Spaceport America's Ongoing Financial Problems
Space, nuclear security, polar bears: Russia and the U.S. still agree on some things, Washington Post
“Farther afield, American astronauts have been relying on Russia to fly them to the International Space Station since the U.S. space shuttle program shut down in 2011. Despite muttering in Moscow about cosmic retaliation for the latest U.S. sanctions, the Kremlin is not expected to follow through. Not when it costs NASA $80 million for a seat on a Soyuz rocket.”
How much secrecy does Spaceport America need? , Las Cruces Sun News
“Spaceport America hasn’t always been so secretive. In addition to releasing Virgin Galactic’s lease without redactions before Hicks was in charge, the agency has also shared details about its agreement with SpaceX. Hicks’ predecessor, Christine Anderson, was quoted in 2013 as saying SpaceX would be paying $6,600 a month for three years to lease a mobile mission control facility and $25,000 per launch to test a reusable rocket. In other words, today the spaceport is trying to keep secret information it released to the public four years ago that’s still available online.”
Funding woes could ‘cripple’ NM spaceport as other states invest in space race, Las Cruces Sun News
“The New Mexico Spaceport Authority, the state agency that operates the facility, has shored up its annual operating budget since 2012 with excess money from taxes collected in Doña Ana and Sierra counties. That’s been controversial. Officials pledged to voters who approved the tax increase a decade ago that three-fourths of the money would be used for construction of the facility that was to be built in the desert west of Truth or Consequences. The remaining one fourth of the tax money was pledged to education programs in the two counties. Officials said the state would fund the spaceport’s operations.”
Transparency problems plague Spaceport America, Las Cruces Sun News
“Spaceport America is a publicly owned government entity, so the law requires its financial and other dealings to be open to the public, with few exceptions. And yet in 2017 the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, the state agency that runs the spaceport, has violated the state’s transparency laws several times in response to requests for documents filed by NMPolitics.net, a citizen from Truth or Consequences, and a reporter with KTSM-TV in El Paso. Those violations, in addition to other possible infractions, blocked or delayed public access to information about the spaceport.”
Unfortunately Spaceport America did not have a good business plan at the start, as there was never any practical way to launch into orbit from an inland site in the US. A better investment for an inland area would have been in aviation, or in university R&D, which would not have required such an isolated location.
Indeed. But here’s the part I don’t get: the missing Global Face Palm when this project was even considered. The spaceport is suitable only for sub-orbital flights. Perhaps a sort of willing blindness settled over the state, similar to the internet thrill of the 1990’s. Anything ‘space’ would be a home run.
We have been so hopeful.
Considering the smartness of some of those involved it’s even more difficult to understand. “Physics is physics”, as my high school physics teacher loved to say, red pen in hand.
Both Baikonur (Russia) and Jiuquan (China) are inland sites and boosters impact on land. However this has (understandably) led to complaints from residents of the impact areas, and both Russia and China are constructing new costal launch sites, China having recently gone operational with its site on Hainan. Technically The Falcon 9 could launch from an inland site with with recovery of the booster on land at a downrange location, but the potential for a launch failure would (rightly or wrongly) create considerable perception of risk for people living downrange.
OK, but — The possibility of orbital-class rockets leaving US soil with any possibility of crashing into land just won’t happen politically, which is why I said that the facility is sub-orbital only.
And anyway, back to the smart people; surely they knew as well as anyone else that there’d never be any sort of a permit issued for a booster launching to orbit from NM? This will be far too dangerous and remain so for many decades.
Maybe in the future when SABRE is working? or some other SSTO?
Yea. How’s that coming?
It isn’t obvious that a suborbital launch is safer for the people downrange than an orbital one. Most of the concern is with the first stage and where it crashes. Suborbital rockets may be smaller than most orbital launch vehicle’s first stage, but they still crash somewhere. That doesn’t preclude inland, suborbital launches from Poker Flats. But I agree commercial launches from New Mexico would be a huge liability problem.
The very first commercial launch licensed by the FAA AST was from NM, a sub-orbital launch in 1989. They have done a number since then including about a dozen from Spaceport America.
It’s really about the safest place for a suborbital launch, since they have been doing them at WSMR since the 1940’s. Most of the range safe procedures were first developed at WSMR.
