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Newt promises a permanent moonbase by the end of his second term

SS1 & SS2 are remarkable for their propulsion system, their aerodynamics, and their intent, but do not break any ground that the X-planes did not break in the early 1960s.

Such craft are almost dead ends as far as getting to and from LEO.

I have been looking at SSTO and ALSSTO since the 1970s.

If you can build a SSTO, it will have to be amazingly lightweight, and will have to choose fuel chemistry that balances Isp and tankage weight. And it will have a near zero payload.

The Atlas-1 was actually pretty close to a SSTO. It was called a "Stage and a half" vehicle as it dumped two of its three engines once it had burned off enough fuel to not require their thrust to finish the mission.

It was a giant aluminum alloy balloon.

They had to be kept pressurized at all times, including in storage, or they would collapse.

The very last one was destroyed in a launch pad accident where a dropped tool bounced into the rocket and punctured the tank.

And that is the sort of tradeoff you will need to make if you want a rocket plane to ever reach orbit.

And reaching orbit is one thing, but a rocket plane ALSO needs to be able to survive re-entry.

And as you compute how to do that, you will note that your payload margin vanishes.

ETA: Note this quote;

In the Atlas missile ultimately introduced, the skin weighed less than 2% of the fuel it carried. If the skin's thickness varied by as little as 1/1,000 of an inch, the missile's weight could increase by 100 pounds and its range could decrease by 100 miles.
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From; http://spaceline.org/rocketsum/atlas-program.html
 
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BenBurch said:
And as you compute how to do that, you will note that your payload margin vanishes.
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Speaking of payload. . . on a tangential note really (not about reusable spacecraft), I just read where the ESA just launched its Vega rocket to save money (or at least keep the money in the European Union rather than paying it to foreign contractors) on launching satellites.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16986043
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16956324
 
Anyway, to summarize my problems with the X-Prize model for fulfilling Newt's promises (numbered for convenience in responding to them):

1. The X-prize was being offered for something that had indeed already been done for decades. This is not comparable to a prize offered for something that has never been done at all.

2. The X-prize winner has yet to "iron out the kinks" and establish viable commercial spaceflight, and it's been a lot longer than 8 years since the prize was first offered in '96. The claim that a small prize can be leveraged to much greater investments is dependent on being able to make a profit.

3. Holding $10 billion of NASA's budget for a prize that no one claims is not without cost, as Newt claims.

4. If we buy haze's misreading of Newt's words as claiming that the x-prize model is not being suggested as "how to do it" wrt to the promised permanent moon base within 8 years, then Newt has offered nothing to suggest how his grand plan will be accomplished.

5. Newt's already planning to bankrupt the federal budget with his tax proposal, so talk of big plans and spending a big chunk of NASA's budget for such plans isn't credible or realistic from a fiscal point of view.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
Speaking of payload. . . on a tangential note really (not about reusable spacecraft), I just read where the ESA just launched its Vega rocket to save money (or at least keep the money in the European Union rather than paying it to foreign contractors) on launching satellites.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16986043
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16956324
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And note this quote from the first of those;

"At the moment, we're talking about a cost of 22 million to 25 million euros for the launcher before you add in the launching costs. It is difficult to gauge how things will evolve - and it is likely to be a function of volume and overall organisation of industry and the value chain in Europe - but frankly I certainly think there is potential to drive costs down further," he told me.
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This is a start-of-the-art medium launcher. Carbon fiber construction for weight savings. And single-use.

1.5 tons to 700 km orbit.

HOW many tons will a lunar base require again?

Even if they cut it to one-quarter that, we are talking like $1800 per pound.

And a half pound is about right for one astronaut meal, including water.
 
BenBurch said:
1.5 tons to 700 km orbit.

HOW many tons will a lunar base require again?

Even if they cut it to one-quarter that, we are talking like $1800 per pound.

And a half pound is about right for one astronaut meal, including water.
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Yep. The only word that comes to mind for the cost of a permanent moon base is "astronomical"!
 
Spindrift said:
The shuttle was rebuildable, not reusable.
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NASA disagrees:

NASA said:
As humanity's first reusable spacecraft, the space shuttle pushed the bounds of discovery ever farther, requiring not only advanced technologies but the tremendous effort of a vast workforce.
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Source.

At any rate, the X prize only called for a second launch (to carry at least 3 people 100 km above the Earth's surface) within 14 days. This was attainable by the shuttle. Not in a prudent or safe way, but it was certain doable.

[ETA: And if you want to quibble over the definition of "reusable", I'd say it's arguable that the shuttles were much more reusable than a craft that only managed 3 total flights in its lifetime.]
 
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Absolutely anything is possible.
Is it now a leftist characteristic to beleive this is not so?

