Reusable Launch Vehicles

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The last decade of the second millennium saw the emergence of the idea of sending payloads into space with reusable launch vehicles (RLVs). It appeared to make economic sense to reuse a launch vehicle that cost as much as a small airliner, rather than throw that vehicle away after one use. Two prototypes—the McDonnell Douglas Delta Clipper and Rotary Rocket's Roton—were built and flown at low altitude. A number of small companies emerged, each seeking to build an RLV. Although this idea has gained broad acceptance, no RLV has flown in space in recent years and none is likely to for many years.

It is a misconception that a number of technological breakthroughs are required before RLVs will be feasible. An American experimental RLV, the X-15, made its maiden flight on June 8, 1959. The X-15 was not called anRLV but a hypersonic airplane. It was incapable of reaching orbital speed (24,000 kilometers [15,000 miles] per hour) but flew fast enough (7,160 kilometers [4,475 miles] per hour) to reach an altitude above 100 kilometers (328,080 feet), the officially recognized boundary between Earth and space. In 199 flights the X-15 topped this altitude once, on August 22, 1963. With pilot Joe Walker at the controls, the X-15 reached 109,756 meters (360,000 feet) and became the first and only successful RLV.

The idea of the RLV can be traced back to 1928, and since that time a great many proposals have been made. The classic The Frontiers of Space(1969) vividly illustrates a number of RLV concepts, all of which were technically feasible at that time.

If technical feasibility is not an issue, why, then, has the RLV not replaced the expendable launch vehicle (ELV)? The reasons include a complex mix of economics, politics, historical accident, and human psychology. To understand them, it is necessary to appreciate how the ELV came into being, how the market for commercial ELVs emerged, and how the operational aspects of ELVs prevent new commercial space markets from developing, and consequently, why no RLVs have been or will soon be developed.

Arthur C. Clarke's The Promise of Space, Chapter 14, "The Birth of Apollo" (1968), gives the most concise summary of the historical events that made the ELV imperative. In essence, the space age was a child of the Cold War. If technology had evolved in a logical manner, RLVs would have been the product. In 1957, however, the Soviet Union shocked the world by using an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) to launch the world's first satellite. A series of space firsts by the Soviet Union began to make the United States look technologically and economically inferior.

This perception was a threat to national security. On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy responded by making a commitment to land aman on the Moon and return him safely to Earth by the end of the decade. Such a feat required decisions to be made early on, the first of which was how to get there. The difficulties of making aircraft that could carry a large payload and fly fast enough to reach orbit were well known, and no such airplane had ever been built. However, hundreds of satellites and spacecraft had been launched on ICBMs, and it was correctly thought that there was no limit to the size of the payload that could be launched with a scaled-up ICBM. Ultimately, President Kennedy's goal was achieved by using the Saturn V rocket, a 2,902,991-kilogram (3,200 tons), 111-meter-tall (365 feet) ELV designed specifically to send astronauts to the Moon. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin landed on the lunar surface, signaling the beginning of the end of the Cold War.

Sadly, that triumph closed the gates to space for future generations. By establishing the ELV as the "existing launch vehicle," a mode of space transportation had been established that was too expensive to permit any normal economic development of the space frontier. In the forty-five years since the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, only one commercial use has been found for space: as a location for relay stations (geosynchronous communication satellites [GEOSATs]) to bounce radio and television signals around the world.

Even that market would not have emerged if it had not been initiated, as a matter of national security, by the U.S. government. In 1962 Congress passed the Communications Satellite Act, which led to the formation in 1963 of the Communications Satellite Corporation (Comsat). The financing of this "risky" venture was possible only because the government backed it. The communications satellite industry grew at an astonishing rate, and was eventually was "privatized" by the Space Act of 1984. It has proved phenomenally profitable but has welded closed the gate to space that Apollo locked.

The reason for this is psychological. According to management consultant W. Edward Deming, "If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got." In the case of space, doing what you always did is a matter two things: Having the government underwrite the risk of any new space venture—be it a new launch vehicle or satellite system—and reaching space by means of "launch vehicles" of any kind are things of the past. Only space projects tied to national security should be backed by the government, and since the end of the Cold War, these projects have not included commercial ventures.

