So it would seem that after a generation and more of the time not being ripe for major divergences from the disposable one-shot rocket launch concept, suddenly it's "steam engine time" and everyone in the world (well, you didn't mention the Russians yet...) wants to develop each of half a dozen rival reusuable concepts, more or less positioned to mature about when we sadly expect the TL to end as it pulls up to contemporary times. Thus making the completed ETS, archived, the annals of the ATL where the mistake of jumping into reusable systems too soon was avoided, specifically documenting its one-shot launcher era.
Since Lockheed's venture comes first in the narrative I have been musing on it. The advantage of siting their launch operations at Matagorda seems clear enough at first; unlike their rivals they have a convenient downrange location for their first stage to recover to. Since the later description of NASA and Europaspace options mentions they would have to include airbreathing jet engines to recover back to their launch sites, I infer that Starclipper's first stage does not have any such; it lands at its downrange recovery site by gliding. Thus if there really could be an option for self-flyback, it would involve refueling the stage with no upper stage attached, and launching it "backwards," on a westward trajectory. Which fights Earth's rotation rather that benefits from it, but a glance at my little globe tells me the distance to be achieved is about 15 degrees; a minimum ballistic trajectory would require a remarkably low speed, and some of the distance would be taken up with the boost phase and the terminal glide back to Matagorda, so the ballistic phase would be shorter still and hence slower.
With a rocket launch required, self-flyback is not as attractive as it might seem at first then, unless it perhaps instead involves fitting a removable jet pack to the launch stage and taking off and flying under jet thrust like an airplane. Then removing the jets before the next launch and thus saving the mass from the burden of the launch to orbit. This way one still has to shuttle the jet pack back to Florida, but that's all.
Either way, or with the third, cheap and simple if slow option of putting it on a barge and returning to Texas that way, the path is clear, both for the eastward launch and the westward return, across the Gulf of Mexico. Operations would be impeded during hurricane season and by lesser but still major Gulf storms, but this must be pretty much true of Canaveral too.
It seems obvious to me that unless NASA wants to do an about-face and buy into the Lockheed concept, abjectly surrendering the whole Saturn concept, the thing to do is build whatever it takes for the recovery site--landing strip, and either seaport or launching pad (or both)--on the west coast of the Florida peninsula. Flying the Starclipper first stage over the peninsula to Canaveral (which does not have the exact type of launch facility desired, though maybe they can improvise something that exists--but then would have to launch west, right over inhabited Florida--and is on the wrong coast of Florida for a barge transfer--obviously possible but far longer) seems like a pointless risk.
Of course the exact dynamics of the launch and glide come into play. If the first stage burnout happens far enough east, it might be difficult to come to a stop as early as the west coast and much better to make for the east coast instead. But I doubt it would work out exactly that way.
Conspicuous by absence in the discussion of possible landing sites for Starclipper's orbiter stage was Matagorda itself, obviously the place where the craft wants to wind up for another launch. Again the globe reminds us, coming in from the west as almost any orbital craft would, it is only possible to approach the southern Texas coast over Mexico. Implicit in the omission of the launch site as the planned landing site of Starclipper's upper stage is the judgement that the liability of reentering over Mexico is too great to offset the obvious advantage of landing at the launch site.
Indeed a landing trajectory that approaches the final site over a large swathe of land should be avoided. But STS did it all the time OTL. I'd think it would be worth Lockheed's while to consider making the Mexican government an offer. The "stick" the US company holds is simply walking away without making an offer and pursuing their other options instead. The carrots, though, would surely include a bond to cover liability should Mexican citizens be inconvenienced (or God forbid hurt), as a minimum. They can go farther though and offer Mexico the incentive of being involved as a space-faring nation, offering incentives for cheaper tickets to ride up to Mexican concerns, or even go so far as to earmark some of the prospective launcher fleet for Mexican ownership, so Mexico could claim to itself be a space-launching nation in its own right (well, in close partnership with a Yanqui concern of course).
