Since finding out it was a bad idea to blog technical on space hardware ideas, I haven’t been writing at all. I listen to a variety of talk shows on the truck radio in dribs and drabs at work and found that listening to people talk trash that I couldn’t respond to was quite irritating. I finally did a short 99 cent of about 30 pages ebook on Kindle called “Arguing with Jerry Hughes and Friends”. It is mostly in response to Jerry’s talk show and is somewhat similar in technique to the discussions we had here on space technology. It is supposed to be free on library loan and I have 5 promotion days available for free downloads once I figure out how that works.

I argue that congress is underpaid, dropping out of school is not always bad and other poorly thought out heresies. Anyone interested that can snag it for free might get their money’s worth.

I have listened to some doomsday energy crap (gas $5.00 gallon and more forever, Japanese nuclear devastation, etc) in the last few weeks that started me thinking of alternatives again. It may be possible that one of the solar thermal generating concepts could find funding for terrestrial applications in the current mood. It may even be worth something later on out there.

A turbine engine intakes air and compresses it, heats it, and runs the expanded air through a turbine to extract the energy and run some sort of machine, often a generator. One of the solar thermal schemes has a fairly low pressure gas as a working fluid to do this job. I don’t have references for the original concept. The cool gas runs through a low tech compressor (possibly fiberglass or other in situ material) and then through an enormous solar heat collector before expanding through the (low tech of in situ materials) turbine to generate power. The exhaust heats the compressed gas in a heat exchanger before the compressed gas enters the solar collector proper. The somewhat cooled exhaust then  is sub cooled in shadow or heat sink before repeating the cycle. I think the original was lunar based.

I was unable to insert a cartoon sketch of the concept this time. In raw form, the same sysem using ambient air could be used here on Earth, and could possibly generate some investment or even revenue fairly rapidly in the current energy hysteria. The heat exchanger could be clear visqueen on a roof or hillside with a dark material under it, like shingles or dark rocks. A few leaks would cost energy, but not sleep. The turbine and compressor equipment could be  built from cheap fiberglass, or even wood.  The idea is to build so extremely cheap that efficiency is very secondary in importance.

While this is a bit off topic, it could create some in situ class experience with other peoples’ money, and might even generate a bit of solid rocket fuel of the green folding type for the right company.

Google TechTalk Slides: “Save the Uranium-233″

Please direct comments over there.

Depending on what upper stages are available to a station facility on orbit, it may be possible to use one of them to create a multipurpose centrifuge without building a dedicated module for the purpose. Even a twenty odd foot diameter centrifuge would be a volume  hog in any near term space station. I suggest that a used upper stage could be fitted out in a manner similar to the wet lab concepts of back when.

I seem to remember that the wet lab concept was abandoned because of the difficulties of fitting out an ex propellant tank with a lot of complex equipment using valuable astronaut time while in microgravity. If a very simple facility is required, it just may be feasible to fit it out in an economical manner and use that upper stage that was going to burn up otherwise. With the relatively heavy engine and light tanks, it seems possible that spinning the stage end over end would put the spin center at about the intertank region for some vehicles.  A spin coupler to the intertank region could connect the used stage to the microgravity station. Existing   hatches (if any) from the intertank region into the tanks would serve as entry to whatever facilities were placed in the ex tanks that are now heath maintenance facilities.

One of the problems frequently mentioned is the quantity of time required for exercise in microgravity in some scenarios and motivating astronauts to do the full effort specified. Often enough the “I think two hours mandatory exercise a day is a great idea sir.” translates to “Whatever it takes to keep me on flight status, you chairborne @#$%.” One possible solution is to use the high gravity time to do things that are seriously enhanced by the presence of gravity, real or artificial. This is also a shot at compensating for  the head in traction annoyance that I am suggesting for avoiding motion sickness.

Inability to take a shower in microgravity is a complaint sometimes mentioned. A shower at 2 gees with water recirculated would be a daily destination of choice for most space travelers. A good hot shower is a luxury after a hard days work that many people enjoy. That gives about 10-20 minutes a day in a gee field by choice.

A toilet in a 2 gee field would be a simpler device than the zero gee devices and most likely more desirable than the currently available  arraingements. Five to fifteen minutes a day per person, again by choice.

A few minutes in a gee field might help clear out the sinuses to the point that a hot cup of coffee would taste good.  Breakfast after a bathroom and shower break could be the meeting place of choice in the mornings if food can be smelled and tasted properly. Other meals likely would be eaten there for the same reason for a total of an hour or more per day per person. Eating standing up would be an acceptable trade off to people that could retire much of their required exercise time during meals.

An exercise facility would still be required in one of the tanks with possibly half an hour a day or less being acceptable if the participants are already spending a couple of hours a day or so in a gee field of substantial strength.

