If you change this to “very high inclinations” I actually agree with it. Even bigger depot prospects than comsats in GEO (or en route in GTO), although not independent commercial customers, are the DoD/NRO/NSA spy satellites, which are mostly in polar orbits. It is next to impossible to plan a propellant budget for these things, since there are so many operational contingencies. Military and intelligence agency surveillance operations more than any others need the real options that refueling would provide. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if there was a secret project on this as we speak (no, I don’t have actual knowledge of such a project. We all know about Orbital Express, of course: I’m surmising that its success may have been a green light to go ahead with a next generation refuelable spysat. You heard it here first).

It’s interesting you’d bring up propellant depots for polar satellites. It’s an interesting market, and though there are some specific challenges that need to be dealt with in servicing it, that’s actually been where most of my thought has been lately. I don’t think there’s as much potential demand mass-wise as a depot for GTO or beyond-GEO outbound trips, but there are other benefits, particularly with the DoD being more willing to try out new capabilities than NASA is.

~Jon

I want to riff on this a bit, because the idea of justifying socialist futurism as “infrastructure” for a supposed (but currently non-existant) future commercial market may be good politics for winning NASA contracts, but it is extremely bad economics.

Those making this argument cite dams, airports, railroads and so on as examples. But in no case did a government come up with these ideas, nor design or build the early examples of them. Private utilities made dams for electricity long before the TVA got government into the business. Railroads too were invented entirely by the private sector and the first tens of thousands of miles of track were built entirely by the private sector. Similar for airplanes and the first airports, although the military value of air power got government involved in it sooner than most other areas.

Now modern governments with their vast R&D budgets do on occassion originate some ideas that eventually become commercially useful infrastructure, but even in those cases the commercial uses are almost completely different than the goal of the government R&D. For example the Internet is a case of fortuitous borrowing of something designed for specific military needs that existed at the time: it is not at all a case of government foresight about the future nature of commerce, or of the future proceeding along the lines of any preconceived plan. Quite the opposite.

Designing commercially useful infrastructure in the first place, and building the first useful examples of it, requires private companies serving the needs of independent private customers. It may or may not make sense to nationalize certain “public good” parts of an industry after it becomes mature, but governments pretending to foresight about the future nature of commerce don’t come up with useful infrastructure in the first place — private companies seeking independent private customers do. On occasion government agencies pursuing their own current utilitarian golas come up with something that commerce can later fortuitously borrow and convert into commercially useful infrastructure. The Shuttle and ISS are good examples of what happens when government rather than the private sector tries to figure out what the future of commerce will look like and then builds “infrastructure” to suit that fancy.

Jon, it is refreshing to see your independent thinking in this area that has been so dominated by politics. Let’s keep going with this train of thought. The main technical work that has been done in this area has been done by people angling for NASA contracts. It is based on extremely non-commercial assumptions that lead to very different engineering choices than a primarily commercial endeavour would. The basic engineering choices in these studies, from the choice of propellants, to the choice of orbit, to assumptions about revenue to pay for the whole thing, are based on an assumption that the main customer is a large sovereign, controlling its own launchers which waste propellant for nationalist reasons. This kind of engineering assumes that said sovereign will heavily subsidize R&D for the depot, including multi-billion dollar bells and whistles like advanced cryogenics and large assembled structures. Even if you can overcome ITAR such that this main customer is a Russian space agency rather than NASA (and the very same nationalism that prevents NASA and Russia from the launching from the equator suggests you won’t), you’re still left being primarily a government contractor, subject to similar bureaucratic pressures that gave us white elephants like Shuttle and ISS. If you don’t want to be subject to these pressures, most of your sales, both in the near term and in the long term, need to be to independent commercial customers. If you choose instead to by highly subsidized, whether by a foreign government or the U.S., you will have to pay the huge price that comes along with that, and design something that is basically useless for independent commercial customers. The preferences of large sovereign versus independent commercial customers, and as a result the design choices to satisfy those preferences, are light-years apart.

I meant foreign launchers, many of the cheapest of which do not have equatorial launch sites.

It’s hard to say how cheap they might actually be, because we don’t really know what the costs of nationally subsidized launchers are. By the time we add in plane changes, not to mention premature circularizations, requiring subsequent un-circularizations and re-circularizations in the economically naive depot schemes, even at the possibly quite subsidized prices nationalist launchers are not the cheapests launchers to the most important commercial orbit. Sealauch/Zenit is.

