Subject: Space-tech Digest #59 Contents: Vince Cate Where is "Rocket Research Co"? Lou Adornato Reference on spacecraft guidance and navigation Hal Mueller Re: Reference on spacecraft guidance and navigation Dominic Herity What's the other 99.4% of space shuttle launch costs? Henry Spencer Re: the other 99.4% of space shuttle launch costs? Joe Pistritto Re: the other 99.4% of space shuttle launch costs? Lou Adornato Re: the other 99.4% of space shuttle launch costs? Henry Spencer Re: the other 99.4% of space shuttle launch costs? Brian Yamauchi Re: the other 99.4% of space shuttle launch costs? Paul Dietz Re: the other 99.4% of space shuttle launch costs? Henry Spencer Re: the other 99.4% of space shuttle launch costs? Henry Spencer Re: the other 99.4% of space shuttle launch costs? ------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 May 1990 15:05-EDT From: Vincent.Cate@SAM.CS.CMU.EDU To: space-tech@CS.CMU.EDU Subject: Where is "Rocket Research Co"? Orbital Sciences is planning on making an ion-rocket (Prometheus) in collaboration with Rocket Research Company for boosting satellites from LEO to GEO. All I know about RRC is that they are a division of Olin Industries and have been doing work in ion-drives. Can anyone answer any of the following: Where is RRC located? What sort of ISP can they get? How light can they make the ion-drive? How reliable are they? How expensive are they? What sort of thrust/drive-weight are we talking about? Any good and recent papers on ion-drives? Any big problems with commercial production of ion-drives? Thanks for any info, -- Vince ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 May 90 11:02:05 CDT From: Lou Adornato To: space-tech@CS.CMU.EDU Subject: Reference on spacecraft guidance and navigation Several months ago I sent out a request on this list for titles of reference books on guidance, navigation, and control of spacecraft. I'd like to thank everyone who responded (all two of you). Of the titles I received, here is the best bet: "Fundamentals of Astrodynamics" Roger Bate, Donald Mueller, Jerry White 1971, Dover Press, 455pp $8.95 (US) (paperback). ISBN 0-486-60061-0 Those of you in the States can order this through B. Daltons. This might be the only book left in print on this topic. This is actually a textbook in use at the U.S. Air Force Academy, where the authors teach. The introduction suggests the sequence of material for a single course or a two course sequence, and there is a section containing suggested projects (all of them computer programs). One of the appendices is a review of vector math. The illustrations aren't fancy, but they're adequete, and the example problems are generally useful and well explained. This is _not_ a light read. The style is concise and clear, but the authors where definitely not writing to an audience 10 years out of freshman calculus. That's the situation I was in when I picked this up, but after a week of grinding my way through one page at a time, I'm ready to execute a two-impulse Hohman transfer between coplanar orbits (sounds like something that would be illegal in Arkansas, doesn't it?). In short, if you've always wanted to understand this stuff but didn't know where to start, this is the place. Partial table of contents: -------------------------- Two Body Orbital Mechanics Orbit Determination From Observations Basic Orbital Maneuvers Position and Velocity as a Function of Time Orbit Determination From Two Positions and Time Ballistic Missile Trajectories Lunar Trajectories Interplanetary Trajectories Perturbations Appendices: Astrodynamic Constants Miscellaneous Constants and Conversions Vector Review Suggested Projects Index ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lou Adornato | Statements herein do not represent the opinions or Cray Research | attitudes of Cray Research, Inc. or its subsidiaries. lfa@cray.com | (...yet) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 May 90 12:15:14 CDT From: Hal Mueller To: lfa@vielle.cray.com Cc: space-tech@CS.CMU.EDU Subject: Reference on spacecraft guidance and navigation Sorry that I missed your request for titles. My favorite is Escobal, "Methods of Orbit Determination", in its second edition 2 years ago. Don't have it here, but can forward the ordering info if anyone needs it. Would recommend this for someone who has already plowed through Bate et al. Assumes you're already fairly familiar with orbital mechanics, and takes you on to how to handle real problems (noisy observations, combining range-only and bearing-only measurements). Worth the purchase price in itself is an appendix with transformation matrices to interchange among almost all conceivable coordinate systems--e.g. taking a range/bearing/elevation from an earth station at a known lat/long/time and converting to range/bearing/elevation from the sun. Saved