This is all speculation about an idea that is dependant on controlling motion sickness in a several rpm field for up to an hour at a time, and that the time in that field will produce the health benefits hoped for. If this turns out to be true, big if, then a station or Mars cycler might prefer an arrangement like this to the tether solution as the travelers will be able to transition from microgravity to a gee field and back in a minute or two whenever they feel the need.  They would be able to do the things that are enhanced by microgravity and the things that are enhanced by gravity in the same ship.

The problem with low rpm artificial gravity is that it requires a very long arm to work effectively. Arms of hundreds to thousands of feet require very different space craft configurations than anything that has ever flown. Depending on which organization tries to develop such a craft, the first vehicle could cost from under one to hundreds of billions.

If some method of using very high rpms can be used, then a much smaller radius can be used for the centrifugal gravity simulation to keep the astronauts healthy during long journeys. There may be a way of keeping the astronauts from getting sick for short stays in a high rpm field. Short stays of half an hour or so at a time could be used for the exercise periods only, which may be sufficient to keep them health if a 1.00 gee or greater field is used.

The cause of the motion sickness seems to be mostly an inner ear problem when any head movement at all is used in a high rpm field. It seems possible that considerably higher rpms could be tolerated for fairly short periods of time if the head were restrained to one particular orientation in the rotating field. If it is possible that this is true, then experiments could be performed  on the ground for a fairly small investment.

I suggest that some existing centrifugal device, such as a carnival ride or NASA training system could answer this question within a few months, if of course, it hasn’t already been answered in the negative decades ago.

With the head restrained in a properly vibration damped seat, it seems possible that 10-20 rpms could be tolerated for a few minutes at a time. Different orientations could be tried to determine the best positions for highest tolerance. If higher rpms can be tolerated this way, then a variety of exercise machines can be installed in the centrifuge to determine the effects of head restraint while working with cardio and weight devices. While the guinea pigs for these experiments would be dealing with substantially higher than normal gee fields, much information on rpm tolerance should transfer directly to spacecraft operations.

It seems possible that using the centrifugal field at 1.25 or more gee could cut the required exercise periods to 30 minutes or so per day. I would be amazed if this thought hasn’t been checked out and answered decades ago.

One good thing about the current congress/senate/president funding mess is that we won’t have to listen to as many cranks start their rocket development plan with, “First we convince the president.”

There have been many comments over the years on many sites about cost plus being used when nobody has any idea of the costs of a project or how to bid it. This morning on Clark’s site spacetransportnews.com he linked to an article claiming that getting bids was so uncertain that contractors would bid 50% higher than it would run to do the same project cost plus to make sure they didn’t lose money. That is an interesting claim. Cost plus is noted for budget over runs while straight bids, honestly enforced, cannot over run as the contractor wouldn’t get paid.

Considering the Constellation mess, wouldn’t it possibly have been cheaper back in 2005 to put the project out for bid? With the current projection of $35B to complete Ares, 50% more would have been a $52.5B  bid. If there was that much money on a fixed price contract, how many companies would have been willing to bid on the expectation of making a large profit? How much would they have been willing to cut to get the bid? This is when someone usually points out that there are only one or two companies qualified to bid on such a system. That should be a red flag. If you are specing a system with too few qualified bidders, then you are overspecing more often than not.

Cost plus seems to have a fairly low percentage of profit or even a fixed profit in the contract and requires extensive oversight to keep the contractors honest. I question whether the mandated low percentage itself eliminates potential contractors. Who wants to do a contract with a limit on potential profits when there is other work with much higher margins except the one or the few companies that are set up to do the insane paperwork and deal with the oversight? I think the profit limits in the name of taxpayer cost control end up costing far more than letting companies make higher profits or take their losses. If there were a half dozen or so companies bidding on the Ares, don’t you think it possible that some of them would think they could do the job for far less than $52.5B, or even $35B?

There are companies that are just better at cost control than others just as some people are smarter than others. I don’t think it is out of line to suggest that some companies can execute a rocket project for half of the cost of a competitor. If one qualified company bids $10.00 on a widget and another bids $9.00, go with the lower bid, and don’t pay if they don’t produce. Then if the second company has costs half that of the first, then they spend $4.50 in costs while the first spends $9.00. The second company has profits of 50% of income while the first has 10%. The government attitude seems to be that since this is taxpayer money, excessive profits are harmful to the taxpayer. With this attitude, the more expensive company has the edge since they will make twice as much profit as the better managed one at the same percentage.

If government contracting would quit worrying so much about how much profit a company makes, and start worrying about what is being delivered for the dollar, more companies would try for the contracts. A possible contract with 25-50% profit potential will attract more players. As more players enter a field, some will have better people or ideas which translates to lower costs, which becomes lower bids. When faced with real competition, Lockheed and Boeing can both find cost saving options when it is in their best interest to do so and they can make higher profit margins doing it.