The bottom line is that most alt.spacers, despite being critical of NASA, are seriously underestimating the extent to which government contracting, and especially NASA contracting, has distorted space engineering. Not only has NASA severely distorted the grand strategu, imposing the preposterously uneconomical Von Braun plan of Shuttle, station, moon base, and Mars mission, these political ideas and the practices of lobbying and contracting have severely distorted the basic engineering choices, especially those made by the NASA contractors that have done the moon base, Mars mission, depot, and similar studies in socialist futurism. It makes no sense to try to pursue these government plans as if they were commercial goals. They bear no resemblance to commercial goals. Of course, those angling for NASA contract will try to sell taxpayers on the ideas that these grand designs are really “infrastructure” that will magically give rise to a new kind of commerce done on their plan, just as the Shuttle and ISS were supposed to do. But real commerce is doing and will be doing very different things than those we see on the NASA Channel.

While that may have been *their* focus, it isn’t mine. A NASA-centric depot architecture isn’t going to go anywhere, because NASA isn’t going to fund it. So I’ve been focusing my independent research and analysis on finding commercially viable ways to field a propellant depot. I do happen to be in contact with some of the key propellant depot players at Boeing and LM, but we happen to disagree strongly at times on how to go about things.

And at least one of the main potential customers I’m thinking of a depot isn’t even American. They just don’t happen to be from a country located on the equator, so you need a non-equatorial depot to service them (and other US and international customers).

and “cheaper supply” really means launch from NASA-controlled Cape Canaveral, which has never been the home of cheap launchers.

Actually, by cheaper supply I did not mean US launchers from Cape Canaveral. I meant foreign launchers, many of the cheapest of which do not have equatorial launch sites.

You have not named a single significant entity that desires to use 28 degrees low earth orbit that is not dependent on the extremely high subsidies of NASA investments or contracts.

28 degrees is a red herring you came up with. I never mentioned that number, and in fact have several times mentioned inclinations between a due east Canaveral launch (23.8 degrees btw, not 28) and ISS inclination (51.6). Right now, the two inclinations I’m most interested in are ~40 degrees and 51.6. And all of this revolves around making sure I can access the cheapest international launchers, and can supply propellant to those customers most likely to need it.

That said, I don’t think that depots for GEO (and lunar and earth escape) missions and customers will be the first application of a depot. I could be wrong, but there are certain obstacles that need to be overcome before GEO comsat operators are likely to a) be willing to use a new technology, and b) adapt their operations to said new technology. I could be wrong, but how things develop from here will be market driven.

You think you are criticizing NASA, but you are really promoting the NASA Channel view of space commerce, i.e. that space commerce is a product of NASA and must be tied to NASA’s apron strings. You are hopelessly confusing political hype with economic reality, and highly subsidized “commerce” used to justify NASA projects with real commerce. 28 degrees is a clue blazing across the night sky that we are not talking about real commerce.

And ironically enough, that 28 degree number came from you not me. You’re arguing against a strawman that I never put forth.

~Jon

If you change this to “very high inclinations” I actually agree with it. Even bigger depot prospects than comsats in GEO (or en route in GTO), although not independent commercial customers, are the DoD/NRO/NSA spy satellites, which are mostly in polar orbits. It is next to impossible to plan a propellant budget for these things, since there are so many operational contingencies. Military and intelligence agency surveillance operations more than any others need the real options that refueling would provide. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if there was a secret project on this as we speak (no, I don’t have actual knowledge of such a project. We all know about Orbital Express, of course: I’m surmising that its success may have been a green light to go ahead with a next generation refuelable spysat. You heard it here first).

By “customers”, the fine folks at NASA contractors Lockheed-Martin and Boeing who came up with these depot studies really mean NASA, its contractors, and its partners, and “cheaper supply” really means launch from NASA-controlled Cape Canaveral, which has never been the home of cheap launchers. You have not named a single significant entity that desires to use 28 degrees low earth orbit that is not dependent on the extremely high subsidies of NASA investments or contracts. You think you are criticizing NASA, but you are really promoting the NASA Channel view of space commerce, i.e. that space commerce is a product of NASA and must be tied to NASA’s apron strings. You are hopelessly confusing political hype with economic reality, and highly subsidized “commerce” used to justify NASA projects with real commerce. 28 degrees is a clue blazing across the night sky that we are not talking about real commerce.

A GTO depot in an equatorial orbit…Right now only two launchers would be able to use it or service it: Zenit Sea Launch and Ariane V. Both of them can already launch the biggest of commercial satellites to GEO without a propellant depot.