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There’s no evidence at present that SSTO is feasible. A variety of proposals have been made for single stage to orbit (SSTO) but those that have reached the stage of detailed design, such as the X-33 and its SSTO successor, have encountered seroius and unexpected obstacles, such as the failure of the linear aerospike engine to reach predicted performance or weight, and the return of such a large vehicle from orbit would be problematic as well. The two stage design of the Falcon permits the booster stage to be returned from suborbital velocities.
Yes. Which is why I was asking the question. Perhaps that tech looked better a decade ago depending on who was making the assessment (it didn’t in reality).
Apparently this ‘space port’ is intended to do only one thing: give the über rich a ride to space on those silly Scaled composite rocket planes. While the total energy in such a system is much less than contained in an orbital vehicle, even the SC devices as we have seen are not without danger of falling from the sky.
So, back to the question: What were they thinking? I did some digging around, thinking that there could be some sort of presentation made by the spaceport officials to the local governing bodies which might include a statement of rationale, but without success (and had to go back to work).
The tech was basically COD in terms of the Rockwell and Boeing designs, even more so for TSTO versions. But NASA has no need for a RLV, it never had, which is why it never made the investments needed to build it. The USAF by contrast does have a need for an RLV for rapid replacement of robotic space assets, but the Clinton Administration space policy prohibited them from working on RLVs.
President Clinton even went as far as vetoing their work on the orbital portion, a military space plane. Fortunately some brave officers took a risk and transferred all the work to the SMV program and as a result the USAF now has the X-37B for those missions. That is also why it’s an “Operational X Plane” 🙂
There were a number of reasons the X-33 failed, but the main one was its crazy V-shaped composite tank. The technology to make one didn’t exist and Lockheed needed a couple of hundred million to fix it, money NASA Dan Goldin refused to invest in SSTO. So most folks now think the technology is not there for SSTO or at least TSTO, killing private efforts. Thank you NASA 🙁
The two designs that lost to the Lockheed design had normal shaped fuel tanks easily made with light weight composites, as demonstrated by the DC-XA which flew with composite tanks in the same shape as the Boeing X-33 entry would have had. Building either one for X-33 would have been easy.
The X-37 is a reusable spacecraft, not a reusable launch vehicle. It is an elegant design, overcoming some of the deficiencies of the Shuttle, but even the best winged entry vehicle weighs and costs more than a capsule of similar volume. A few years ago it would have been difficult to claim that a capsule could be reusable, but that seems to be changing with all three commercial providers.
The tank itself was not the core of the problem. Had the configuration been simpler, as with the DC-X, composites would have worked. The engineers on the project informed NASA that because of its complex shape, the X-33 LH2 tank would actually have been lighter if it had been made of titanium, however the NASA manager was convinced that a composite tank would somehow have made SSTO possible (with no objective data, it was simply an opinion) and ordered the project cancelled. Moreover, the weight and performance of the linear aerospike engine were not up tothe claims that had been made.
The central problem with the X-33 was the assumption that the proposed followon design, based on the same technology would be capable of SSTO.
Yes, the original plan for the military space plane (X-37B) was it would be launched using a winged reusable booster, just as the original Shuttle design. It would launched out of WSMR and the booster would land at an AFB down range, be refueled, and fly back to WSMR.
http://www.astronautix.com/…
http://www.astronautix.com/…
Look familiar 🙂 Unfortunately only the upper part was approved/funded and had to be adapted for a conventional booster. But the X-37B scales well,
https://www.space.com/13230…
and it wouldn’t be hard to build that booster. Indeed it would probably cost a lot less than the SLS.
>similar to the internet thrill of the 1990’s.
>Anything ‘space’ would be a home run.
There was a time when everyone expected a helicopter in every garage. Another time when SSTs will be primary means of moving people from one spot to another. Both are great but cannot scale up like cars and subsonic airliners. Maybe SA cannot scale up to orbital flights, not enough tourists for short duration suborbital flights, and particularly SteveW comment it is located in a place with not much amenities.
Do you remember when the press was busy explaining what “software” was?
Or when the supposedly smart people were all abuzz about this new-fangled ‘computer’ that would, sadly, put many out of work, but it was so adaptable that nearly every job would become mechanized?
And that the biggest social problem facing us was what to do with all of the free time that the new computing order would give us? This one is especially poignant
How did we ever cope?
