Stratolaunch: General Company and Development Updates and Discussions

[ChrisWilson68]

Congratulations to Floyd, I wish him success with this venture!

I very much look forward to learning which rocket configuration they choose to pair up with the carrier aircraft.  My hope is they select a hydrolox launch vehicle since the carrier aircraft is weight limited and so hydrolox would provide the biggest payload mass.  Pegasus used solids, but solids have the worst lv weight to performance ratio of all choices.

That's not necessarily true.  You have to consider both the propellant mass and the mass of whatever equipment on the aircraft supports it.  With hydrolox, you will have to have tanks, pumps, and plumbing on the aircraft to top off the rocket.  If your limit is the gross take-off weight of the aircraft, solids could conceivably give a higher payload mass.

[Star One]

A change around of staff between NG & Scaled no doubt related, as we've now seen, to NG's winning of the LRS-B contract.

Northrop Grumman has appointed Scaled Composites president Kevin Mickey as vice-president of advanced design within its advanced research, technology and design group while Scaled has a new president and chief technology officer.

Long-time Scaled vice-president of engineering, Ben Diachun, has been named to fill the vacancy of president effective 31 October, and Cory Bird has been appointed executive vice-president and chief technology officer.

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/scaled-president-appointed-vp-of-advanced-design-at-418118/

[Beittil]

Via Spacenews.coms newsletter comes this bit:

The future of Stratolaunch is unclear after the company has delayed decisions on rockets to use in that air-launch system. The president of Vulcan Aerospace said the project is being reassessed based on shifts in the market towards smaller satellites, which don't require a large rocket and large aircraft that the company is building in California. Vulcan closed out an earlier contract with Orbital ATK to develop the rocket, and this summer said it planned to make a decision on a new rocket, or rockets, this fall. [Wall Street Journal]

I wasn't aware yet that they terminated the Orbital contract, thats the 2nd partner now that bails in their project. SpaceX being the first when they saw no light in creating an air launched version of Falcon.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-co-founders-space-project-is-in-limbo-1447809375 (Paywalled)

[yg1968]

There was some news about Stratolaunch. Beames said at 1h08m that they have a LV for Stratolaunch and it will be announced in the fall.

http://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/space-wa2/

But now that human spaceflight plan is shelved, along with Orbital’s planned rocket.

[Vulcan Aerospace president Chuck Beames] said Orbital’s rocket “was not hitting the economic sweet spot to generate revenue,” so Vulcan has reopened the design plan and is “evaluating over 70 different launch vehicle variants.”

See the above posts. It's the other way around. Stratolaunch decided that Orbital would be too expensive.

[Comga]

It is not clear whether this bolsters or refutes the contention that Stratolaunch is a flying "Glomar Explorer".
They had a very clear goal with the Glomar Explorer and just built it.
There are a number of possibilities for a rocket powered, air launched vehicle.
It is harder to think of uses for an enormous aircraft with no known payload.  It can't swoop in just anywhere and pick up a gigantic payload.  It is probably limited to dropping something, perhaps from altitude, perhaps onto a tarmac.
Perhaps Stratolaunch is dismissing the rocket vendor as the cover story is no longer needed or affordable.
Or, as preferred by Ockham's razor, perhaps the whole thing was not well thought through.
I wonder if the carrier aircraft will ever fly.

[Kabloona]

I did suggest "Glomar Explorer" as a precedent.  However, I have no idea what the military would be after with Stratolaunch.  Of course we in the public had no idea that the Glomar Explorer was going after a Russian sub. 

Some posters have suggested that Paul Allen is a fool, which is both rude and absurd.  Guys like that don't get careless with money, although they can take big risks.  We can guess that either he had some reason to believe that it would work better than others believed, or that its application would tolerate that poorer performance. This could be an unannouced use for its secondary benefits, which include unmonitored launches, on-demand inclination and orbital phase matching, and possibly others.   

Considering that they've now burned through two rocket providers, doesn't that indicate that they clearly don't have some super secret justification for it? If it looks like a program wandering around in search of purpose, then maybe it is a program wandering around in search of a purpose.

And I don't think Paul Allen is a fool. I think he came up with a big idea without having good market research and engineering evaluation first.

