SpaceX Statement on Shared Use of LC-39A (Update)
According to SpaceX on 20 Sep: “SpaceX has nearly 50 missions on manifest to launch over the proposed 5 year lease period and we can easily make use of the additional launch site. At the time we submitted the bid, SpaceX was unaware any other parties had interest in using the pad. However, if awarded this limited duration lease on 39A, SpaceX would be more than happy to support other commercial space pioneers at the pad, and allow NASA to make use of the pad if need be.”
Musk Calls Out Blue Origin, ULA for ‘Phony Blocking Tactic’ on Shuttle Pad Lease, Space News
“[Blue Origin] has not yet succeeded in creating a reliable suborbital spacecraft, despite spending over 10 years in development,” Musk wrote. “If they do somehow show up in the next 5 years with a vehicle qualified to NASA’s human rating standards that can dock with the Space Station, which is what Pad 39A is meant to do, we will gladly accommodate their needs. Frankly, I think we are more likely to discover unicorns dancing in the flame duct.”
Congress Voices Support for NASA LC 39-A Leasing, earlier post
Perhaps Musk wants to avoid any political battles and knows that no one else will really be interested in using the pad. Blue Origin has no real booster at present, ULA has committed to using Cx-41 and is far from capacity there, and Orbital has no intention of leaving Wallops. As for NASA, it can’t afford enough launches of the monster rocket to even keep LC-39B occupied.
Musk’s response yesterday (today’s update) said it best. “phony blocking tactic”. Paraphrasing, “sure, show up with a rocket and we’ll accommodate you”.
“SpaceX would be more than happy to support other commercial space pioneers at the pad, and allow NASA to make use of the pad if need be.”
Nice statement, but the scheduling could get complex and troublesome. Postponements for various reasons aren’t uncommon, and if I were Musk, I wouldn’t want my schedule held hostage to the delays of others.
Besides, if version 1.1 of the F9 is successful, there are said to be a number of customers waiting in the wings to add to SpaceX’s manifest. As these things go, the launch complex could prove to be relatively busy if only with SpaceX’s own flights.
All the more reason for spacex to have it.
With customers waiting in the wings for cheaper lift to Leo I don’t understand why Spacex seems to be the only company targeting recoverable launch.
Do the other companies believe they will fail? ???
To me it is a no brainer the falcon 1.1 will succeed. The question is how well. How many times can a booster be reused? How much will it cost to set a used booster back on the pad? Reguardless of these answers its sure bet the price of launch is about to plummet. Exciting times 🙂
Imagine mobile launchers in line to use this pad with recovered rockets rolling up and launching twice a day.
Cost of each launch only a couple/few hundred thousand dollars.
Blue Origin has filed for a patent on a down-range booster recovery system, possibly sea based, though that would probably depend on the launch site. Obviously, we have yet to see hardware.
Equally obviously, if the SpaceX system works, it will be necessary for them to develop equipment to move returning stages from their landing sites to hangers for inspection and any necessary refurbishment. I envision something like a giant forklift with a strongback to protect the stage from bending moments. Nothing like the size of the Apollo transporter, but substantial nevertheless. I can see moving recovered stages either vertically or horizontally, though I imagine horizontal would be preferred given the way SpaceX has moved its launchers until now.
As for the time between launches, that will depend on the robustness of the stages. I would expect it to take a number of successful launches and recoveries to determine which, if any, parts of the stages need work or repair before re-integration and re-launch. That’s going to mean a fair number of flights.
Airline-style turnaround is years away at best if only because we have to march out along that learning curve.
Mark
Tinker has said that the falcon r will fly nearly straight up with little down range before the booster separates which means that the booster should be able to land near its launch pad. Couldn’t they just have a rail near the recovery pad that has a strong back that grabs the booster and lowers it.
We have heavy earth moving dump trucks. Four of those bolted to a strong back could easily carry a booster.
Wouldn’t you just hop a booster grass hopper style to it strong back intergration pad? ???
The carrier doesn’t seem like anything troublesome, as you point out.
As to hopping a stage back to an integration pad, maybe. But so far SpaceX has done all its integration work horizontally; they may prefer to keep it that way. It’s really up to them, but I suspect the rule of thumb is that, if it works, don’t fix it.
Mark:
SpaceX will attempt to return to the launch site. The first stage may be longer but will not burn as long as the original Falcon. That’s why the second stage is almost twice as long on the new rocket. The second stage will fire longer and throttle for efficiency. The first version of the second stage was under-fueled and under-powered because they just didn’t have the margin to do more and get a reasonable amount of payload to orbit.