In the long run, competition will cut into the possible profit potential and the end result will be a percentage similar to that mandated in cost plus except on a far lower total price. Financial oversight can be vastly reduced for further savings.

One objection many make is about quality when a simple low bid is the criteria. They believe that low cost is low quality. This has been demonstrated to be false anytime there is a competent purchasing agent involved. If the product doesn’t perform, don’t pay.

Another thing brought up all the time is dishonest contractors when there is no oversight, with the assumption that most contractors will cheat when no one is looking. Thomas Matula says that this is why the government must have a ten page spec for an ashtray. From rotten food to weapons that don’t work to vehicles that don’t run, he suggests that every single one of those specs is required due to suppliers cheating at one time or another. I believe this is a  poorly thought out objection. Every single time one of those suppliers cheated, there was a government official not doing his job of confirming an acceptable delivery. It is a matter of historical record that much of the time the particular official was corrupt. You want honest delivery, write a simple spec and have one (1) official responsible for the proper delivery. Responsible includes prison for corruption, which he can share with this supplier.

Many of us have complained from time to time about the lack of true progress from NASA even while agreeing that there are a lot of very smart motivated people in the agency. It would be useful if some way could be found to use the capabilities of those skilled  people without the anchor of bureaucracy holding them back. It is even more difficult considering the role congress plays in controlling the outcome of funding for the different stakeholders.

I wonder if it could be made possible to provide incentives to the people that can produce, while simultaneously preventing the bureaucrats in the agency from interfering with the producers. I suggest a thought experiment for increasing agency performance in a politically acceptable manner, while reducing long term costs. This is just a first cut for the Halibut.

List a series of projects internal to the agency for employees to bid on. A condition of the bid is that successful completion of the project ahead of time and budget qualifies the participating employees for full retirement effective immediately after the demonstration of success. Incentive also is that 10% of the funds remaining from being under budget is split among the participating employees. Failure to complete on time and budget is immediate layoff from the agency.

Other NASA employees have no oversight role for these cheetah teams. If the team leader and his group are good though, they will get the support of many of the theoretically uninvolved to help accomplish the project, even though they will not be eligible for the retirement package.

A project might be a multipropellant depot in LEO. It must accept LOX and fuel from at least two vehicle types and dispense the propellants to a different vehicle type after storing it for at least two months. Time limit three years and bid cap at three billion including projected retirement payments.

 Whichever group gets the bid will increase spending in a congressional district through at least one election cycle and possibly two. With congressmen on the bid review board, it seems likely that they will be going for the infusion of near term pork and will worry about the following elections later. The bidding NASA teams will be aware of this and will dutifully spread the pork as far as they need to to get the congressmen on their side.

A bid might be a team leader and a couple of hundred other NASA employees bidding $2.6B and 32 months. If they succeed on time and for $2.1B, they split $50M two hundred ways by whatever formula they agreed to among themselves and retire early with full benefits. The depot is in orbit and operational and two hundred people with a performance track record are available to the private sector if they choose to keep working. Also $850M less than the original cap could be available for the follow on projects.

The retirement incentive is center to the strategy. After slamming a project through with little time for the agency drone workers, the project members will need to get out as too many toes will have been stepped on for them to be part of the clique again. The termination for failure is the stick to balance the carrots.

An F1 class kerosene engine might be another project with a functioning rotovator for a different group.

A suitably motivated group could have had Ares I flying by now, or if none would bid it would have been understood that it was a turkey five years ago. Either there would be working hardware, or the money wouldn’t get spent.

If there is a project that none would bid on, as seems possible for the Ares, then it is understood that the agency is not capable of that task. That would be a clear signal that the ‘experts’ in that field were not up to the job and would run the risk of losing whole departments that couldn’t get results in their field. The agency would need to get teams to produce with failure to do so carrying real penalties. Employees wouldn’t sign on to a project to be sacrificial goats to the bureaucrats and drones, so the bureaucrats and drones would need to support the teams in their own best interest.

With the truly productive getting projects and getting out, the agency drones would run out of workers to hide behind and could then be dismissed as excessive to the requirements of the agency. The congressmen gaining from the project pork would possibly support getting rid of people not getting them as much return in favor of the high profile projects they brought home. The high profile projects could get them more votes than the standing armies for this election, and the next one could be worried about later.

There is a fairly constant murmur that commercial space will not go beyond LEO and more mumbling that there must be a specific destination with a specific timeline.

The second mumbling assumes that there is some top down command structure that will make one thing happen regardless of obstacles or opportunities along the way. Goals for the short term are often good, but not so much for the uncertain future. It is roughly the difference between getting married or staying single. When you get married, it better be the right one, and all the other options better be off the table. A single goal and time frame assumes that no other goal is worthwhile, and that nothing will ever change the relative values.