I remember pieces in PopSci about self-driving cars and the need to embed wires or something in the paving so the cars would be able to follow lanes.
Remember the big argument by some that computing devices would never find a place in households? (Someone help me on this—was it an IBM CEO that said something like that?)
Oh, and this— remember the huge discussion about computer topology- one side argued for centralized computers with distributed terminals. On the other side, computers would be in households and businesses because we needed to protect our data? Funny how that one turned out.
Oh. Remember when we’d never really have video on computers because copper wires could never carry enough data?
Or the discussion about storage, back when a 10M disk was a serial device- and >$1000? Back in those olden times, it was common to compare growing storage technologies to the size of all the data in the Library of Congress, estimated in 2012 to be about 15 terabytes; a collection of three disks would hold this amount of data, and the disks would be bus-powered!
More recently, and about 10 years ago, the then-CEO of RIM said that they’d spent years perfecting the mobile phone, and that “computer guys aren’t just gonna walk in here”?
The future ain’t what it used to be.
I was at a conference a couple weeks ago, and I realized I hadn’t packet a memory stick to transfer my talk from my laptop to the conference’s machine. So I ran out and bought a 128 GB one for about $50 dollars.
The solid state recorders on Cassini are each 2 Gbits (that’s bits, not bytes), requires 9 W of power, 7x7x10 inches and 30 pounds.
And before someone says my new memory stick isn’t radiation tolerant, I can certainly use a computer and EDAC code to periodically sweep it to correct bit flips (Cassini also does this) For total dose, I can wrap enough lead around it to solve the problem without getting close to 30 pounds.
Maybe you guys should have included an expansion USB port on that fancy critter!
The current location was selected for the SSTO and TSTO systems, commercial and military, proposed in the 1990’s. WSMR, which routinely conducts overland rocket flights from Utah since the 1960’s had mapped out both high inclination and easternly launch corridors that had lower risks to third parties than the Space Shuttle re-entry routes had.
But in terms of VG, they didn’t need a clean sheet location. They could have located it at Las Cruces International Airport. The area to the north and west of it is just empty land, far safer for Spaceshiptwo operations than Mojave Air and Spaceport is. The money spent on Spaceport American could have extended its main runways instead.
Really? Las Cruces isn’t even open for commercial service any more, and it’s only got one concrete, 7500 ft runway (plus two shorter asphalt ones.) Could Virgin Galactic fly out of that?
If they spent the money to build a new runway at Spaceport America they could have spent the money needed to extend the existing runway at Las Cruces International Airport, especially as the FAA often provides matching funds for airport improvements. And they wouldn’t have the extra operational costs of fire/rescue/security since it already has it.
I just passed it yesterday and saw a couple of light aircraft in the pattern. My friend who lives there said the city was trying to attract another commuter airline to serve it.
I live in a similarly-small community— Napes, Fl— the airport is constantly trying to get regular service.
Which we had, back in the good old days; commuter service to Miami, Key West, the islands, etc.
All of which was unknown (to me) but simply adds fuel to the fire; who thought, back when the facility was being planned, that SSTO was even on the horizon? Anybody other than Skylon?
Yes, NASA! It was claiming that the Shuttle would be replaced with a SSTO system called VentureStar that would be flown commercially by Lockheed. That was why they were funding the X-33 and X-34. I remember Dan Goldin speaking in Las Cruces and saying how NASA SSTO was the wave of the future and how NASA would like a second inland site to fly SSTOs from. This was in the mid-1990’s when Lockheed, Boeing and Rockwell were all pitching SSTO to NASA.
I forgot all about that, thanks.
Here’s my opinion about SSTO: Looks great on paper and on sci-fi movies but cannot repeal the laws of physics. There’s an article “Tyranny of the Rocket Equation” on the internet, many figured that old guy Tsiolkovsky’s stuff is old school. So far nobody has proved him wrong.
Which is why so many of the concepts involve air breathing or at least rockets with some ability to breath at lower velocities. That gives a huge specific impulse. But it doesn’t work all that well above Mach 5 or so. That’s produced some concepts with two sets of engines, one air breathing and one not, some which switch from air breathing to tanked oxygen in flight. There are ideas out there which could get around the rocket equation. But it’s a huge technical challenge.
Yes, which is why TSTO is much more feasible.
