October 2016 - Opening the High Frontier

The Call of an Unlimited Future

In 2014, Erik Wernquist released a short film about his vision of our future called “Wanderers”. It shows an incredible and wondrous future that sets no limits on what we can do and on what we might become. Every bit of it is within our reach. The only thing that is missing is the vision on how to make that first step, the step from the surface of the Earth to orbit and to escape velocity, affordable to everyone.

Think about that as you watch it.

All it will take to make this happen in the real world are the four components of a combination launch system. Components that can be affordably built right now with existing materials and technology. Four components that will give us an unlimited future.

In the closing lines of the film, it says,

“Maybe it’s a little early, maybe the time is not quite yet, but those are the worlds promising untold opportunity. [They] beckon. Silently they orbit the sun . . . . waiting.”

Why are we waiting?

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Visions of the Future

Where are we headed, as individuals, as a civilization?

What does the future hold in store for all of us?

Will we destroy ourselves in a nuclear war?

Will our civilization collapse due to overpopulation?

Will we muddle on with an ever growing divide between the haves and the have-nots?

Or will we take the next step and build a spacefaring civilization that sets no limits on what we might become?

We have been exploring space on a limited basis for over 50 years. Limited because of the cost. All the dreams and visions of large commercial passenger-carrying spaceships traveling between the planets, of cities on the Moon and Mars, of asteroid mining, and of space colonies scattered throughout the solar system, have remained dreams due to the high cost of spaceflight. Isn’t it time we came up with a workable vision on how to make spaceflight affordable to everyone? A vision that can be affordably built right now with existing technology?

Building a space transportation system that is affordable to everyone will allow us to make all of these dreams into reality.

Seriously, what other choice do we have?

The ideas and technologies that will make spaceflight affordable to everyone have existed for a long time.

The first component consists of choosing between air assisted launch or a ground assisted launch. Two ideas that have been around for a long time.

The second component is making the launch vehicle reusable.

The third component is some form of a combination air-breathing and rocket motor propulsion system.

The fourth component is a non-rotating Skyhook with an ion propulsion system.

These four components, when used together, will reduce the cost of going to orbit from the current price of over $20 million per person to $20,000 per person. And the best part of all this is that all four of these components can be affordably built with currently existing materials and technology, right now, today, no waiting.

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It’s All About Speed!

When a rocket takes off from the surface of the Earth and flies into orbit it increases its velocity by approximately 9,100 meters per second. That breaks down to 7,800 meters per second for the speed of orbit and 1,300 meters per second for drag and gravity losses. That is a lot of speed and it takes a lot of propellant to go that fast.

An example of just how much propellant is required is the Space Shuttle. Sitting on the launch pad waiting to take-off, the Space Shuttle was 85% propellant, 14% launch vehicle, and 1% payload. If Earth to orbit spaceflight is ever going to be affordable to everyone, the launch vehicle will need to be both fully reusable, and able to carry a large enough payload that it makes it worth all the trouble. Up to now, that has not been possible. To make the Space Shuttle fully reusable it would have been necessary to make it both larger and heavier which would have required a larger propellant fraction and that would have made the payload go to zero. Obviously, not a very workable solution.

This is where reducing the speed to orbit comes in.

There are a number of ways to do this. One is to use a ground accelerator that is located on the side of a tall mountain to boost the launch vehicle up to 600 MPH before starting its engines. This reduces the speed to orbit in two ways, by the speed added to the launch vehicle by the ground accelerator, and by reducing the drag and gravity losses that would have been incurred by the launch vehicle if it had accelerated to this speed and altitude on its own.

Another way to reduce the speed to orbit is to use a Skyhook at the upper end of the flight profile. Skyhooks can be short or long. The best way to use a Skyhook is to start small while the flight rate is low and gradually grow it into a longer and stronger version as demand increases. For this example, a short Skyhook, like the one shown in this video was selected.

The total velocity reduction made possible by the 600 MPH ground accelerator and 200-kilometer long basic Skyhook used in this example is 1,060 meters per second. This reduction in velocity will triple the amount of useful payload that can be delivered to the Skyhook compared to the same expendable launch vehicle flying to a space station without a ground accelerator or Skyhook. Increasing the amount of useful payload by a factor of three will reduce the cost to orbit to 1/3 of what it was without the ground accelerator and Skyhook. If it is assumed that the first stage of this launch vehicle is made reusable like the first stage of the Falcon 9, it then becomes reasonable to assume an additional 50% reduction in launch costs. This will reduce the cost to orbit to 1/6 of the cost of flying the expendable version of this launch vehicle without the ground accelerator and Skyhook.

And this is only the beginning. The longer the Skyhook becomes the lower the price becomes. Once the Skyhook is long enough it then becomes possible to use a fully reusable single stage launch vehicle that will reduce the cost even more. Best of all, the 600 MPH ground accelerator, the basic Skyhook, the reusable first stage launch vehicle, they can all be affordably built right now with existing materials and technology.