If direct return to Matagorda for the orbiter from space by overflying Mexico is ruled out, obviously there are still decent options for return of the orbiter from other sites. I'd think that with a recovery site for the first stage already in place, presumably on the western Florida peninsula coast, that would be the obvious one, with Canaveral much less attractive for the same reasons it would be poorer for the first stage. Why build two facilities in Florida when one would do?
"Self-ferry" is mentioned--this seems problematic enough for the first stage, which at least is designed to launch as a rocket from sea level. How would the second stage self-ferry, unless it has built-in jet engines? Or as I suggested for the first stage, strap-on temporary jets.
If rocket-boosted self-ferry is an option for the first stage, launching from a light pad on the west Florida coast, perhaps the orbiter can be attached and a heavier though still light load of fuel can launch both together to fly to Texas. I'd think it would be necessary for the two stages to separate though, and thus the orbiter would have to have some propellant too to move away from the other stage's trajectory so both can approach Matagorda separately.
That's perhaps too daredevil a stunt for anyone to seriously propose though.
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The Lockheed scheme has many attractions, but I foresee one key liability that will give any of its competitors a big edge--severely limited launch inclination window.
Matagorda combined with a peninsular west coast Florida recovery site is absolutely great--for one single launch inclination only! Looking at the globe, it's no problem to burn straight east; by the time the trajectory crosses Florida the first stage has long ago burned out and is approaching the coast on aerodynamic glide, whereas the second stage, barring a failure in a relatively narrow time range, is already boosted to a velocity where it will safely pass over the land, and probably I'd guess at such an altitude that sonic booms are no issue either. Achieving the most economical orbit that can be approached from that launch site, with inclination equal to Matagorda's latitude, is very doable.
But to achieve any dramatically different inclination (that is to say, a higher one) is very problematic indeed. Launching more northerly will take the craft over a swathe of the American Southeast. It is also possible to achieve inclination by veering south instead of north of course; but that would take the craft first over Cuba instead of Florida, and then farther south over Yucatan and then a grand tour of all Central America. Launching straight south would go over a big swathe of Mexico and launching straight north, over Texas and Arkansas.
Worse--the scheme depends on having a downrange recovery field for the first stage. For one fixed launched inclination, such a site can be provided in Florida. To vary it significantly would take that site out of the first stage's gliding crossrange and require that additional sites be developed, even if issues of overflight and the politics of the potential landing site could be considered solved.
Lockheed's Starclipper as configured here is then a one-trick pony, capable of delivering payloads to just one narrow range of orbital inclinations, at any rate unless a massive investment in half a dozen or more stage recovery sites is made.
Any of the rivals face rather steep challenges to match Starclipper's economy in reaching that particular range of orbits--but if any of them can be made to work, none of them face the same limits in orbits that can be achieved. All of them, eliminating dependence on a single developed downrange site (with only NASA's notion requiring any such site exist at all, and then only for certain missions, and proposed as a mobile oceanic installation that can be pre-positioned to suit any particular mission profile) can take full advantage of their respective sites' full range of launch inclinations available.
Recovery of their various orbiter components is another matter of course. We are familiar with how NASA handled returns to Canaveral OTL with STS; the final approaches being over US soil helped with the political liability aspect of course. Landing at Kourou requires the Europeans to negotiate with the Andean Pacific nations their craft would approach over, but there the craft is far uprange and chances of liability remote; more important is that a deal exist with Brazil. But the final approach paths would mostly be over sparsely inhabited Amazonian land; to be cynical about it the Brazilian government might be casual about the fates of many of the individuals living there, if funds for an indemnity are forthcoming from the European powers. Another reason I wish Kourou could avoid this liability is that anything that crash-lands short of Kourou's facilities would be out in the jungle, hard to locate and harder to haul back to base for a post-mortem.
But of course the goal is not to crash...
Balancing all the issues, I'd say that overall Cape Canaveral remains the best spot available, but Kourou is clearly superior for actual launching.
Perhaps the Europeans would do well to develop several landing sites in western Africa, from which their returned orbiters could be ferried across the Atlantic back to the launch site; this would have the political effect of strengthening ties between the European Community and selected African states (or rather the sites would be chosen with consideration of the state of relations already existing in mind, which might motivate some coastal African states to improve those relations to be considered).