Although the trajectory won’t be quite straight up, it won’t roll down range right after launch like the Shuttle either. If you watched the Antares launch rocket cam videos you’ll see that Orbital choose an almost vertical trajectory too. For Orbital it was a matter of disposing of the fairing before second stage ignition could occur that made them seek thin air over performance.
Falcon 9 v1.1 has loads of margin, some of it is used to keep the first stage within reach of the launch site, some to carry a heavier second stage and payload plus some as fuel enough to land at the launch site. Also, some of that margin will be the landing legs which weigh two tons combined.
Aside from having new flight computers in the first stage, the landing legs are the only large structures that need to be added to recover the stage. Some of the other parts of the recovery system already exist (fuel tanks, fuel, Merlin engines) while others parts are a small percentage or additive to existing systems (Draco thrusters, full flight computers, extra helium tanks for engine restarts).
Strip off all the recovery stuff, fly the Falcon v1.1 on a performance trajectory, call the second stage ‘payload’ and it could probably lift 20 tons to LEO.
Everybody has been flying rockets at peak performance (and nothing but) that they wouldn’t know what to do extra margin… until now!
tinker
Of course, SpaceX will (we hope) return the boosters to the launch site. I didn’t say they wouldn’t. What I was thinking, as an old pilot, was that you wouldn’t want to land too near the launch pad because there would be infrastructure and obstructions nearby. Probably you would land in an unobstructed space a safe distance from the pad and its associated infrastructure.
I agree as to margin. I think Musk may always have had this in mind.
AYK, lots of the launchers we’ve used in the past were “just big enough” to do the job with very little margin. I still remember the trauma at Grumman paring mass from the lunar landers a gram at a time.
Musk’s approach is almost luxurious by contrast. By tightly controlling the cost of the launcher itself, he can afford to build-in margin economically, so up to a point, precise control of payload mass is less important. To my way of thinking, V 1.1 is a maturation of that approach.
As long as the rocket is relatively inexpensive, you can afford to waste some of its payload potential. SpaceX’s business model lets him achieve that and still remain competitive.
For all the talk about SpaceX technology and achievements, I often think that their business model may be the core of their success.
BTW, I thought your approach to Hyperloop construction (trusses, et al) was more practical than Elon’s. Just so you know.
That’s what happens when one uses total system cost as the metric. Anything else leads to weird and harmful design choices.
I was surprised that 1.1 only has 10,000lbs. to GTO. Some of those birds are 12,000lbs. I hope you saw that they will burn 3 engines in space to hit the air and 1 to land(FAA). Burn all the fuel in the 2nd stage. Escape velocity maybe. DARPA is going to build a space plane,a copy of the Swiss. Half the cost of F1. $5 million. A robot plane. More business for KSC.
The DOD has been working on reusables for a few years now. It’s disappointing that NASA is not.
Helium… the most expensive (in terms of total cost) fluid loaded onto the Shuttle. Maybe Musk can figure out an alternative.
You meant hydrogen? A lot of helium gas was used in the shuttle program but I don’t believe it would be anywhere close to how much (liquid) hydrogen it took to launch a shuttle. In the event of a scrub, pumping it back to the storage tank meant losing a lot through evaporation, so more $$$. I have not priced one against the other, but I cannot imagine the helium costing more than the hydrogen. If you really meant helium, please explain why. Thanks.
I take back my last. I asked around and vulture4 is correct in his statement about Helium. It surprised me, but I stand corrected.
I am looking to learn more about gelled Hydrogen/methane would this make for a better Falcon upper stage?
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW…
On the other hand, it’s fairly safe to make a statement like that when you know that nobody’s going to take you up on it for several years. ULA doesn’t need it, Orbital doesn’t need it, Blue Origin doesn’t need it.
Blue Origin was one of the bidders.
That’s not the same thing as needing it. They don’t have a rocket yet, and don’t expect to be flying one until 2018.
Keith:
Where did you find this statement? I’ve looked all around and on their site too. Is this an exclusive? Others are already quoting you.
tinker
Tinker
Your idea of connecting two falcon R boosters together with a 30 person winged X-37 B like shuttle. Would this launch pad work well for such a vehicle?
Couldn’t the shuttle use the same second stage engine Spacex now throws away?
Would Spacex build the shuttle or have some other lifting body builder do it?? ?
Yes I know lifting bodies and wings are different.
