Burt Rutan "****ed off"

I believe what Burt Rutan was referring to was the stranglehold on
pirvate space projects. What ever hapened to the guy who was
scrounging old Atlas missile parts to make his own 100 kilo rocket? I
can just see the FAA inspectors quibbling him to death because nothing
had a yellow tag on it, or he couldn't prove provenance of a part.
As for NASA, what we are seeing is very typical of a mature
Bureaucracy where all the decision makers got where they are by never
taking a chance as far as they know and never making waves. 'Go along
to get along', etc. Not a leader in the bunch. Score points by making
the boss happy - always. Squelch the wave-makers. All decisions
approved by committee thus diluting the blame. A complete antithesis
of the old Skunk Works.
Walt BJ

(Xenia Dragon) wrote in message . com...
(Kevin Brooks) wrote in message . com...

Running a space program based upon GAO findings would be like asking
your local brain surgeon to remove a tumor using a procedure planned
by your auto mechanic. As to Rutan, you were closer to the mark with
your initial comments--he is apparently clueless is he really thinks
NASA or the US government has placed a "stranglehold" on space
operations (I have to wonder if the initial poster was not waaaay off
base with his recollection of Rutan's remarks, as I would have thought
he is a bit brighter than that...).

Brooks

I don't have a transcript at hand but Rutan was clearly
agitated during the segment while discussing NASA vs private
initiatives. He thinks NASA propagates a mythology about
space flight being best left to an elite corps of astronauts
arguing that much of the danger has been eliminated by automated
control systems, and that the first decades of space
exploration have been
so much safer for pilots than conventional air flight was.
He was scathing in his condemnation of NASA forcing Russia
to abandon selling seats on flights to the ISS, as it
had done with California businessman Dennis Tito.

Gee, since we footed the majority of Russia's original planned bill
for the ISS, is it any wonder that we would veto then turning it into
a glorified vacation destination?

With respect to Tito, how often have you heard him snidely
described as a "space tourist" ? Tito earned a B.S. in
astronautics and areonautics as well as an M.S. in
Engineering Science. He is also an ex-NASA employee.
If that is the calibre of "tourist" going up ... let me
carry his luggage to the pad.

Incidental qualifications. His sigle biggest qualification was that he
forked up the money for the trip. You do recall how close that singer
came to getting a similar shot?


I don't know that the GAO report on the Orbiter factors
in so tightly to what Rutan is saying.

I might share one more thought. My impression is that
most of the posters to this group are well educated males
between the ages of 40 - 60. If you take care of your
health you may all live to witness just ONE MORE generation of
spacecraft to replace the Shuttle orbiter, and ONE MORE
generation of "front line" combat aircraft in the US national
inventory. Burt Rutan is saying that the only guarantee
for spaceflight to become a commonplace for mankind
is simply to put more PEOPLE up, not just aged astronauts.
(Yes he did say the average age of a NASA pilot is 60 years.)
That fixation doesn't make him a crank, and it doesn't make
him un-American.

Nor does it make him right.

Brooks


Xenia

(Walt BJ) wrote in message . com...

(second attempt to reply due to a server failure (gotta love
Adelphia...)

I believe what Burt Rutan was referring to was the stranglehold on
pirvate space projects.

Where is the beef here? Did NASA shut down Orbital Sciences and
Pegasus? Has it not privatized a significant amount of launch-related
work over the past few decades?

What ever hapened to the guy who was
scrounging old Atlas missile parts to make his own 100 kilo rocket? I
can just see the FAA inspectors quibbling him to death because nothing
had a yellow tag on it, or he couldn't prove provenance of a part.

Hey, I used to play with stuff that went "boom" a bit, but that does
not mean I think that the US government should allow me to do so
whenever or wherever I so choose to. I kind of *like* the idea that we
may require Fred-the-auto-mechanic to meet some standards before we
allow him to place a bunch of us under his range fan for his first
orbital attempt.

As for NASA, what we are seeing is very typical of a mature
Bureaucracy where all the decision makers got where they are by never
taking a chance as far as they know and never making waves. 'Go along
to get along', etc. Not a leader in the bunch. Score points by making
the boss happy - always. Squelch the wave-makers. All decisions
approved by committee thus diluting the blame. A complete antithesis
of the old Skunk Works.

Gee, you seem to have a bird's eye view of NASA...IMO, your analysis
is a bit too "in depth". Sure it has its bureaucratic twits--as does
GM, Boeing, et al. "Not a leader in the bunch", huh? You know all of
them intimately perhaps?

The plain fact of the matter is that until it becomes truly profitable
to conduct private space development operations, companies are not
going to invest the massive capital that such an endeavor would
require. The Russians are trying to sop bucks up from anybody who can
pay for a trip (and thank goodness we scotched the idea of them doing
so in the case of the ISS, which we paid for the lion's share of; last
thing we need is a bunch of dot-com Yuppies sucking up valuable oxygen
in the ISS), and they are doing so only after having already invested
the massive required outlays to build an infrastructure to allow such
flights. Would *you* invest a big chunk of *your* 401K in a private
space travel venture capital fund?? If not, then one suspects it would
be for the same reason few others would--unlikely return of
investment.

