t/Space CCDEV2 Concept

[HMXHMX]

There's always the possibility of private investment. If your concept really is cheaper and better, it may be possible to partner with someone, especially if a market is demonstrated.

I've been trying to find commercial space funding for 43 years, now.  Absent NASA's endorsement of one's design, there is basically no chance that private investment will emerge.

[HMXHMX]

Your grouping is similar to the other capsules, namely an capsule with an integrated LAS, with a service module behind it. Where you propose a different solution, is in the layout of the pressure vessel (rather like a cylinder), the concept of a heat shield that can take multiple internal pressure vessels (if I'm not reading it wrong), and putting an integrated pusher liquid LAS on the tip. I'm assuming this is made so the system can be reused, and it simplifies the connection to the service module and is sort of autostabilizing.
On the other hand, if it was a true pusher system, it wouldn't have cosine losses and it could be optionally disposed if it was used as a booster stage.
BTW, on the fifth page ("Comparison to Other CCDEV Crewed Spacecraft") the passengers seem to be pointing downwards like in the escape capsule, but are only eight, like in the proposed transport.

There is only one pressure vessel in the XV itself, that which protects the crew.  (Unless your are referring to the propellant tanks?)  The patented integrated LAS/OMS/RCS system is not liquid, by the way, it is gas-gas.  The tractor arrangement of the LAS engines is designed to eliminate the need for abort steering control.  Once abort begins, power, computers, everything on the spacecraft can fail and the crew survives.  Even main parachutes are hand triggered by the crew (optionally).

Cosine losses don't matter in abort; the use (and disposal) of the OMS/RCS propellant does, and there is more than is needed for nominal aborts in all circumstances, so in fact, we purposely "waste propellant".

Seats rotate and can be arranged in many different layouts.  We used a number of layouts in the proposal to show flexibility.  In lifeboat mode, seats would be aft facing for ease of ingress from ISS.

[HMXHMX]

In slide 5, the XV is shown in comparison to other proposed CCDEV silhouettes. What is this slide trying to sell? The Cygnus and Dragon vehicles have the service modules. But the XV lacks its OV. Is the slide showing that the XV is generally more compact than the others, or just that it's in the same class? Sorry if I'm reading into this more than was intended.

It was just a comparison of the relative sizes, that accompanied a written discussion of empty mass. OM, by the way, not OV...but that is being pedantic. 

[Zed_Noir]

How long can the XV in the lifeboat/CRV role stay in LEO? Does the gas-gas propellants have a shelf life limit?

[HMXHMX]

How long can the XV in the lifeboat/CRV role stay in LEO? Does the gas-gas propellants have a shelf life limit?

I really don't know.  My hope would be to make the "shelf life" years, but the main limiting factors are not the XV spacecraft systems, but rather orbital debris.  If the lifeboat is protected with a cocoon of some sort, then years might be a reasonable goal.  Ultimately, parachutes will be the issue, usually having a five year storage limit.

Gas-gas systems should be able to be stored for years if properly sealed.  If the deorbit propellant tanks are segregated from the ascent and docking propellant, they could be sealed with welded burst discs, and that could provide storage life measured in decades.  Other factors will limit life before propulsion becomes a problem, unlike Soyuz, for example.

[sdsds]

I'm not sure I understand the access question, but there is a hatch at the rear of the XV crew module.

Sorry if the original question was confusing!  That concept of a hatch at the rear of the crew vehicle for access to an orbital module seems like it's a key element making this design more flexible than others.  The lurking fear is that it is somehow too good to be true; that others would have adopted this approach if it were practicable.

Isn't it a cylinder kind of "weak" structurally for reentry? I mean, with my absolute lack of aerodynamics.

pretty much any object can be made to re-enter safely.

This seems like another area where there could be "lurking fears" about the design.  Not looking at it technically, but only historically.  It seems like, both on the civilian space side and the military ICBM side, considerable effort was put into re-entry vehicle design.  At the time it was strongly implied if not explicitly stated that this was a difficult problem.

Is the confidence you feel now based on improvements in computational fluid dynamics?  You say safe re-entry is not dependent on any sort of active control?  (Tangentially, but as an example, do you feel SpaceX will by able to easily solve their first stage re-entry difficulties?)

[HMXHMX]

I'm not sure I understand the access question, but there is a hatch at the rear of the XV crew module.

Sorry if the original question was confusing!  That concept of a hatch at the rear of the crew vehicle for access to an orbital module seems like it's a key element making this design more flexible than others.  The lurking fear is that it is somehow too good to be true; that others would have adopted this approach if it were practicable.

Isn't it a cylinder kind of "weak" structurally for reentry? I mean, with my absolute lack of aerodynamics.

pretty much any object can be made to re-enter safely.

This seems like another area where there could be "lurking fears" about the design.  Not looking at it technically, but only historically.  It seems like, both on the civilian space side and the military ICBM side, considerable effort was put into re-entry vehicle design.  At the time it was strongly implied if not explicitly stated that this was a difficult problem.

Is the confidence you feel now based on improvements in computational fluid dynamics?  You say safe re-entry is not dependent on any sort of active control?  (Tangentially, but as an example, do you feel SpaceX will by able to easily solve their first stage re-entry difficulties?)

Ah, I understand your concern now.  That hatch is not in the heat shield, like the Gemini MOL, Merkur-Almaz, or other such proposals.  It's in the boat-tail, which in turn is in the flow wake.  Temperatures there would be comparable to or less than at the top of the Apollo CM, which also had a hatch.

XV is a bit like Soyuz.  If loaded and trimmed properly it should always enter with the proper AoA.  Absent roll control it may miss the landing point but the roll system is redundant.  The pickup helicopter can also compensate for slightly off-nominal CEP errors, of course.  But if for some reason it enters at a zero angle of attack condition (pure ballistic and similar to Soyuz's attitude control failure type entries) then the rotating seats will show their value.  A safe ballistic entry is assured, but you want crew on their backs.