-----------
With the exciting new dawn of the era of the reusable launcher breaking at last, I still have to wonder--the ATL having thus far proven the strengths of the "big dumb booster," is any major launch player or contender going to consider bucking the current that has suddenly accumulated for reusuables, and attempt instead to so cheapen the construction and launch operations of one-shot rockets as to remain competitive with even the most efficient reusable system that emerges?
Is this perhaps what the Russians are thinking of, or the Chinese or Indians?
From all the debate on the subject I've gathered from this TL and others in the years it has been running, my impression is the major cost element in any rocket launch is not the hardware of the rocket itself, nor its fuel, but rather the operations and staff required to safely and reliably launch it. Thus, the path to a cheap and truly disposable launch system would seem to lie in the direction of making the rocket so robust and simple that these operations can proceed quickly with a minimum of staff, and still achieve good reliability. Perfection is not required since rivals will make their own mistakes, but a high standard of quality must be maintained. Still, can this be done with staffs and times much reduced from the norms routinely achieved, OTL and in this ATL?
Note that the same considerations apply to reusable operations as well. It won't matter if Lockheed or Northrop or the Europeans can devise spacecraft whose material two stages can be used a hundred times each, if the cost of paying for huge staffs of people pursuing intricate processes to recover them, check them out, mate them together again and then prepare them for their next launch remain the expensive legions they have been; they are still the big ticket item in the total costs the providers must charge their customers or go under.
This is the point Alan Bond et al at Reaction Motors OTL stress when touting Skylon; the dream of single-stage, utopian as it may seem, has the best potential to simple down the routine operations needed to take a reusable system from the completion of one mission to the operations of another.
Reducing these costs will probably be the most vital aspect of bringing cost to orbit down to something less, um, astronomical.
---------
Finally, it occurs to me to pity the Japanese; it would seem that no matter how effective their planned spaceplane vehicle might have turned out to be it will be too little and too late to operate in the new competitive environment of three or four rival reusable two-stage projects; I expect the effort will be abandoned as soon as it becomes clear at least one of them will become operational at a competitive rate.
Or is it too soon to give up HOPE?
Since Lockheed's venture comes first in the narrative I have been musing on it. The advantage of siting their launch operations at Matagorda seems clear enough at first; unlike their rivals they have a convenient downrange location for their first stage to recover to. Since the later description of NASA and Europaspace options mentions they would have to include airbreathing jet engines to recover back to their launch sites, I infer that Starclipper's first stage does not have any such; it lands at its downrange recovery site by gliding. Thus if there really could be an option for self-flyback, it would involve refueling the stage with no upper stage attached, and launching it "backwards," on a westward trajectory. Which fights Earth's rotation rather that benefits from it, but a glance at my little globe tells me the distance to be achieved is about 15 degrees; a minimum ballistic trajectory would require a remarkably low speed, and some of the distance would be taken up with the boost phase and the terminal glide back to Matagorda, so the ballistic phase would be shorter still and hence slower.
With a rocket launch required, self-flyback is not as attractive as it might seem at first then, unless it perhaps instead involves fitting a removable jet pack to the launch stage and taking off and flying under jet thrust like an airplane. Then removing the jets before the next launch and thus saving the mass from the burden of the launch to orbit. This way one still has to shuttle the jet pack back to Florida, but that's all.
Either way, or with the third, cheap and simple if slow option of putting it on a barge and returning to Texas that way, the path is clear, both for the eastward launch and the westward return, across the Gulf of Mexico. Operations would be impeded during hurricane season and by lesser but still major Gulf storms, but this must be pretty much true of Canaveral too.
It seems obvious to me that unless NASA wants to do an about-face and buy into the Lockheed concept, abjectly surrendering the whole Saturn concept, the thing to do is build whatever it takes for the recovery site--landing strip, and either seaport or launching pad (or both)--on the west coast of the Florida peninsula. Flying the Starclipper first stage over the peninsula to Canaveral (which does not have the exact type of launch facility desired, though maybe they can improvise something that exists--but then would have to launch west, right over inhabited Florida--and is on the wrong coast of Florida for a barge transfer--obviously possible but far longer) seems like a pointless risk.