my neck on a project a couple of years ago. Hal Mueller hmueller@cssun.tamu.edu n270ca@tamunix (Bitnet) Graduate Student, Department of Computer Science Research Assistant, Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 09 May 90 10:18:41 BST From: dherity%cs.tcd.ie@vma.CC.CMU.EDU Subject: What's the other 99.4% of space shuttle launch cost? To: space-tech%cs.cmu.edu@vma.CC.CMU.EDU Several proposals for LEO launch vehicles, notably the British HOTOL, seem to assume that a major cost in existing systems is the energy content of rocket fuel. A quick calculation shows that this is not the case. The launch mass of the space shuttle is about 2000 tonnes, most of which is fuel. I don't know the specific impulse of the solid rocket boosters, but it is less than that of hydrogen/oxygen. Therefore, the energy content of a shuttle on the pad is less than that of 2000 tonnes of hydrogen/oxygen fuel. The specific impulse of this fuel is 456 seconds. Therefore, the energy cost of a shuttle launch does not exceed 1/2 * 2000 tonnes * (456s * 9.81m/s/s)^2 = 2.0E13 Joules = 5.5E6 KWh. The current price of electricity is around $0.20/KWh, so the energy cost of a shuttle launch is less than US$1.1M. A shuttle carries a payload of something less than 30 tonnes. A 30 tonne payload yields a specific energy cost of $37/Kg=$16.8/lb. Note that the above energy cost is a gross over-estimate, and that a shuttle carries more than twice as much 'dead weight' to orbit as it does payload. I gather from recent postings to sci.space that launch charges are about $3000/lb. So I wonder what constitutes the other 99.4% of the cost of a shuttle launch. Of course I realize that $3000/lb is the market rate for launches and that NASA would be foolish to charge less. But if NASA were making lots of money out of commercial launches, they would have built a lot more shuttles and would not need begging bowls to get the finance. So we would be doing pretty well on launch cost if all we had to pay for was the rocket fuel. And it seems more than 99.4% mis-directed to look towards hypersonic engines and the like to reduce the cost of access to space. So lets have it. Does anybody out there have any idea of the costs of a shuttle launch? The capital cost of a shuttle? The salaries of support personnel? Maintenence? What? These are the barriers to the conquest of space. ------------------------------ From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu Date: Wed, 9 May 90 14:03:28 EDT To: space-tech@CS.CMU.EDU Subject: Re: What's the other 99.4% of space shuttle launch cost? > I gather from recent postings to sci.space that launch charges are about > $3000/lb. So I wonder what constitutes the other 99.4% of the cost of a > shuttle launch... The vast majority of the costs of current large launch vehicles is the salaries of several thousand people involved in launching them. Cutting costs a lot requires vehicles that don't need such large "standing armies" (in Max Hunter's words). There is debate about whether this could be done with current launchers, by radical reorganization of the relevant bureaucracies, or not. It almost certainly could not be done with the shuttle, which simply requires too much refurbishment and checkout between launches. (After every launch, some 5000 parts need to be removed, checked, refurbished, and replaced... on *each SRB*. Don't even think about the orbiter.) > So we would be doing pretty well on launch cost if all we had to pay > for was the rocket fuel. And it seems more than 99.4% mis-directed to > look towards hypersonic engines and the like to reduce the cost > of access to space. The hope is that more airliner-like launchers would be operated more like airliners. It is not entirely clear whether this would be true. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 May 90 9:00:20 MESZ From: "Joseph C. Pistritto" To: dherity@cs.tcd.ie Cc: space-tech@CS.CMU.EDU Subject: Re: What's the other 99.4% of space shuttle launch cost? Capital cost of Shuttle = about $2.5 billion at current prices. (this is about what Congress allocated to replace Challenger) It might be higher. If we assume it will be good for 100 missions, that $25 million/mission. Already a lot more than fuel costs. Both the 100 missions, and the lack of interest charges on the financing are optimistic. (Assuming those 100 missions happen at the rate of 4/year, that is a lifetime of 25 years, current government bonds of that length pay about 9% interest). If you took out a mortgage on a 2.5 billion dollar house at 9 percent, for instance, your mortgage payments would be about 251 million dollars/year, or about 63 million per mission. Just from the financing cost. Note that I believe the government DOESN't include the cost of amortizing the orbiters in its price estimates, it just capitalizes it like a road or