The private sector has seldom had the financial courage to undertake a new kind of space venture without government guarantees. The most notable exceptions have been the global cellular telephone projects Iridium and GlobalStar. Both have been spectacular failures because they have relied on "launch" by the means used for GEOSATs. Although each GEOSAT produces revenue and requires only one launch, Iridium and GlobalStar had to place large numbers of satellites in orbit before any revenue could flow. The cost and time required to do this on single-use launch vehicles were so great that corners had to be cut in terms of the size and power of the spacecraft. The result in each case was substandard service at a price no one could afford.

The chief barrier to large-scale commercialization of space is the concept of the launch. The practice of making each satellite a complete, independent, stand-alone unit results in an upward cost spiral for both satellite and launch vehicle (the size of both continually increases to squeeze every ounce of revenue out of the increasingly expensive hardware) and a consequent reduction in the number of spacecraft launched each year.

An RLV must fly many times to recover its cost of development and construction. Further, it would take an extremely large and expensive RLV to carry stand-alone satellites of the GEOSAT class. An expensive RLV carrying a small number of complete stand-alone satellites each year is not economically viable.

However, there is no reason, other than those imposed by launch, that every payload cannot be a complete, stand-alone unit. On Earth one does not deliver an office building to its lot on a single truck. One brings in many trucks, each carrying small components of the building. Erecting an "office building" in space is done the same way. The International Space Station could not have been "launched" on a single rocket. It had to be taken up in modules and assembled in orbit. The significance of this is that on-orbit assembly has been demonstrated on a massive, complex scale. The assembly of smaller spacecraft on orbit should be no more difficult.

No technological breakthroughs are required for RLVs to flourish. What is required is the discarding of the very concept of the launch and adopting the same approach to space operations that is used routinely on Earth: build spaceplanes and other space transport systems and use them to carry components of space factories into orbit. After the factories are built, they shouldbe used to produce the only thing that can be built better in space than on Earth: spacecraft. The parts for the spacecraft, along with the people to put them together and the supplies needed to keep them alive, can be delivered by space transports on a regular basis.

In this system a space transport that delivers a smaller payload but does so economically (i.e., a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle) has a decided advantage. Because it can deliver only a small load, it must fly frequently. It will therefore spread its cost of development and construction over a large number of flights, just as an airliner does.

The first spacecraft to be assembled in orbiting factories would be communications satellites, since there is an established market for them. Having put in place an orbital infrastructure involving people living and working in space, one then can branch out into other areas. The same habitats used as factories could be replicated, with modifications, as orbiting hotels. Because a large number of people would have already flown into space to assemble the factories, the communications satellites, and the hotels, enough experience would have been accumulated to make passenger flights safe and easy.

Once passenger travel is established, the promise of space will be realized. There are 6 billion potential payloads in the form of human beings. This far exceeds the number of spacecraft that will ever be built and represents the real market for future space transportation systems.

Getting to this point will not happen soon. In light of the realities of finance and markets, the only hope for change is the emergence of an individual with the personal financial resources, technical know-how, business acumen, and vision to make it happen. What is needed is a Howard Hughes,^* who possessed all of these attributes and used them to advance aviation.

When such a person appears and brings about the needed changes, the opportunities will be endless. No one knows what new activities and industries will result when large numbers of people travel into space. One can be sure that things that we have never dreamed of will emerge. When people are placed in a completely new environment, they adapt both themselves and that environment in ways that cannot be predicted. This has been the history of humanity, and it will be the future of our expansion into space.

^*In 1966 Fortune magazine declared aviator and financier Howard Hughes the richest man in the United States.

Accessing Space (Volume 1);; Business Failures (Volume 1);; Communications Satellite Industry (Volume 1);; Getting to Space Cheaply (Volume 1);; Hotels (Volume 4);; Launch Vehicles, Expendable (Volume 1);; Launch Vehicles, Reusable (Volume 1);; Satellite Industry (Volume 1);; Tourism (Volume 1).

Bono, Philip, and Kenneth Gatland. The Frontiers of Space. New York: Macmillan, 1969.

Clarke, Arthur C. The Promise of Space, New York: Harper & Row, 1968.

McLucas, John L. Space Commerce. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.

Thompson, Milton O. At the Edge of Space—The X-15 Flight Program. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991.

This is the complete article, containing 1,840 words (approx. 6 pages at 300 words per page).