Of course the exact dynamics of the launch and glide come into play. If the first stage burnout happens far enough east, it might be difficult to come to a stop as early as the west coast and much better to make for the east coast instead. But I doubt it would work out exactly that way.
Conspicuous by absence in the discussion of possible landing sites for Starclipper's orbiter stage was Matagorda itself, obviously the place where the craft wants to wind up for another launch. Again the globe reminds us, coming in from the west as almost any orbital craft would, it is only possible to approach the southern Texas coast over Mexico. Implicit in the omission of the launch site as the planned landing site of Starclipper's upper stage is the judgement that the liability of reentering over Mexico is too great to offset the obvious advantage of landing at the launch site.
Indeed a landing trajectory that approaches the final site over a large swathe of land should be avoided. But STS did it all the time OTL. I'd think it would be worth Lockheed's while to consider making the Mexican government an offer. The "stick" the US company holds is simply walking away without making an offer and pursuing their other options instead. The carrots, though, would surely include a bond to cover liability should Mexican citizens be inconvenienced (or God forbid hurt), as a minimum. They can go farther though and offer Mexico the incentive of being involved as a space-faring nation, offering incentives for cheaper tickets to ride up to Mexican concerns, or even go so far as to earmark some of the prospective launcher fleet for Mexican ownership, so Mexico could claim to itself be a space-launching nation in its own right (well, in close partnership with a Yanqui concern of course).
If direct return to Matagorda for the orbiter from space by overflying Mexico is ruled out, obviously there are still decent options for return of the orbiter from other sites. I'd think that with a recovery site for the first stage already in place, presumably on the western Florida peninsula coast, that would be the obvious one, with Canaveral much less attractive for the same reasons it would be poorer for the first stage. Why build two facilities in Florida when one would do?
"Self-ferry" is mentioned--this seems problematic enough for the first stage, which at least is designed to launch as a rocket from sea level. How would the second stage self-ferry, unless it has built-in jet engines? Or as I suggested for the first stage, strap-on temporary jets.
If rocket-boosted self-ferry is an option for the first stage, launching from a light pad on the west Florida coast, perhaps the orbiter can be attached and a heavier though still light load of fuel can launch both together to fly to Texas. I'd think it would be necessary for the two stages to separate though, and thus the orbiter would have to have some propellant too to move away from the other stage's trajectory so both can approach Matagorda separately.
That's perhaps too daredevil a stunt for anyone to seriously propose though.
-----
The Lockheed scheme has many attractions, but I foresee one key liability that will give any of its competitors a big edge--severely limited launch inclination window.
Matagorda combined with a peninsular west coast Florida recovery site is absolutely great--for one single launch inclination only! Looking at the globe, it's no problem to burn straight east; by the time the trajectory crosses Florida the first stage has long ago burned out and is approaching the coast on aerodynamic glide, whereas the second stage, barring a failure in a relatively narrow time range, is already boosted to a velocity where it will safely pass over the land, and probably I'd guess at such an altitude that sonic booms are no issue either. Achieving the most economical orbit that can be approached from that launch site, with inclination equal to Matagorda's latitude, is very doable.
But to achieve any dramatically different inclination (that is to say, a higher one) is very problematic indeed. Launching more northerly will take the craft over a swathe of the American Southeast. It is also possible to achieve inclination by veering south instead of north of course; but that would take the craft first over Cuba instead of Florida, and then farther south over Yucatan and then a grand tour of all Central America. Launching straight south would go over a big swathe of Mexico and launching straight north, over Texas and Arkansas.
Worse--the scheme depends on having a downrange recovery field for the first stage. For one fixed launched inclination, such a site can be provided in Florida. To vary it significantly would take that site out of the first stage's gliding crossrange and require that additional sites be developed, even if issues of overflight and the politics of the potential landing site could be considered solved.