dam. But we taxpayers pay for it anyway. Now there are roughly 2000 people employed around KSC, just for shuttle related things like tile work, engine servicing, etc. At around $100K/year for salary, benefits and overhead, that's 200 million/year, amortized over 12 missions, to about 16 million per. A lot of these people are contractors. Facilities maitenance. Pretty difficult to tell here, but two launch facilities, the VAB, Orbiter Processing Facility, a 747 carrier aircraft, Rotational Processing Facility for the SRB's, etc are maintained exclusively for Shuttle program use. Note that this doesn't include the general cost of KSC, which is also used by unmanned launchers, (and even charged for now). This is several hundred thousand square feet of buildings alone, and commercial maitenance for buildings is often estimated at $10/square foot, or a few million a year. I bet this is really low, both because some of those buildings are really BIG, and because they're special purpose, and therefore very costly to maintain. Figure this adds half a million per mission. Ancillary capital equipment, like the Orbiter Mate/Demate facility, (which stacks the orbiter on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft). There are at least 2 of these, maybe more. Bet these cost a few million a pop. That big machine that rounds out the SRBs sounds expensive too. They also have an amazingly well equiped machine shop down at KSC for making special orbiter parts, and custom stuff for the various payloads. Priced machine tools lately? I bet $50 million has been invested in special tools, etc. laying around different NASA centers that are JUST for the shuttle. If we use them for 15 years, that's over 3 million/year, or $250K/mission. Not a big contribution, but it adds up. So far we have: Orbiter Cost/Mission: $25000K (no interest) $63000K (at 9%) Support Staff: $16000K Facilities maint.: $ 500K (real lowball estimate) Ancillary Equipt: $ 250K Things I can't estimate now: Cost of external tank ??????? Avg. cost of SRBs ??????? Total: $41750K ($41million/mission) (with avg 40K payload) ~$10K/mission/pound (with max 60K payload) ~$7K/mission/pound As I said, I think NASA doesn't include the cost of amortizing the orbiter, and certainly doesn't follow Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (like charging interest on capital), while doing it. If you leave out the orbiter cost, you get down to around $17million/ mission, or $4250/pound with an average payload, or $2800/pound with a max payload. (Note that not all orbiters can carry the max payload.). (all these numbers not including the stuff I couldn't estimate). So the moral is: Space is Expensive, particularly if we keep doing it The Way We Do Now! As you can see the major cost element is that standing army sitting around KSC. Build a launch vehicle that doesn't require as much servicing as the Shuttle, and watch your costs go down. This is a point MOST people forget about. The cost of servicing your launch vehicle is critical to on-orbit costs. Sorry, this got a bit long... -- Joseph C. Pistritto (cgch!bpistr@chx400.switch.ch, jcp@brl.mil) Ciba Geigy AG, R1241.1.01, Postfach CH4002, Basel, Switzerland Tel: +41 61 697 6155 (work) +41 61 692 1728 (home) GMT+2hrs! ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 May 90 10:17:02 CDT From: Lou Adornato To: space-tech@CS.CMU.EDU Subject: Re: What's the other 99.4% of space shuttle launch cost? Does anyone know of a breakdown of the tasks (and associated costs) involved with turning around an orbiter? I assume that this would be a _large_ hardcopy volume. Such a study would be the logical place to start nibbling away at the costs of the program. Congress might be amennable to spending some bucks on maintenance redesigns of the more cost-intensive subsystems, if it could get a guarantee of a 2 to 5 year payback. Of course, this would require admitting that the shuttle isn't perfect, which in turn would leave NASA open to more charges of lying to the public... An associated topic : does anyone know if NASA has given serious thought to developing robots to do some of the more labor intensive portions of the turn around work? I realize we're talking about some pretty intricate work, but if they seriously plan to build a robot to do on-orbit maintenance on Freedom, it would make a lot of sense to get some practical experience by building robots to do orbiter maintenance. One more question, as long as I'm wasting the time of sever hundred skilled people: does anyone have the numbers offhand for the delta v prodived to the shuttle by the SRB's? Thanks Lou Adornato | Statements herein do not represent the opinions or Cray Research | attitudes of Cray Research, Inc. or its subsidiaries. lfa@cray.com | (...yet) ------------------------------ From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu Date: Thu, 10 May 90 12:33:41 EDT To: space-tech@CS.CMU.EDU Subject: Re: What's the other 99.4% of space shuttle launch cost? >... if they seriously plan to build a robot to do on-orbit maintenance on >Freedom, it would make a lot of sense to get some practical experience by >building robots to do orbiter maintenance. This is a confusion of terminology, I think. There are no serious plans to build *robots* for Freedom; all current plans are for teleoperated manipulators. This avoids EVA but doesn't save on manpower. There are assorted mutterings about how software might eventually take over some of the work from the human operator, but the smart money says "don't hold your breath". >One more question, as long as I'm wasting the time of sever hundred skilled >people: does anyone have the numbers offhand for the delta v prodived to the >shuttle by the SRB's? Don't have a number offhand for this. However, I can suggest one way to cut the manpower some: forget recovering the SRBs, just let them splash and sink. At least one group that looked at the economics concluded that NASA is really not saving any significant amount of money by recovering them. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ To: space-tech@CS.CMU.EDU Cc: yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu Subject: Re: What's the other 99.4% of space shuttle launch cost? Date: Thu, 10 May 90 14:36:27 -0400 From: yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu >>... if they seriously plan to build a robot to do on-orbit maintenance on >>Freedom, it would make a lot of sense to get some practical experience by >>building robots to do orbiter maintenance. > >This is a confusion of terminology, I think. There are no serious plans >to build *robots* for Freedom; all current plans are for teleoperated >manipulators. Well, this may be true in reference to maintenance, but the EVA retreiver is designed to be autonomous and not teleoperated. This is a free-flying robot designed to recover objects that fall off of Freedom (such as tools -- or astronauts...) Brian Yamauchi yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu ------------------------------ To: henry@zoo.toronto.edu Cc: space-tech@CS.CMU.EDU, dietz@cs.rochester.edu Subject: Re: What's the other 99.4% of space shuttle launch cost? Date: Thu, 10 May 90 14:26:19 -0400 From: dietz@cs.rochester.edu Henry wrote: > Don't have a number offhand for this. However, I can suggest one way to > cut the manpower some: forget recovering the SRBs, just let them splash > and sink. At least one group that looked at the economics concluded that > NASA is really not saving any significant amount of money by recovering > them. This could be a false economy. Recovering the SRBs lets NASA detect the precursors to catastrophic failures. Not that they would *act* on those precursors, alas, but at least it helped them diagnose what destroyed Challenger. There was some speculation that the SRBs on STS-4 suffered severe joint damage, since they were very "out of round" and had unusually low thrust. The SRBs were not recovered, due (according to NASA) to parachute malfunctions. Paul F. Dietz dietz@cs.rochester.edu ------------------------------ From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu Date: Thu, 10 May 90 16:35:42 EDT Subject: Re: What's the other 99.4% of space shuttle launch cost? To: space-tech@CS.CMU.EDU > this doesn't include the general cost of KSC, which is also used > by unmanned launchers... Small misconception here: KSC, Kennedy Space Center, on Merritt Island, launches nothing but space shuttles. The expendables go up from the USAF facilities on Cape Canaveral, just south of KSC. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu Date: Thu, 10 May 90 17:03:39 EDT To: space-tech@CS.CMU.EDU Subject: Re: What's the other 99.4% of space shuttle launch cost? >Well, this may be true in reference to maintenance, but the EVA retreiver is >designed to be autonomous and not teleoperated. This is a free-flying robot >designed to recover objects that fall off of Freedom... One must distinguish between design and actual usage. I'd bet almost any amount of money that the retriever will be teleoperated when retrieving anything valuable, at least after the first time it's tried. The shuttle orbiter was designed to make an autonomous landing (except for lowering the gear), but has never once been flown that way. The difficulty of NASA EVA operations in recent times has been directly proportional to the degree of automation involved. (Compare the Solar Max repair with the Syncom repair.) Pork-barrel robotics-is-the-wave-of-the-future propaganda aside, the automated stuff simply will not be trusted with anything vital. With good reason. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ End of Space-tech Digest #59 *******************