There are so many mistakes here it’s hard to know where to begin. First, those two launchers between them account for most commercial communications satellite launches. This is by far the biggest area of independent space commerce. Brushing them off is what a political lobbyist would do, because a political lobbyist is trying to win tax money not customers. Brushing off the biggest commercial market is the last thing a real depot entrepreneur would do.

Second, you have again been hoodwinked by your NASA contractor friends if you think depots will provide substantially cheaper propellant. Quite the opposite: the greater tankage factor, R&D amortization, ullage, operational complexity, and other overhead ensures that depot propellant launched from earth will be at least somewhat more expensive than dedicated propellant. If the depot project is tied to NASA’s apron strings, it will be substantially more expensive than dedicated propellant, per NASA’s history with the Shuttle, ISS, etc. The main benefit of a depot and refueling is not direct cost reduction, it is the provision of real options: to allow successful satellites to extend their lifetimes, and to rescue satellites from upper stage malfunctions, to give two examples.

Boeing and Lock-Mart might be able to pull the wool over the eyes of Congress and taxpayers with this fantasy of lower propellant costs, just as they pulled the wool over our eyes with promises about how the Shuttle would greatly lower costs and the ISS would spur a commercial boom, but they wouldn’t make any profit selling high cost propellant at the promised low price. The only way to make money on such a fraudulent promise is with big fat NASA contracts. Another huge clue, as if we needed another one, that they are angling for NASA contracts rather than puruing real commerce.

To do get customers to use your depot service and benefit from the real options it could provide, you have go where said spacecraft are when the real options are needed. To do these things and not be clinging to NASA’s costly apron strings, you need to go where the real customers are. Most of the real customers do their staging in GTO, and none of them do it at 28 degrees. If somebody is trying to sell you a depot at 28 degrees, they have no real interest in commerce and are just another of thousands in the U.S. aerospace industry gunning for NASA contracts. I’m not blaming them, that is the traditional way they have gotten money for their space projects. But to succeed in this business one must learn that 90%+ of the ideas floating around the NASA contractor community are talked about because of their political rather than their economic promise. In a business dominated by political lobbying, it is crucial to learn the difference between political lobbying and real commerce.

Have you really thought this out? Where do you think most of the propellant for a propellant depot is going to come from? Which launchers and countries can take advantage of said depot? What benefit would the depot be providing?

A GTO depot in an equatorial orbit would be the one that’s almost worse than useless. Right now only two launchers would be able to use it or service it: Zenit Sea Launch and Ariane V. Both of them can already launch the biggest of commercial satellites to GEO without a propellant depot. So, the depot doesn’t really allow them to increase their product offering. Also, they can’t access propellants any cheaper than themselves, so it can’t reduce their cost either.

Sure, low to moderate inclination orbits (you’re the only person I’ve ever known to call 28 degrees a high inclination orbit) do cost a bit of delta-V for the plane change (which would typically be done at apogee in order to minimize the cost). But if they either a) allow you to access other customers, or b) allow you access to cheaper supply, it might very well be worth it. I’ve written a few blog posts in the past about stations in the 40-51.6 degree inclination range using resonant orbits, and what they mean about launch opportunities from various current and future launch sites throughout the world. The basic upshot is that the entities that would most benefit from (and thus are most likely to buy from) a propellant depot are all located at moderate to high inclinations, and most of the cheaper sources of propellant require higher inclinations as well. Especially if RLVs ever come into the mix–hint for legal reasons a lot of them are going to be launching out of the CONUS.

This has nothing to do with trying to be patriotic, or trying to accomplish NASA’s goals, or putting political over economic concerns. This has everything to do with looking at supply and demand and finding where you have the most competitive advantage. You’d be well suited to drop that canard and stick with your strong points.

~Jon

Far too loosely. There’s a huge energy penalty from launching spacecraft bound for geosynchronous orbit from highly inclined orbits like 28 degrees rather than from the equator. Thus real geosynchronous commerce lauches from the equator (Guiana, Sea Launch, etc.)

By having a station at LEO on the other side, it makes it much easier and cheaper to get stuff to that GEO station in the first place.

On top of the vast and entirely unecessary extra costs of launching into a highly inclined orbit like 28 degrees and then rocketing away large amounts of propellant to get to 0 degrees, there’s also a big energy penalty from prematurely circularizing your orbit. The natural place to put a propellant depot is where rockets headed to GEO already launch directly to and stage, i.e. at geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO).

It’s entirely consistent with political lobbying, but not at all consistent with commercial behavior, to demand that one’s customers pay these energy penalties so that one can put one’s depot in the politically convenient 28 degree low earth orbit. Such a strategy might win NASA contracts, but it won’t win any real commercial customers.