Lockheed's Starclipper as configured here is then a one-trick pony, capable of delivering payloads to just one narrow range of orbital inclinations, at any rate unless a massive investment in half a dozen or more stage recovery sites is made.
Any of the rivals face rather steep challenges to match Starclipper's economy in reaching that particular range of orbits--but if any of them can be made to work, none of them face the same limits in orbits that can be achieved. All of them, eliminating dependence on a single developed downrange site (with only NASA's notion requiring any such site exist at all, and then only for certain missions, and proposed as a mobile oceanic installation that can be pre-positioned to suit any particular mission profile) can take full advantage of their respective sites' full range of launch inclinations available.
Recovery of their various orbiter components is another matter of course. We are familiar with how NASA handled returns to Canaveral OTL with STS; the final approaches being over US soil helped with the political liability aspect of course. Landing at Kourou requires the Europeans to negotiate with the Andean Pacific nations their craft would approach over, but there the craft is far uprange and chances of liability remote; more important is that a deal exist with Brazil. But the final approach paths would mostly be over sparsely inhabited Amazonian land; to be cynical about it the Brazilian government might be casual about the fates of many of the individuals living there, if funds for an indemnity are forthcoming from the European powers. Another reason I wish Kourou could avoid this liability is that anything that crash-lands short of Kourou's facilities would be out in the jungle, hard to locate and harder to haul back to base for a post-mortem.
But of course the goal is not to crash...
Balancing all the issues, I'd say that overall Cape Canaveral remains the best spot available, but Kourou is clearly superior for actual launching.
Perhaps the Europeans would do well to develop several landing sites in western Africa, from which their returned orbiters could be ferried across the Atlantic back to the launch site; this would have the political effect of strengthening ties between the European Community and selected African states (or rather the sites would be chosen with consideration of the state of relations already existing in mind, which might motivate some coastal African states to improve those relations to be considered).
-----------
With the exciting new dawn of the era of the reusable launcher breaking at last, I still have to wonder--the ATL having thus far proven the strengths of the "big dumb booster," is any major launch player or contender going to consider bucking the current that has suddenly accumulated for reusuables, and attempt instead to so cheapen the construction and launch operations of one-shot rockets as to remain competitive with even the most efficient reusable system that emerges?
Is this perhaps what the Russians are thinking of, or the Chinese or Indians?
From all the debate on the subject I've gathered from this TL and others in the years it has been running, my impression is the major cost element in any rocket launch is not the hardware of the rocket itself, nor its fuel, but rather the operations and staff required to safely and reliably launch it. Thus, the path to a cheap and truly disposable launch system would seem to lie in the direction of making the rocket so robust and simple that these operations can proceed quickly with a minimum of staff, and still achieve good reliability. Perfection is not required since rivals will make their own mistakes, but a high standard of quality must be maintained. Still, can this be done with staffs and times much reduced from the norms routinely achieved, OTL and in this ATL?
Note that the same considerations apply to reusable operations as well. It won't matter if Lockheed or Northrop or the Europeans can devise spacecraft whose material two stages can be used a hundred times each, if the cost of paying for huge staffs of people pursuing intricate processes to recover them, check them out, mate them together again and then prepare them for their next launch remain the expensive legions they have been; they are still the big ticket item in the total costs the providers must charge their customers or go under.
This is the point Alan Bond et al at Reaction Motors OTL stress when touting Skylon; the dream of single-stage, utopian as it may seem, has the best potential to simple down the routine operations needed to take a reusable system from the completion of one mission to the operations of another.
Reducing these costs will probably be the most vital aspect of bringing cost to orbit down to something less, um, astronomical.
---------
Finally, it occurs to me to pity the Japanese; it would seem that no matter how effective their planned spaceplane vehicle might have turned out to be it will be too little and too late to operate in the new competitive environment of three or four rival reusable two-stage projects; I expect the effort will be abandoned as soon as it becomes clear at least one of them will become operational at a competitive rate.
Or is it too soon to give up HOPE?
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