Start Up Companies

Some of these companies are in business today while many have gone under, including companies that claimed to be designing to the minimum cost design criteria. It was regretful to see this latter group fail. As far as I was able to ascertain, no company in this group attempted to fully understand the MCD criteria and use the methods of design analysis contained in the report readily obtainable from Aerospace/Air Force. Instead they seemed to treat the criteria as a "philosophy" or a "concept," and to reduce it to a set of design guidelines; such as,

• make it simple,
• make it rugged,
• let it weigh more,
• use commonality,
• treat all stages equally in sophistication,
• use less than optimum hardware if it saves money, and,
• minimize nonrecurring (developmental, one-time) costs.

The additional complexity is incurred by the introduction of cost as an equal and the ultimate parameter. This means that the production cost of components and subsystems, including such items as the costs of acceptance testing and installation, must be estimated along with weight and reliability so that tradeoffs can be made to select the cost-optimum component or subsystem. Nonrecurring cost of each subsystem must also be estimated so that, ultimately, the total system configuration represents the minimum cradle-to-grave program costs.

Payload designers should be surveyed to determine the limits of acceptable payload environments, such as acceleration, vibration and noise, that may be imposed by the SLV. Trade-offs between the payload and SLV costs might be worthwhile since the MCD/SLV has the potential for providing a more benign environment at lower cost. The design and cost of launch facilities that provide one or more vehicle environments are determined from which the optimum is selected. Similar tradeoffs may be made between the vehicle and payload costs and the cost of the launch facilities.

The optimization procedures outlined are in sharp contrast with SLVs designed to the minimum weight/maximum performance criteria. The MCD/SLV is not treated as an inviolable entity isolated from the rest of the system. No longer are the interface systems designed to protect the fragile SLV, notably the launch facilities, including assembly and test of the SLV before launch. The costs incurred by launch delay and SLV failure are more easily negated as well as the costs due to launch delays due to winds aloft and inclement weather.

Hence, the MCD optimization procedure is similar to the more recent practice of airliner designers. No longer do they "throw the design drawings over a transom" to the production department and to designers of other elements of the system. Now the airliner engineering department interacts and conducts tradeoffs between the airliner design and other system elements, such as the airline operators. Tradeoffs are also conducted between recurring and nonrecurring costs to establish the number of vehicles at which profits absorb nonrecurring costs. 

This description of the MCD design procedure has touched on a few of the many engineering disciplines that are involved concurrently in designing an SLV. Many of the disciplines might reside in single individuals only found in vast engineering organizations. These are disciplines, such as, expertise in combustion instability, and knowledge for avoiding the propellant flow problem incurred by the dynamic reaction of the propellant feed structure under flight conditions. Moreover, an adequately functioning library with research capability is an indispensible part of an engineering organization.

Start up companies have circumvented many of these requirements using some of the following schemes:

• Selected developed propellants and propulsion systems, or those that have been partially developed and have never been exploited, compromising on suitability: efficiency, weight, cost, and reliability.
• Devised configurations which avoided many of the disciplines that would be involved in "a clean sheet of paper" design.
• Devised unique, far-out schemes of launching, refueling or recovery.
• Purchased the required engineering disciplines under subcontract.
• Assumed unreasonable risks.

Although I had a very small team of designers working with me in conducting the preliminary design and early development of the MCD/SLV, I did have the Aerospace engineering staff of more than 3000 engineers, scientists and technical specialists from which I drew specialized information. I also had available industry reports, some of which were proprietary. I further had the attention of industry that gladly answered or performed experiments to answer my questions. TRW and Boeing made significant contributions in propulsion and propellant tank fabrication that greatly furthered my work; see Columns dated May 1 and 15, 1997. Moreover, the major aerospace contractors checked and validated the MCD criteria and all of its claims.

For start up companies to obtain adequate financing has indeed been the critical problem. American venture capitalists are not tuned to investing relatively large sums of money in projects that will not show profitability in five or more years. Of course advancing technology for the benefit of an industry is not one of their goals. Understandably they choose not to become involved with the aerospace industry that is known to experience mishaps, large financial losses and overruns.

The characteristics of large space programs are generally government sponsored throughout the world. On face value it appears that our government has been sponsoring the design of new launch vehicles for the past thirty years that will reduce launch costs. In most programs, the objective has been a modest reduction of up to 50%; see Column dated January 26,1997. Until the White House and Congress recognize foreign competition and believe that it might be best for all concerned to appreciably reduce launch costs, I believe we will not have an MCD/SLV. Perhaps a positive attitude toward appreciably reducing costs must await effective campaign finance reform, and I do not see this happening soon.

Within the last several years I have appealed, without success, to the FAA, the White House and NASA to start an MCD/SLV program. I may, in a future Column, describe these efforts and the replies I received.

Today, the organizations with the most to gain from an MCD approach are those that are planning communication satellite networks, estimated to cost ten billion dollars or more. I invite Teledesic, Celestri and Globalstar to examine the history and potential of the MCD criteria. I know you are troubled with the current and future lack of launch services. Might not it be worth investigating whether you can save billions of dollars by designing the optimum size or sizes of MCD/SLVs and matching them with minimum cost payloads? Optimizing the launch vehicle and payload in combination should result in additional savings in time and money. In addition you would have greater control over launch vehicle cost and availability. Moreover these vehicles would be a highly salable product by themselves; as a commercial enterprise not seeking government funding, you would have fewer political constraints in selling launch services. Although you may feel, at this time, that the projected, large economic return of your communication network may make the investment cost of the system inconsequential, the large profits may not last if companies that follow effectively compete with much lower cost systems.
 
 

Is it possible for a start up company to produce an operational space launch vehicle? [clicking on the above opens link to discussions that followed the initial posting of this column]

Next Column: Will appear in September. Several columns will discuss my experiences with the Office of Technical Assessment, the technical arm of Congress.

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