Brooks

Walt BJ

"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message
om...
"Ed Majden" wrote in message
.ca...
"Tarver Engineering"
. I expect NASA to
pay attention to the GAO and the Columbia accident investigation
board,
while ignoring Rutan and BBC.

Indeed, the government should pay close attention to the
investigation
boards!

Running a space program based upon GAO findings would be like asking
your local brain surgeon to remove a tumor using a procedure planned
by your auto mechanic.

The GAO works for Congress, their findings are not just suggestions. If
NASA wants to stay funded, they will respond positively to the GAO
investigation.

I don't know why some of you are putting Rutan down. He has the right
to his own opinions. I also think he has contibuted to avaition by spending
his own money and not the tax payers.
Good luck to him!
Ed

"Guy Alcala" wrote in message
...
Paul Austin wrote:


Right now, the launcher business is almost impossible to make
money
in, because there's way too many launchers looking for customers.
The
US (four launcher companies), Europe, Russia (two launcher
companies),
China, Japan, India and soon, Brazil compete for the dozen or so
commercial launches each year.

The main obstacle to cheap space is the cost of access. A lot of
people keep hoping of a skyhook that will reduce the cost of a
pound
to orbit into the sub-hundred dollar range. For all Rutan (and
others)
complaining about restrictive bureaucracies, if a cheap launch was
technically possible,_someone_among all those subsidized launcher
companies would come up with it.

Rutan has of of course built (and has already done the first drop
flight)
of a sub-orbital combo mother ship/rocket with his own and other
people's
money, in an attempt to win the X-prize:

http://www.xprize.org/press/what.html


http://www.space.com/businesstechnol...ed_030809.html

AvLeak has also been covering this quite extensively.

That's true enough. The fact remains that what's needed is low cost to
orbit. Rutan is embroidering on the notion behind Pegasus, which I had
considerable hopes for, so much that I invested substantially in
Orbital. If you look at Pegasus' cost per pound in LEO, you'll see
that it doesn't compete well with even a Delta. I got a tour of the
Delta Clipper when I was visiting Huntington Beach years ago
and_that_concept had a lot of hopes riding on it. There have been a
lot of disappointments in the economical launcher "business"

NASA sponsored a study some years back to determine why ArianneSpace's
cost to launch is so much lower than the US launchers and the answer
was in the size of the launch crews. Because of the nature of Sea
Launch's operations and the fact that their launcher takes advantage
of superb Russian rocket engineering (and low costs), I have hopes
that SL will eventually shake down into a low cost launcher.

Until we get propulsion with high enough Isp that we don't have to
pare off every extraneous gram and which can be turned around and
reused on a weekly basis, getting_to_space is going to remain an
expensive business, so expensive that space operations will yield
marginal or negative returns. Once there, as long as we have to do
those gram by gram weight budgets, the satellites and spacecraft will
continue to make solid gold look like the low cost spread.

"Tarver Engineering" wrote

"Paul Austin" wrote

One of the reasons why US launches are so expensive (compared to
ArianneSpace) is that Cape Canaveral is so much nicer than Guyana.
If
there's a launch at the Cape, every contractor that_touches_the
bird
sends people (and their families) to help. Nobody in their right
mind goes to Devil's Island.

NASA delivers the pork and I don't forsee any of the regions they
deliver to
giving it up.

Yup. NASA's regional centers carry a lot more clout than does
Headquarters, precisely because of the pork involved. Headquarters
does manage overall tone and direction (remember how Better, Cheaper,
Faster permiated NASA during the Golden years?) but it doesn't have
the clout to make significant changes to the Centers.

Still, I think Rutan is off base. Even with a heavily subsidized
launcher business, the last five years has seen about 7 billion
dollars go to money heaven through space enterprises like Iridium
and
GlobalStar. In Iridium's case, Moto did everything it could to
build
the constellation on the cheap. They employed industrial processes
and
components instead of traditional space grade parts, built a
satellite
factory to punch out 77 identical satellites and bought the
cheapest
rides to orbit that they could find. The rest as they say is
history.

Moto sold something they could not build and as the say, "screwed
the
pooch". There were plenty of us well aware that Iridium was to be a
dud,
not long after the first phone call. In fact, one of Irridium's
biggest
users was al Qaeda and only because there was no other option.
Selling
Iridium to corporate aircraft showed the system had more
non-coverage than c
overage.

The Iridium business plan was a bust even before it became apparent
that the 'phones didn't work in anything but optimimum conditions. One
of our guys attended a presentation at the Space '99 conference, where
the Iridium suits explained that their natural business base was
cannonical Frenchman flying from CdG to JFK and demanding that the
same phone work in both places. Since Mr Hertz rented
phones-real-cheap, those free-spending Frenchmen seemed likely to be
few in numbers.