My point is unassailable: 28 degree low earth orbit is useful only for NASA to do the most showing off with the least amount of effort while patriotically launching from one of the United States. Only companies angling for NASA contracts would seriously consider using that orbit. Commercially, it is worse than useless: it adds large and completely unecessary energy penalties to the commercial customers’ operations. If somebody’s space project is going to 28 degrees that fact alone proves beyond a reasonable doubt that they are angling for NASA contracts or partnerships rather than pursuing real space commerce.

No, the biggest jump in efficiency comes from doing different things, things that NASA has not pursued because they were only economically and not politically viable. Space is vast, and the realm of possible space projects is even vaster. In this realm, the intersection between the politically viable, in terms of its ability to garner tax funding, and the commercially viable is very small, and probably not far from the empty set.

[you] seem to think that if NASA thought it was a good idea, and hyped it, it must have not been a good idea in the first place.

NASA hype doesn’t by itself prove that the idea is wrong, but the traditional dominance of political lobbying in the space fan community should make one highly skeptical about the received wisdom about what are good and bad goals for space commerce. To pursue a goal because it is of great interest to space fans might sell a few t-shirts, but it is a highly flawed approach to space commerce. This approach will put you in a small (or nonexistant, outside of NASA or similar contracts) market overcrowded with competitors, all pursuing hype and buzz that is only useful for political lobbying.

The received wisdom among space fans is the accumulation of decades of pro-NASA lobbying — of trying to figure out the most politically exciting ways to fund aerospace jobs out of tax money. These goals are extremely different than the goals that unfettered and unsubsidized commerce would pursue, and indeed the intersection between the two may be close to the empty set.

Many myths have been propagated by political lobbyists that certain areas are commercially viable. These myths are relentlessly propagated because they can be used to lobby for NASA projects like ISS or a return to the moon. Many other areas that really do have commercial promise have been neglected. An approach to alt.space that just tries to recreate this NASA Channel excitement out of private funds is going to founder on the reality that NASA has never chosen projects for their economic viability. Indeed, projects like ISS cost thousands of times their direct economic return. The Space Shuttle cost over a hundred times the revenue it generated. The idea that the private sector can mimick NASA goals but bring costs down by a factor of ten, much less the factor of a thousand needed to make a space station commercially viable or the factor of 100 to make an RLV commercially viable, is absurd. The big win comes from changing goals.

Just because NASA coopted an idea for its own purpose

These ideas often originated in a political lobbying effort, for example Von Braun’s extensive efforts in the 1950s (the Collier’s articles, etc.) to drum up interest is space shuttles, space stations, and Mars missions — an entirely political religion still pursued by most space fans and by NASA, because it has proved to be a politically viable source of tax funding. Sometimes these ideas originated in science fiction, as mere entertainment, and have long since been warped by NASA and aerospace lobbyists into propaganda. On uncommon occasions good ideas originated from utilitarian motives (e.g. Eisenhower’s spy satellites) and became an important part of utilitarian endeavors (in this case NSA and NRO), or
they went from the pages of science fiction (Clarke’s geosynchronous space station as radio relay) to commerce (AT&T’s Telstar and the subsequent comsat industry) without being killed off by NASA interference. Neither Von Braun, nor the subsequent promoters of Von Braun’s ideas, nor NASA itself have ever originated a good space commerce idea. Commercial reality has never been necessary in their quest to get their hands on more tax money.

There are a number of basic flaws in the Von Braun paradigm that NASA manned spaceflight has followed. The worst of these are (1) there is a fixed plan, a set of “next logical steps”, which we should all follow rather than an ability to respond to opportunities as we discover them, and (2) space activities should be centralized around a core space station.

I actually agree with all of these points quite a bit. There is just too much demand in too many different orbits to service all with one station. Not to mention t hat putting all your eggs in one basket is just about always a dumb idea.

I disagree though about there not being much utility for a low-inclination LEO station. Even setting aside our difference of opinion about the feasibility or potential profitability of microgravity research, development, and eventually manufacturing. A depot station (or preferably several) in a low inclination low earth orbit (and I’m using the term relatively loosely–I mean anything between say the ISS’s inclination and the inclination you can get from a due east launch from Cape Canaveral) could actually be very useful as stopping-off point for travel to further destinations. Say it turns out you want a station in GEO for servicing GEO comsats. By having a station at LEO on the other side, it makes it much easier and cheaper to get stuff to that GEO station in the first place.

Just a thought.

~Jon