For more information about this and other related cost reducing concepts, read the book “Opening the High Frontier”.

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Combination Launch Systems

A combination launch system is a launch system that consists of multiple launch technologies that work together to boost a payload into orbit for a small fraction of the cost of current launch vehicles. It works by reducing the amount of velocity that the rocket-powered components of the launch system need to achieve. This reduces the propellant fraction and increases the payload fraction of the launch vehicle to such a degree that airliner like operations to orbit and beyond using a fully reusable launch system becomes possible.

There are many different launch concepts that we can build today that can be combined together to do this: subsonic air-launch; supersonic air-launch; ground accelerators; combination air-breathing and rocket motor propulsion systems; reusable launch vehicles; and, Skyhooks. All of these concepts can be combined together to reduce launch costs.

There are also many ways to combine these concepts to make a combination launch system. They can be as simple as using a vertically oriented ground accelerator to boost an existing expendable launch vehicle up to 600 MPH prior to igniting the rocket motor. They can be as complex as combining air-launch with a reusable launch vehicle that uses a combination ramjet, scramjet, rocket motor propulsion system, that flies to the lower end of a non-rotating Skyhook. The hard part is finding the combination that has the lowest user cost to orbit for the lowest possible initial investment, that is sized for the existing launch market and has the potential to grow as the market grows.

Combination launch systems are not new. The Wright brothers used a catapult to boost their first airplane up to flight speed. The U. S. NAVY still uses catapults to launch fighter planes from the decks of aircraft carriers. The world’s first reusable rocket plane, the Bell X-1, was air-launched from a B-29. Probably the best-known combination lunch system was the X-15 rocket plane that was air-launched from a B-52. In 1967 they even test flew a mock-up of a scramjet on the X-15. There were also studies that examined the possibility of supersonic air-launching a rocket-ramjet-scramjet powered delta winged version of the X-15 from the back of the XB-70 at Mach 3 that had a small expendable upper stage rocket for carrying satellites into Earth orbit.

Unfortunately, all of these ideas fell by the wayside in our rush to beat the Russians to the Moon back in the 1960’s. It wasn’t until SpaceShipOne flew in 2004, the start of Virgin Galactic and Stratolaunch shortly thereafter, as well as SpaceX and Blue Origin developing reusable first stage launch vehicles, that we have seen a serious effort to develop combination launch systems again. The only negative about this is that none of these new combination lunch systems go far enough.

While all of these concepts, ground accelerators, air-launch, reusable first stage launch vehicles, air-breathing and rocket propulsion systems, and Skyhooks, will reduce the cost of getting to orbit, none of them, by themselves, will make spaceflight affordable to everyone. To do that we will need a launch system that combines almost all of these concepts together.

Once we have that, the solar system is ours.

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Why do Rockets Cost so Much?

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, America used the Saturn V rocket to go to the Moon. The first stage of that rocket had an empty weight of 130,000 kilograms and carried 2,160,000 kilograms of propellant. It was used only once and then thrown away.

The second stage of the Saturn V had an empty weight of 40,100 kilograms and carried 456,100 kilograms of propellant. Like the first stage, this stage was used only once and thrown away.

The third stage of the Saturn V had an empty weight of 13,300 kilograms and carried 106,600 kilograms of propellant. This stage was also used once and thrown away.

The total empty weight of those three stages was 183,400 kilograms.

By comparison, a Boeing 747 has an empty weight of 183,000 kilograms. The 747 can fly 15 hours per day, 11 months per year, and has a useful life of 20 years. It also carries three hundred plus passengers per flight.

Each Saturn V made only one flight and carried only three passengers.

This is why spaceflight that is based on using expendable rockets costs so much.

This is also why SpaceX and Blue Origin are working so hard to develop reusable rockets.

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In the Beginning . . . .

In 1903 the Wright brothers made the first controlled sustained flight in a powered airplane. It was the beginning of aerospace.

In 1919 airplanes began crossing the North Atlantic.

In 1933 Boeing and Douglas introduced the first modern airliners.

It only took 30 years.

The first rocket to exceed 100 kilometers altitude was the German V-2 in 1944.

The first satellite to orbit the Earth was launched in 1957, and shortly thereafter the first manned spacecraft was launched in 1961.

Eight years after that, in 1969, people walked on the surface of the Moon.

It only took 25 years.

The last manned expedition to the Moon occurred in 1972. The primary reason for stopping was cost and the lack of a realistic vision for how to make it affordable.

It has now been 44 years since people walked on the Moon and we have yet to come up with a workable plan for how to make spaceflight affordable to everyone.

That is what this website is about, a realistic vision that will make spaceflight affordable to everyone, using existing technology and known concepts that can be built and operated for an affordable price. It’s about “Opening the High Frontier“.

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