I always assumed that they understood from the beginning that the location is limited to suborbital, but they expected tourist flights to start several years ago, at a high rate, and they expected that VG’s success would then lead to other companies launching tourist flights from their location. Several years later with none of that materializing it’s no surprise they are in bad shape financially, the only surprise is that the plug wasn’t pulled on it a long time ago
They did make the mistake of buying into the hype of the X-Prize and VG. But there have been other customers using Spaceport America for suborbital flights since it was established. But since they are uncrewed folks tend to ignore those flights.
In terms of VG it’s much safer than Mojave where they are flight testing Spaceshiptwo. When it had its accident in 2014 the falling debris almost hit two trucks whose drivers, on a state highway, had no idea a test was underway.
By contrast Spaceport America is in the WSMR call up area and uses the same procedures WSMR uses when doing rocket tests in the area. The most common tests WSMR does is firing IRBMs from Utah or Northwest NM into the range. Most recently these launches are used to test ant-missile systems at WSMR.
Secrecy is all the rage these days.
A problem with spaceports – Mojave, Kodiak, Spaceport America, even Wallops – is that they are located in backwaters. Few workers at the companies that want to launch from those spaceports have employees that want to work at them. They are too remote except for the hunter/fishermen space specialists and rock climbing/desert rat space technicians. The amenities and life-style are not attractive to the company CEOs or their management and most of their workers.
Jim Cantrell wrote over a picture of an alligator, “I have bug bites on my scalp after joining search for @vectorspacesys rocket yesterday in @camdenspaceport JUNGLE w/ gators, snakes & pigs.” Spaceports are often located in deserts, “jungles”, and glacier country. Kennedy/Canaveral/Disney, silicone valley, or Seattle are where workers want to be.
So SA has Virgin Galactic as a tenant, but their office is 107 miles away in Las Cruces. Sure, the taxpayers can once again invest in SA to pave the desert road shortcut, but that will make Las Cruces only easier to reach. So, sorry T or C. Then it will be easier for Las Cruces residents to take the few existing SA jobs.
The reason of course is that rockets have a fairly large impact when they explode on launch, not to mention the noise even when launches go well. I wonder how SpaceX ever received approval for South Texas. Their flight path is only a few miles from the Condos and resorts of South Padre Island. I expect a lot of broken glass if a Falcon 9H blows up right after launch…
Even when they don’t explode, rockets are _loud_. The neighbors might not like that. Denver International Airport gets noise complaints from people in southern Boulder county, and that’s far enough from the airport that the planes are pretty close to 10,000 feet up. Even if a successful Falcon Heavy launch doesn’t blow out any windows, it’s likely to rattle them out to a couple dozen kilometers.
Having watched a couple of S5 moon missions leave Earth, I can tell you that they were so loud I feel like I STILL hear them!
There’s no sound at first. Then those enormous plumes of vaporized water shoot out the sides, signaling that the engines are alight but hidden.
You know that the roar is coming, though. There’s huge anticipation. Nobody around you breathes.
Everyone has binoculars. Next see those big motors that are so bright they overwhelm the clouds of steam. and there is a sense that the rocket is clawing out of a hole, finally leaving the tower. Finally you feel it, a mini-earthquake, as a tidal wave of sound washes over you.
Oh, but what a beautiful sight!
And I’ll be there when the Rocket We All Love To Hate finally blasts off. And FH, of course.
“Kennedy/Canaveral/Disney”? Disney world opened in 1971, the first cruise ship stoped at Port Canaveral in 1964, and that business didn’t really take off until the 1980s. The first rocket launched out of Canaveral Air Force Base was a V-2 in 1950. Back then, Canaveral was located in a backwater.
Sure. It’s little more than an hour to Orlando and Disney from the Cape, closer since civilians will likely live on the mainland. The point is that assignment at Canaveral, like Silicone Valley or Seattle, would not be considered a ‘sentence’ and isolation from the world of their peers. Take a look at Glassdoor comments from space workers at Mojave where at least they are closer to civilization than Las Cruces where there have been no scheduled flights since 2005. Want to visit your girlfriend in Long Beach? You’d have a 4 hour drive, whether you take a flight from ABQ or drive to her house.
It is no longer the 1959’s, but even then, attrition was high from backwater sites. Technically skilled people expect certain hardships on assignments, but young people today insist on their life-style perks, too. Headquarters will always be where the perks are better. Launches will stay where they can crash them.