And an important difference between Stratolaunch and Pegasus is that Orbital started with a launch vehicle for which there was a market, minimized their development costs, and used relatively inexpensive carrier aircraft (first borrowed the NASA B-52, then modified a used L-1011).

Seems like Stratolaunch did the opposite and started with a massively expensive carrier aircraft for which the LV and the market for it appear to be almost afterthoughts, at least from the outside.

[yg1968]

Via Spacenews.coms newsletter comes this bit:

The future of Stratolaunch is unclear after the company has delayed decisions on rockets to use in that air-launch system. The president of Vulcan Aerospace said the project is being reassessed based on shifts in the market towards smaller satellites, which don't require a large rocket and large aircraft that the company is building in California. Vulcan closed out an earlier contract with Orbital ATK to develop the rocket, and this summer said it planned to make a decision on a new rocket, or rockets, this fall. [Wall Street Journal]

I wasn't aware yet that they terminated the Orbital contract, thats the 2nd partner now that bails in their project. SpaceX being the first when they saw no light in creating an air launched version of Falcon.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-co-founders-space-project-is-in-limbo-1447809375 (Paywalled)

Not terribly surprising but Stratolaunch disagrees with what Andy Pasztor's wrote in the WSJ:

http://spacenews.com/stratolaunch-backer-says-it-remains-committed-to-transforming-space-launch/

[Kabloona]

Until Vulcan can demonstrate that Stratolaunch is "needed" by coming up with (1) a cost-effective launch vehicle concept and (2) a target market segment with enough demand to make Stratolaunch financially viable, it's hard to argue with Paztor's statement that Stratolaunch "may no longer be needed." And if they can't make the concept work with an Orbital launch vehicle, that's a big red flag.

So their rebuttal sounds pretty weak. They're looking for a way to be "needed" and confident they'll find one by the end of the decade. Meanwhile the search goes on...

[Stan-1967]

It is not clear whether this bolsters or refutes the contention that Stratolaunch is a flying "Glomar Explorer".
They had a very clear goal with the Glomar Explorer and just built it.
There are a number of possibilities for a rocket powered, air launched vehicle.
It is harder to think of uses for an enormous aircraft with no known payload.  It can't swoop in just anywhere and pick up a gigantic payload.  It is probably limited to dropping something, perhaps from altitude, perhaps onto a tarmac.
Perhaps Stratolaunch is dismissing the rocket vendor as the cover story is no longer needed or affordable.
Or, as preferred by Ockham's razor, perhaps the whole thing was not well thought through.
I wonder if the carrier aircraft will ever fly.

I love the idea of an enormous airplane launching an enormous rocket, but Stratolaunch has just failed to produce a plan that makes any sense.    Glomar Explorer comparisons, while fun to spin in one's mind, weighed favorably against any commercial application.  Only occam's razor tipped the scales back to the probability that Paul Allen just took a page from Mr. Branson. ( which was only maybe 75% apparent at the time ).

Furthermore, now that Iran has a nice treaty with the USA and is out of the international doghouse, my minds feverswamp of military uses for this aircraft are completely nil.   Therefore winding down the program and putting the carrier aircraft into storage make the most sense.

[yg1968]

Until Vulcan can demonstrate that Stratolaunch is "needed" by coming up with (1) a cost-effective launch vehicle concept and (2) a target market segment with enough demand to make Stratolaunch financially viable, it's hard to argue with Paztor's statement that Stratolaunch "may no longer be needed." And if they can't make the concept work with an Orbital launch vehicle, that's a big red flag.

So their rebuttal sounds pretty weak. They're looking for a way to be "needed" and confident they'll find one by the end of the decade. Meanwhile the search goes on...

I think that they objected to his reporting that the project was on-hold.

[yg1968]

Incidentally, the most important part of Stratolaunch's statement is this one:

To best serve the variety of space operators with more convenient and less expensive options, we envision affording the satellite operator multiple launch vehicle options with varying payload capabilities.

http://spacenews.com/stratolaunch-backer-says-it-remains-committed-to-transforming-space-launch/

[Todd Martin]

Bringing a new launch vehicle to market takes time.  SpaceX wasn't born in a day either.  I think too many people get hung up on Strato-launch being so different because it has an aircraft component.  This is not Spruce Goose or Glomar Express.  Howard Hughes is not the project manager.  In the end it will be just another LV choice in the Worldwide market for launch vehicle access to orbit.  There is established demand for LV access to orbit.

