve done a few launches,” he says. The Falcon is designed to be 80% reusable, compared to 90% for the space shuttle. Limiting the regulatory burden To get the FAA’s nod, a company has to perform environmental assessments and show that its launch plan is workable and that safety considerations can be met. For SpaceX and other providers of expendable vehicles and stages, that means items such as the flight termination system must be proven to be reliable, and that stages remaining in orbit will be properly vented to avoid explosions, which would add to space debris. On Capitol Hill, Musk and others have been asking Congress to allow space vehicle providers for the fledgling space tourism industry—a field Musk ultimately plans to pursue—to remain free from additional types of certification standards like those that commercial aircraft must meet before passengers can board. “It is critical that regulatory authorities recognize the early and experimental nature of the commercial launch vehicle industry,” Musk told lawmakers, “providing only the minimum regulatory burden necessary to ensure reasonable safety for the general public.” Before attempts at manned flight, however, Musk plans to ascend to the second step of his ladder—a “heavy” Falcon with two additional first stages used as liquid-fueled “strap-ons.” The latter feature, he says, will boost payload to 4,500 lb and drop user costs to $2,200/lb to orbit. After that, Musk hopes to obtain private financing for an even larger booster: a superheavy vehicle he refers to by the code name BFR. The BFR, possibly with a scaled-up Merlin engine, would be used for large geosynchronous satellites, or possibly for the human transport market. Market outlook Some entrepreneurs, such as Burt Rutan, are putting their near-term efforts into suborbital manned flight, in part to capture the X-Prize, a privately funded effort that will pay $10 million to the first person to build and fly a three-person spacecraft capable of flying to 100 km and back twice in one week. At the moment, 24 contenders from seven countries are competing for the prize, which was established in 1995 by entrepreneur Peter Diamandis, cofounder of the International Space University. Rutan’s vehicle, called SpaceShipOne, achieved its first gliding flight and landing in August after being hauled to 47,000 ft over Mojave by Rutan’s White Knight carrier aircraft. SpaceShipOne will likely be powered by a hybrid motor rocket using liquid nitrous oxide rubber propellants (see “SpaceShipOne: Riding a White Knight to space, January, page 45). Also competing for the prize, which many think will be awarded before the end of this year, is XCOR Aerospace, headed by Jeff Greason. XCOR will build the Xerus spacecraft, which takes off and lands like a conventional airplane. XCOR plans to use a cluster of main engines to propel the Xerus from the runway to a 65-km altitude, after which it would coast to 100 km for a suborbital ballistic trajectory. XCOR says the initial flight testing will retain a propellant reserve, allowing test pilots to restart the engines to reach the airport or perform a go-around if needed. Musk, however, is betting his money on building a reliable unmanned orbital booster first, debugging his machines in LEO before putting people on board. “The X-prize is a one-off deal,” he says. “Where’s the next $10 million coming from?” Higher fruit That project fell by the wayside, however, as NASA kept to its mission of searching for life and Musk discovered the high price of boosters. Though manned exploration appears to be his desired end-state in the business, for now he appears to be crawling before walking, proving out the low-cost Falcon before moving on to larger, and then manned, space vehicles. He says he may one day decide to revive the Mars Oasis idea, but as a separate, philanthropic project. *** Whether Musk is in the space business for the long haul is uncertain. If the Falcon is successful, there are likely to be offers from competitors to buy the business. Asked whether he would sell, Musk did not say “no,” but noted he would be “pretty uncomfortable” if the buyer would not want to “carry on the mission.” That opportunity, however, will depend on the fate of the first few Falcons, two of which are currently in production. If the first Falcon does not fly, Musk says he will try again. Asked how many times, his answer is clear: “Three strikes and we’re out.” Cost goal: A reality check How sweet a deal is Mr. Musk’s rocket ride to LEO at $4,000 a pound? The answer lies in the future. Experts say Musk’s per-pound figure, computed by dividing the maximum payload of the Falcon by the cost of the booster, rarely reflects the real costs of launching a small payload to orbit. There are many reasons, among them that payloads often are smaller than the capability of the rocket; booster prices can vary based on how many vehicles the buyer wants to secure, and insurance companies may add hefty premiums for vehicles with poor or no track records. Possibly the most significant driver in out-of-pocket costs has been the less-than-optimum size of the payloads, say analysts at Maryland-based Futron, a space and telecommunications research, analysis, and forecasting company. In studying commercial launches between 1990 and 2000, Futron found that payloads launched into nongeostationary orbits on average used only half of a booster’s capabilities, resulting in an average cost-per-pound-to-orbit of $10,000 throughout the period, with no clear trend toward lower prices. The underutilization occurred even though many of the launches were multimanifested with several spacecraft. Despite having multiple payloads, however, the technical limitations involved in putting spacecraft in more than one orbital plane, combined with concerns about a single launch failure wiping out an entire constellation, have kept payloads below the maximum capacity. Things looked better for geostationary payloads over the same period because of lower prices and competition from Russian and Chinese commercial launch vehicles. Futron found that these payloads, generally on the larger rockets, on average took up 80-90% of the booster’s capability, resulting in a one-third reduction in price over the period, down to $12,000 a pound. While the decrease in pound-to-orbit costs for geosynchronous payloads is significant, and low-cost booster options are abundant overseas, commercial space activity remains dismal, having slipped from 35 a year in the late 1990s to 16 in 2001. Moreover, industry forecasts predict it will be another 10 years before business rebounds, SpaceX or no SpaceX. Ray Peterson, director of research at Forecast International, says SpaceX’s pound-to-orbit goals have merit, but that a $6-million rocket is “still a lot of money” and is not going to energize the market in and of itself. “Right now the market’s saturated. If the [Falcon] is unproven, how willing will satellite manufacturers be to buy in?” asks Peterson. Small launch vehicle costs (5,000 lb or less to LEO)
*Shtil launch costs partially subsidized by the Russian navy as part of missile launch exercises.
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