As an aside about Al Qaeda, I was manning our booth at the Space 2000
conference (December 1999) {with a dreadful cold as it happened} when
I was approached by a German guy who wanted to buy a COMSAT to beam
Koranic broadcasts to the faithful in Afghanistan. He claimed to be
Osama Ben Laden's personal representative and the WARC signator for
Afghanistan. Even then, I remembered OBL's name and with red flares
going off and flashing warning lights in my head, sent him down to
talk to the nice people at Lockheed's booth.

"Tarver Engineering" wrote in message ...
"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message
om...
"Ed Majden" wrote in message
.ca...
"Tarver Engineering"
. I expect NASA to
pay attention to the GAO and the Columbia accident investigation
board,
while ignoring Rutan and BBC.

Indeed, the government should pay close attention to the
investigation
boards!

Running a space program based upon GAO findings would be like asking
your local brain surgeon to remove a tumor using a procedure planned
by your auto mechanic.

The GAO works for Congress, their findings are not just suggestions.

Yes they are just suggestions, in reality. You think they run around
in black coats and pull out their GAO ID's and all other feds
immediately melt into oblivion and do their bidding? Coming from
"Splaps Boy", I guess this is to be expected...how are those "optical
nukes" of yours coming these days, Tarvernaut?

If
NASA wants to stay funded, they will respond positively to the GAO
investigation.

ROFLOL! Care to guess how many GAO findings have been laughed off (or
easily shrugged off) in the past by various federal organizations who
understand that the GAO is so politically motivated that their
objectivity has been completely compromised? Not to mention the fact
that the GAO is not an enforcement agency...

Brooks

"Paul Austin" wrote in message
...

"Tarver Engineering" wrote

"Paul Austin" wrote

One of the reasons why US launches are so expensive (compared to
ArianneSpace) is that Cape Canaveral is so much nicer than Guyana. If
there's a launch at the Cape, every contractor that_touches_the bird
sends people (and their families) to help. Nobody in their right
mind goes to Devil's Island.

NASA delivers the pork and I don't forsee any of the regions they
deliver to
giving it up.

Yup. NASA's regional centers carry a lot more clout than does
Headquarters, precisely because of the pork involved. Headquarters
does manage overall tone and direction (remember how Better, Cheaper,
Faster permiated NASA during the Golden years?) but it doesn't have
the clout to make significant changes to the Centers.

The Centers have an engineering deficit and FAA can deliver that pork in a
different useful form. I hope NASA will take the GOA advice to heart, but
conflict is the mother of creativity and that is a culture missing at NASA.
A power point expert does not an engineer make.

Still, I think Rutan is off base. Even with a heavily subsidized
launcher business, the last five years has seen about 7 billion
dollars go to money heaven through space enterprises like Iridium and
GlobalStar. In Iridium's case, Moto did everything it could to build
the constellation on the cheap. They employed industrial processes and
components instead of traditional space grade parts, built a satellite
factory to punch out 77 identical satellites and bought the cheapest
rides to orbit that they could find. The rest as they say is history.

Moto sold something they could not build and as the say, "screwed the
pooch". There were plenty of us well aware that Iridium was to be a
dud,
not long after the first phone call. In fact, one of Irridium's biggest
users was al Qaeda and only because there was no other option. Selling
Iridium to corporate aircraft showed the system had more non-coverage
than c
overage.

The Iridium business plan was a bust even before it became apparent
that the 'phones didn't work in anything but optimimum conditions. One
of our guys attended a presentation at the Space '99 conference, where
the Iridium suits explained that their natural business base was
cannonical Frenchman flying from CdG to JFK and demanding that the
same phone work in both places. Since Mr Hertz rented
phones-real-cheap, those free-spending Frenchmen seemed likely to be
few in numbers.

Charlatans.

As an aside about Al Qaeda, I was manning our booth at the Space 2000
conference (December 1999) {with a dreadful cold as it happened} when
I was approached by a German guy who wanted to buy a COMSAT to beam
Koranic broadcasts to the faithful in Afghanistan. He claimed to be
Osama Ben Laden's personal representative and the WARC signator for
Afghanistan. Even then, I remembered OBL's name and with red flares
going off and flashing warning lights in my head, sent him down to
talk to the nice people at Lockheed's booth.

We like to have the destination country on our export 8110-3s, for that
reason.

"Paul Austin" wrote
dollars go to money heaven through space enterprises like Iridium
and
GlobalStar. In Iridium's case, Moto did everything it could to build
the constellation on the cheap. They employed industrial processes
and
components instead of traditional space grade parts, built a
satellite
factory to punch out 77 identical satellites and bought the cheapest
rides to orbit that they could find. The rest as they say is
history.

Don't knock the Iridium satellites. We use the flares to calibrate the
all-sky cameras used by the Sandia Bolide Detection Network. They do cause
problems for astronomers however, if they flare up while your doing a long
exposure to capture a spectrum! Flare predictions for your location can be
obtained from the "Heavens Above" web site.
Ed