Some may argue the approach Strato-launch will have higher costs than existing providers.  We don't know enough details to be definitive, but we do know that the aircraft won't be thrown away after each flight.  Reusability will be helpful. 

[Jim]

Bringing a new launch vehicle to market takes time.

Not a valid reason. There has been plenty of time to define the launch vehicle.  Right now, it is plane without mission.

[starchasercowboy]

You would be supprised on how many projects, every year, that Stargazer has uses for.  Hourly flight and ground time, FAA STC changes, engineering, administration costs usually kill all these projects.  Stargazer L1011 can carry more than the 52K lb Pegasus under her belly, but sometimes other things like ground clearance, nose gear tire FOD, MLG doors, interior, exterior mods deter the her use on some of these projects.  The ROC will find something to get it started, after it fly's. I don't think Paul Allen will give up very easily.  Very few FAA civilian operated aircraft have release systems capable of releasing this kind of weight at 40,000'.

[RonM]

Bringing a new launch vehicle to market takes time.

Not a valid reason. There has been plenty of time to define the launch vehicle.  Right now, it is plane without mission.

Yes, there's been plenty of time. Stratolaunch was announced four years ago.

Their website seems to be MIA. The main page is a picture of Roc from earlier this year and the message "Under Construction The Stratolaunch website is under construction." That's not a good sign.

http://www.stratolaunch.com/

[Kabloona]

Bringing a new launch vehicle to market takes time.

Not a valid reason. There has been plenty of time to define the launch vehicle.  Right now, it is plane without mission.

Exactly. The time is not because of normal development schedule, it's because they can't find a cost-effective business model. They gave up on Orbital's LV because they couldn't make the numbers work.

Paul Allen is wealthy but he can't lose money forever.

[Prober]

It is not clear whether this bolsters or refutes the contention that Stratolaunch is a flying "Glomar Explorer".
They had a very clear goal with the Glomar Explorer and just built it.
There are a number of possibilities for a rocket powered, air launched vehicle.
It is harder to think of uses for an enormous aircraft with no known payload.  It can't swoop in just anywhere and pick up a gigantic payload.  It is probably limited to dropping something, perhaps from altitude, perhaps onto a tarmac.
Perhaps Stratolaunch is dismissing the rocket vendor as the cover story is no longer needed or affordable.
Or, as preferred by Ockham's razor, perhaps the whole thing was not well thought through.
I wonder if the carrier aircraft will ever fly.

small side point (off topic sorry)
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=30260.msg1441518#msg1441518

"Glomar Explorer" the Hughes people were talking about their disappointment this ship didn't work out, and was too expensive to continue to operate. Scrap

[Archibald]

Even without a rocket clung below it, Roc can kick An-225 pants for oversized cargo transportation. It is just a matter of finding payloads - locomotives ? huge excavators ?

Will Roc become aircrafts own SLS ? :p

[Coastal Ron]

Bringing a new launch vehicle to market takes time.  SpaceX wasn't born in a day either.

It's interesting to compare Stratolaunch and SpaceX.

Paul Allen has plenty of money to build out what he wants to build out, but the market he is entering is non-obvious.  Who are the customers, and how much business is there?

SpaceX didn't have plenty of money, but they were entering a very large and mature market, and would be offering a price point that would make them very attractive to customers.

Personally I think it's great that Paul Allen is risking his money to see if he can find a business model that works.  And I hope he does succeed, since that should result in overall increased activity in space which should benefit everyone in space related industries.

But I know for me I can't get excited yet because I don't understand the market Stratolaunch is going into.  With SpaceX it was clear.  So maybe I'm hesitating in being emotionally invested because I'm not sure whether it will pay off?  And defending something that is exciting, but has no known business case, is not what I normally do?

#conflictingemotions

[yg1968]

They believe that there is a market for rapid access to space. Nobody has acheived rapid access to space. So they are competing against every one else that has yet to acheive that (including SpaceX).