In fact, my baseline was to conduct all entries with the seats rotated. Safer that way for a number of reasons.

(Finally, I'll avoid commenting on SpaceX's recovery issues.)

[RanulfC]

Can you hang it below a 747 with a tripple-barrel, 3STO pressure feed VPAC booster though? :::::grin:::::

Randy

[HMXHMX]

Can you hang it below a 747 with a tripple-barrel, 3STO pressure feed VPAC booster though? :::::grin:::::

Randy

I could try...

Seriously, a key element of the concept is so-called "launch vehicle agnosticism."  I wanted to keep the options open for the future.  Our early evaluations suggested the ability to fly on a number of vehicles, from Atlas 401, F9, T-II (enhanced version), Soyuz and even (with human-rating the LV plus variable length OM) Cyclone-4, Zenit 2 stage, or Angara.

[notherspacexfan]

I am curious how well the XV could scale up.

It seems like unpressurized Downmass is the biggest un-replaced capability of the shuttle. Could the XV be scaled to contain a cylinder the size of the shuttle PLB?

[HMXHMX]

I am curious how well the XV could scale up.

It seems like unpressurized Downmass is the biggest un-replaced capability of the shuttle. Could the XV be scaled to contain a cylinder the size of the shuttle PLB?

Anything is possible.  But the XV was sized to be the most efficient vehicle able carry the maximum number of souls on existing LVs with the OM attached.  If a much larger LV (both diameter and mass) was available, one might up-scale it, but I question if the market would justify the added cost.

[HIP2BSQRE]

in the evaluation T/Space was rated Red/Red-business and techicnical.  How do you overcome that?  In space you have to get finance--how do you get money without being a billionaire and starting up your own business?  I think alot of people were suprised what T/Space did with $6 million, if NASA had been given an additional $50 million do you think that they should have given you a chance with maybe $10 million or do you think it would have been better spent on the 4 winners plus maybe 1 additional company?

[HIP2BSQRE]

Have you tried talking with Spacex about co-developing?

[HIP2BSQRE]

If you had to select the companies that got the money ie you are NASA what changes would you have made???

[HMXHMX]

in the evaluation T/Space was rated Red/Red-business and techicnical.  How do you overcome that?  In space you have to get finance--how do you get money without being a billionaire and starting up your own business?  I think alot of people were suprised what T/Space did with $6 million, if NASA had been given an additional $50 million do you think that they should have given you a chance with maybe $10 million or do you think it would have been better spent on the 4 winners plus maybe 1 additional company?

Well, you might say I disagree with the assessment.



I wonder if they read the same proposal we wrote, frankly.  For example, they speak about lack of off-nominal landing calculations and other FAA license related analyses.  Our proposal explained very clearly that we targeted open ocean off the California coast to reduce FAA license risks.  Our off-nominal strategy is a "normal" water landing, or a hard land landing (both similar to Apollo), with the former case requiring refurbishment and the latter necessitating scraping the vehicle but with crew survival due to our unique fabric seats.

In another place they say we have unrestrained crew during entry and landing.  WTF?  The crew would be fully restrained.  Then they complain that we provided insufficient detail to evaluate launch vehicle integration.  Eh?  We explained carefully that there was only a bolted joint between LV and spacecraft, no other interface (fluid, electrical, etc.). 

They state that we failed to provide sufficient detail on the technical risks of launch-escape-integral-abort recovery system.  Pardon moi?  Our partner HMX holds the patent.  Their previous CCDEV1 proposal was highly detailed, and was referenced. 

I have argued the issue of skin in the game in other forums here, and won't repeat myself, except to note that our reading of the RFP (and responses to questions from contractors answered by NASA) was that skin was not required if the amount requested for CCDEV2 was low enough, though they didn't give a figure of what was "low."  We asked for thirty million dollars to perform more work that any of the of the contractors who won space Act agreements will do with both NASA and their own funds.  Our past performance on CE&R shows we could have met our milestones...which were mostly hardware based, and not design reviews as other contractors proposed.

[HMXHMX]

Have you tried talking with Spacex about co-developing?

No offense, but are you serious? 

[HMXHMX]

If you had to select the companies that got the money ie you are NASA what changes would you have made???

I would have picked five or six firms and given them each ~$30-40M, and funded another five or six tech firms (Orbital Outfitters, Andrews, etc.) at about $5-10M.  Companies like SNC, SpaceX and Boeing, not to mention Blue Origin, can spend nearly unlimited amounts on their systems.  NASA should be leveling the playing field and increasing competition, not picking winners and losers.

[MATTBLAK]

I've always liked T-Space's concepts, including the air-launched spacecraft to the ISS that I've seen an animation of somewhere.

[kkattula]

I can understand why Boeing & SpaceX got funded, they look to be the obvious, lower risk, higher cost, options. And DreamChaser is in a different solution space, with added sentimental value. (i.e. It's both cool and we all wish we'd finished just one of the earlier lifting-body spaceplanes)

But it seems odd to me that Blue Origin got $20m, yet t/Space couldn't get $30m. BO don't really seem to need the money, an unfunded or minimally funded SAA should have sufficed. Given what you achieved with $6m back when, I would have thought $30m now would have been seen as a huge opportunity.

I give t/Space, and Gary personally, a lot of the credit for the COTS / CCDEV model of funding, and the propensity of all the applicants to include a lot of prototype hardware in the first two rounds. So much better than just doing a lot paper studies.

It's just a crying shame t/Space missed out, again.

[Downix]

Pity t/Space isn't in the SLS development group of companies.  I'd be most curious what would come out of that.