Im thinking that dream chaser may need a cheaper ride soon. Maybe they will not survive down select. Couldn’t Musk use your two booster idea to boost many different second stages/spaceplanes to orbit?? ?
The falcon 18 option. 🙂
“Your idea of connecting two falcon R boosters together with a 30 person winged X-37 B like shuttle.”
I’ll just leave this here 😉
https://twitter.com/Rockete…
Duncan:
Very nice! Just what I was looking for!
I should point out that Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser could be launched to orbit by a single-core Falcon 9-R with two tons of cargo.
tinker
“Serenity” is intended to be somewhat larger than DreamChaser.
Lots of food for thought in your Falcon-18 concept, thanks 🙂
We went through this before and I think the same objection still applies — unless you’re talking about specific companies/LVs, and know their hardware details and requirements, we can’t even say whether other users can make use of it on a shared basis. If it requires major rework between launches to accomodate multiple users, then it just isn’t practical. Even differences in integration methods and control room requirements could affect the usability of the pad/complex.
Steve:
If we assume that ‘venders’ will use mobile platforms, then all that’s needed is common interface for fuel, oxidizer, power, data, etc. Everybody will be using liquid oxygen, fuels would range from kerosine to liquid methane and hydrogen. Just make all three fuels available and hook up what’s needed for a particular customer.
With the Vehicle Assembly Building, the crawlers and platforms, both pads should be opened up for multiple vendors.
tinker
A common interface standard and shared launch pads is something we may eventually see, but I would think that is farther down the road. These companies at the moment are clawing their way to LEO and have to optimize everything for their particular launcher. Very little margin to do the compromises needed to meet all of those standards. Not to mention the complexities of trying to share a launch pad with other launch companies. It’s the reason why airlines prefer not to share gates if they can avoid it, even though technically they are compatible.
Not sure how practical the VAB would be for commercial launch companies, it sure is a long way from the pads. When your launcher is on the pad and you realize it needs a quick fix in the hanger, you would have to spend two full days just moving your rocket back and forth across Merritt Island. So I was assuming that anyone leasing 39A would want to build their integration hanger near the pad, maybe even inside the perimeter fence.
I concur on VAB and distance. SpaceX now has a horizontal integration building fairly close to the pad; they can get a launcher to and from the pad pretty quickly. Frankly, I’m puzzled as to the attraction of this launch complex. It would require a lot of work and a change in SpaceX’s typical methods of operation. I’d like to read somewhere about the rationale for leasing it.
Sounds like braggings rights to me. Could be foolish. Spacex is in a bidding war for this?? Big egos can lead to dumb decisions.
I have a very hard time seeing Musk doing anything of consequence out of ego. Sure, he has a generous supply of it, but that doesn’t equate with poor decision making. His decisions have always been about the prize at the end of the race – colonizing Mars. If Musk wants 39A, then he has calculated its benefit to his goal. Launching from there makes it a whole lot easier to run joint missions to Mars with NASA, dramatically more simple than getting them to agree to launch from south Texas and move all of their launch operations there.
Todd
I was looking up raptor and methane engines. I found this.
Large-engine developments
In October 2012, SpaceX publicly announced concept work on a rocket engine that would be “several times as powerful as the Merlin 1 series of engines, and won’t use Merlin’s RP-1 fuel”.[19]
SpaceX has declined to provide details at present on the 1.5 million lb thrust class engine,[15] but did indicate details would be forthcoming in “one to three years”. The large engine is intended for a new SpaceX rocket, using multiple of these large engines, that would notionally launch payload masses of the order of 150 to 200 tonnes (150,000 to 200,000 kg) to low-Earth orbit, exceeding the payload mass capability of the NASA Space Launch System.
So in a couple of years spacex will have the engine ready for a BFR for this launch pad.
I wonder how they will intergrate such a monster????
That’s the Falcon XX rocket…
They would need to use a tractor crawler system (probably)…
Stack it in the VAB and role it out to 39A…
That’s why they want the pad.
I thought they’re planning to use Merlin 2 engines for the Falcon XX (which use RP-1).
My guess would be they are talking about methane. Althoughvertical integration isa possibility, horizontal integration has been used for LVs as large as the N-1.
Here’s some nice photos of Energia/Buran being rolled out to the pad horizontally.
http://www.darkroastedblend…
I would expect Falcon XX to use horizontal integration, and a heavier variant of the FH transporter/erector.