The murmur about commercial not going beyond LEO is often from people that haven’t considered the implications of CATS. For this post, I suggest that CATS is $1K per kilogram to LEO and work out a few costs that apparently haven’t been considered openly enough. I also suggest that RLVs are giving launch on demand in order to hit that price point.

Say someone wants to send a small commercial robot probe to a NEO. Current state of the art might be a one ton spacecraft with a mass ratio of three to go from LEO to the object. At $10K per kilogram for launch costs, $30M. The way it is currently done, perhaps $50M for the vehicle itself and another few million for operations. So $85-90M for one data set. From program start to launch could easily be from three to five years, plus looking for funding and operating the vehicle almost as an afterthought. It would be easy to burn a decade on the program, and well over $100M considering the time value of money.

With CATS and launch on demand, other methods become attractive. If it is allowed to triple the mass of the probe and use less efficient engines, a three ton vehicle with nine tones of propellant becomes 12 tons IMLEO instead of 3 currently, though launch costs drop from $30M with a long lead time to $12M whenever you get ready to go. With relaxed mass constraints developing the probe becomes a construction project rather than research and development. Shield modern electronics with mass rather than use expensive antiques that are space rated. It seems possible that the three ton probe could drop to $1,000.00 per kilogram in construction costs, for a total of $3M in hardware costs. Lead time could drop to a few months with relaxed hardware mass restrictions. Engineers could spec a 7mm bolt from COTS suppliers rather than spend the time and money to determine that a 6.26mm bolt gives the exact safety margin required.

If CATS makes it possible to send a NEO probe within three months of decision for a total cost of  $15M, that is a time frame and cost that fits into a quarterly stockholders report. Pick your favorite reason to go, and it is quite possible that there is a millionaire out there that will agree with you. Minerals, volatiles, SPS materials, or just to see what is there become affordable to many thousands of interested people. At that price point, hundreds of probes per decade would certainly fly.

Many many people will point out that a three ton probe is way too much craft for early prospecting. Some people will certainly agree that 10 kg of fairly sophisticated instruments could be quite capable and not even be all that expensive if they didn’t have to support a decade program and could avoid a lot of that helpful oversight. 10 kg of instruments in a 40 kg vehicle with an IMLEO of 200 kg including propellant would drop the launch costs to $200k. Instruments and hardware by the right people might double that total cost. With a total of $400k per flight, commercial and private players would launch them by the thousands. I think it would be safe to suggest that known NEOs, the moon, Mars, Venus, Mercury, and most of the asteroid belt would be explored for a fraction of today’s government exploration budgets.

There are some that would try to do probes with a 1 kg cube sat, While I’m skeptical, CATS would make it possible for them to prove me wrong for around $10k.

I personally am more interested in the effects on human spaceflight. With $1,000.00kg for launch costs, a person’s direct mass cost to LEO would be around $100k. A reasonable overhead for life support and supplies would bring it to perhaps $500k for a several week visit. A true CATS launch on demand would let people go during a month vacation. Bigalow would have to get busy building stations and hotels to accommodate the customers that could and would  go at that price point.  There is a laundry list of experiments that companies and governments would do if their orbital workers could do a three month LEO  tour for under a million. An EVA worker cost would drop to a couple of thousand dollars an hour under these conditions.

What about beyond LEO? A five ton vehicle could certainly shuttle from LEO to LLO and back with four people. Flying the same vehicle repeatedly with four people and supplies would require about twelve tons of propellant and provisions per trip. Twelve tons of supplies is about $12M in launch costs and about $6,346.50 for the actual supplies. Circumnavigating the moon for under $4M per person including launch costs and LEO accommodations is considerably less than anything currently planned and should be proportionately more attractive to customers.

If the vehicle has entered LLO, then a modest craft can single stage from there to the surface and back. Propellant costs would bring the whole adventure to about $8M per person for the round trip from Earth’s surface to a moon base and back. Additional time on the surface is simply a matter of supplies. At $10k per kilogram on the Lunar surface, a person could stretch their stay by about three weeks per million dollars. It is a fairly safe bet that many people will go, and some of them will go for profit as they look for something they think valuable to some market. Anyone that can create more than 5 kg per day in resources from the local materials can stretch their stay almost indefinitely.

For some, it’s Mars or nothing. There is no reason they can’t get to Mars while everybody else exploits the nothing they disdain. Think of a ship of a thousand tons for their comfortable journey to Mars that takes ten thousand man hours of EVA to assemble and needs three thousand tons of propellant for the trip. What would that cost? At $1K per kg for the ship mass, $1B for construction. $4B for launch cost. $20M for EVA labor costs. Total costs for a thousand ton ship on Mars trajectory, $5.02B plus tax, tag, and title.

Quit yammering about commercial stopping in LEO. If commercial creates CATS, the rest follows.