Whilst the Republicans might be bad, they are not nearly as bad as the leftist ideloges of the Democratic party who only bring critisim of the Right to the table.
 
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Bill Thompson said:
Absolutely anything is possible.
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That's not true. I can cite an infinity of examples of things that are in fact impossible, especially when they're tied, for example, to time limits.

[ETA: And for the record, this isn't a debate about whether or not a moon base is possible. It's about whether or not Newt has offered any credible way of achieving his grandiose promises.]


Whilst the Republicans might be bad, they are not nearly as bad as the leftist ideloges [sic] of the Democratic party [sic] who only bring critisim [sic] of the Right to the table.
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How absurd! You mean those "leftist ideologues of the Democratic Party" that ran into the Party of No in the last two years after passing huge amounts of historic legislation the two years before that?

Reasonable minds can disagree on whether or not what they accomplished was good, but they can't disagree on whether or not they accomplished things.
 
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Bill Thompson said:
Absolutely anything is possible.
Is it now a leftist characteristic to beleive this is not so?
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This thread probably wouldn't exist if Newt had said that it is possible, but highly improbable, that there would be a moon base and Mars rocket by 2020.

-Bri
 
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JoeTheJuggler said:
Maybe it was reasonable to offer a prize in '96 and maybe possibly get commercial spaceflight as early as 2013 (but don't hold your breath). That's a far cry from Newt's promise to have a permanent moon base and rockets that can get to Mars quickly by 2020--within 8 years!

Kinks was your word:

Again, how long is "a little while"? Is it under 8 years?.....
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Might be workwhile to take into account that Rutan's and Microsoft cofounder Allen's SS1 and Branson's subsequent interest in it, leading to his contract with Rutan and the building of the SS2 for commercial spaceflight, are two separate although related ventures. I'm not sure how you could put a timeframe on that or what it would mean.
 
Speaking of profitability. . . Virgin Galactic is already booking seats in anticipation of its commercial spaceflight business taking off. A ride to suborbital altitude will have a $200,000 ticket price. The craft holds three passengers. So how many flights will they have to pull off successfully before they pay off their investment and start making a profit on it?

[ETA: Sorry--I misspoke. Spaceship Two carries 6 passengers, so I guess that halves the time to pay back the investment!]

And I'm certain any fatal accident will be the death knell of the business.

So it might be that around 25-30 years later, the X Prize will have led to a profitable commercial spaceflight business doing something that NASA and the Air Force had done roughly half a century earlier. (The first civilian in space was in 1963--see the info Ben has provided about the X-15.)

On top of all of that, by the time Virgin Galactic is turning a profit, I think it will be clear that the X-Prize was only symbolically important, and that the prize money itself almost meaningless.
 
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mhaze said:
I'm not sure how you could put a timeframe on that or what it would mean.
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Exactly! But Newt did just that.

He said:

Newt said:
By the end of my second term we will have the first permanent base on the Moon, and it will be American [applause].

We will have commercial near-Earth activities that include science, tourism, and manufacturing, and are designed to create a robust industry precisely on the model that was developed by the airlines in the 1930s, because it is in our interest to acquire so much experience in space that we clearly have a capacity that the Chinese and the Russians will never come anywhere close to matching [applause].

And by the end of 2020 we will have the first continuous propulsion system in space capable of getting to Mars in a remarkably short time, because I am sick of being told we have to be timid, and I’m sick of being told we have to be limited to technologies that are 50 years old [applause].
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JoeTheJuggler said:
NASA disagrees:



Source.

At any rate, the X prize only called for a second launch (to carry at least 3 people 100 km above the Earth's surface) within 14 days. This was attainable by the shuttle. Not in a prudent or safe way, but it was certain doable.

[ETA: And if you want to quibble over the definition of "reusable", I'd say it's arguable that the shuttles were much more reusable than a craft that only managed 3 total flights in its lifetime.]
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Nope. It was never possible to return a STS unit to service within 14 days. That is not even considering getting a launch stack ready consisting of the big tank and the two solids. As far as you trying to question the meaning of terms like "reusable" they are well understood in the industry and are not subject to your finesse.

The standards for operational readiness, and the items to be serviced or replaced between flights are specified clearly.

Bill Thompson said:
Absolutely anything is possible.
Is it now a leftist characteristic to beleive this is not so?

Whilst the Republicans might be bad, they are not nearly as bad as the leftist ideloges of the Democratic party who only bring critisim of the Right to the table.
Click to expand...

Rather strange isn't it?

First, the Left presides over the termination of the Shuttle program by the Bamster, and the cancellation of Constellation, leaving American with no man rated rocket launch system.

Second (here) they ridicule private efforts and methods of inducement through prizes to replace these previously government - supplied systems.

Which leaves you with .....
 
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