Note that those estimated payload figures put the notional launcher in the SLS class. If they build it, I’ll bet it will cost far, far less than SLS
My feeling is that 1) Musk wants to avoid any question that the access and egress system is man-rated by reusing the FSS tower. 2) He thinks there is a better chance of launching under FAA regulation rather than the hide-bound DOD if he is on KSC rather than CCAFS. 3) There is some slight possibility that he will someday build a _really_ big rocket that could actually need the VAB and vertical integration, and this will give him the facilities just in case. 4) He expects NASA to pony up some subsidies for maintaining the pad, 5) It will slow down some potential rivals, and 6) bragging rights. That said, I have no idea how he will actually move the Falcon to the pad and erect it there. He might put in rail tracks over the flame trench.
Tinker,
Fair enough, but I think that’s a big “if” and I don’t see it happening any time soon. Steve Pemberton sums up my view of things well in his response.
Also, while I will always scream and cry for standardization and modularity on a lot of things, I don’t want to see those decisions made on key elements until the individual manufacturers and vendors have given their individual component and process designs sufficient real world trials. That’s how we collectively find out the best ways to do things and what the flaws and dangers are in the less-than-best ways.
For the time being, I would think that the differences in integration and test methods, and in transport from the integration location to the pad, alone will be sufficient to make multi-user impractical. I would suspect that only BFRs are candidates for the VAB and/or the NASA crawler, and even then all of the supports, hold-downs, umbilicals, blast deflector hardware, etc. are going to be different for everybody’s designs. You’d also have to be able to swap out the existing gantry and somehow insert your own for every design (design, not vender), because redesigning your LV to “fit” the existing gantry is not viable, especially if your LV happens to be 10 meters shorter than the next guy.
Another thought is that, after every launch, certain elements of the pad and system have to be cleaned, checked, refurbished, repaired, etc. as necessary before the next user can begin. Logically, the responsibility and costs for this would fall on the user just finished (although a third party would probably be employed to do the work), but the next user would still have to recheck and verify everything. This has the potential to open up a whole rats’ nest of legal, “social,” and financial problems, and worst of all, day-for-day delays to everyone down-stream if problems or hold-ups occur (and it will probably put the legal and regulatory power-mongers in the driver’s seat). For instance, if a smaller company should have a failed launch, which depletes their working capital through penalties, and they can’t pay for the post-launch facilities work, what happens? Likely everything comes to a grinding halt until a court case settles things, or NASA/taxpayers end up paying the costs in order to keep things moving (and if this is allowed to happen even once, it will be seen as “a way out”). So then we’re looking at vendor audits before they can launch, and things just keep getting more convoluted, vulnerable and expensive until it all falls apart from overcomplexity. In the long run, Murphy almost always wins at some point.
Last point, if we accept that it will be a complex arrangement to implement a multi-user pad, then it will likely take months, maybe years, to set up, especially if Congress gets involved and the FAA try to claim total jurisdiction. I just can’t see if happening, as logical as it would seem from a first look. And don’t overlook bureaucracy’s talent for making everything more complicated than it needs to be.
Steve
I agree. It’s a good idea in the abstract, but less so in practice.
First, it would be hard to implement and maintain.
Second, it would restrict future designs in ways we can’t be sure are positive.
Third, the bureaucrats involved would have a terrific opportunity to screw things up.
Don’t forget the scism between vertical and horizontal integration. And the high maintenance cost of the FSS/RSS, VAB, crawlers, and MLPs.
Five year lease doesn’t sound very long, almost sounds like a hold it in case we need it type of arrangement. Which makes me wonder, will NASA require as part of any lease that they have to start using the pad by a certain deadline?
And will they renew the lease at the end of five years.
If you had rubber tired earth moving trucks with hydraulic strong backs couldn’t Spacex use the crawler tracks as a booster landing field????
It’s packed rock, right? Probably a bad idea.
I agree; the last thing you want is chunks of rock flying in all directions. I believe the grasshopper uses a high-temperature concrete pad similar to the concrete-like Marsite used in some of the CCAFS launch pads.
Without fuel the booster is relatively light and could be moved by existing KSC equpment like the rubber-tired shuttle orbiter transporter
http://www.youtube.com/watc…
or by the wheeled gantry crane used for moving the expended solid fuel boosters. However it is going to land vertically so some sort of crane will be needed to rotate it to horizontal position for integration. Eventually landing may be precise enough to land on a railed mobile platform.
Just like airplanes do! Oh, wait…
MEANWHILE, back at the rocket factory…
http://www.spacex.com/news/…