Lessons Learned: Rockets in the 1980s and 1990s and now

[Jim]

All solids got to success earlier, OSC Pegasus is almost too early to be concerned as "commercial".

Not , it isn't.  It was developed with only company funds.

[Kabloona]

All solids got to success earlier, OSC Pegasus is almost too early to be concerned as "commercial".

Not , it isn't.  It was developed with only company funds.

Whether you call Pegasus "commercial" or not isn't really relevant to this thread.

What is relevant is that Pegasus was able to be developed on a shoestring budget, which was made possible by the fact that the propulsion technology and tooling was basically "off the shelf" from Hercules based on their Small ICBM motors. That helped to minimize the development costs.

Point is, it's much cheaper and faster to get to first launch if you can use existing proven designs, tooling, etc instead of reinventing the wheel, especially in the area of propulsion systems. Pegasus was a good example of this.

Taurus was similar in building on Pegasus, losing the wing and adding the Peacekeeper-derived Castor 120.

[Jim]

All solids got to success earlier, OSC Pegasus is almost too early to be concerned as "commercial".

Not , it isn't.  It was developed with only company funds.

Whether you call Pegasus "commercial" or not isn't really relevant to this thread.

I was calling it commercial.  Just saying it wasn't too early

[edkyle99]

Pegasus is the "world’s first privately developed commercial rocket" according to Orbital ATK.  I can't think of another that was successfully developed earlier than Pegasus and went to orbit.
http://www.orbitalatk.com/news-room/PrinterFriendly.asp?prid=208

 - Ed Kyle

[Danderman]

Turbopumps are cheap in the sense that you can go out and buy them off the shelf?

[savuporo]

Turbopumps are cheap in the sense that you can go out and buy them off the shelf?

Given that you can buy engines 'off the shelf', that's a yes. Whether that's at an interesting price point or from a really awesome supplier is another matter.

[Kabloona]

Pegasus is the "world’s first privately developed commercial rocket" according to Orbital ATK.  I can't think of another that was successfully developed earlier than Pegasus and went to orbit.
http://www.orbitalatk.com/news-room/PrinterFriendly.asp?prid=208

 - Ed Kyle

The reality was a bit more nuanced than "privately developed" suggests. Orbital's budget for Pegasus development came from the profits they made on their Transfer Orbit Stage development contracts with NASA. And I would expect that Hercules' budget also came from their corporate profits on Gov't contracts. They also benefited from the technology developed on Gov't dollars from Small ICBM. And their first customer was DARPA. And they got a lot of support from NASA/Dryden with the B-52.

So without taking anything away from the Pegasus team's achievement, it's fair to observe that the US Gov't also played an indirect role in "funding" the project through other contracts. In that sense, Pegasus was a bonus result of other Gov't funded aerospace projects. Yes, privately developed, but in large part enabled by indirect public funding.

"Failure is an orphan, but success has many fathers."

[savuporo]

... And their first customer was DARPA.
... Privately developed, but in large part enabled by indirect public funding.

So many parallels with SpaceX over 15 years later.

[HMXHMX]

Turbopumps are cheap in the sense that you can go out and buy them off the shelf?

As close as anything gets to "off-the-shelf" in our business.  Well under $5M and less than 18 months for big TPAs.  Amazing!

[Kabloona]

... And their first customer was DARPA.
... Privately developed, but in large part enabled by indirect public funding.

So many parallels with SpaceX over 15 years later.

Yes. So it looks like Blue Origin might be the first to go orbital in a truly "privately funded" enterprise that didn't have some kind of Gov't funding source.

Not that we need be fixated on where the money comes from. But lesson #1 is surely that you can't get to orbit without a boatload of it. Some boatloads, like that of Pegasus, can be relatively small. Jeff Bezos' boat will have to be quite a bit bigger.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Obviously these didn't kill Orbital, but they did kill one of its vehicles, ie Taurus, and the "lessons learned" for other companies are (1) minimize the number of separation events, and (2) avoid use of separation systems that can't be fully tested before launch, ie pyros, wherever possible. Looks like SpaceX took those lessons to heart.

Yes Elon has talked about how at the beginning of SpaceX they looked at the history of past launch failures and separation event issues were right up there. I believe the attached Futron report, published in 2004, summarises the data SpaceX used.

[Kabloona]

Obviously these didn't kill Orbital, but they did kill one of its vehicles, ie Taurus, and the "lessons learned" for other companies are (1) minimize the number of separation events, and (2) avoid use of separation systems that can't be fully tested before launch, ie pyros, wherever possible. Looks like SpaceX took those lessons to heart.

Yes Elon has talked about how at the beginning of SpaceX they looked at the history of past launch failures and separation event issues were right up there. I believe the attached Futron report, published in 2004, summarises the data SpaceX used.

Thanks for that link. I vaguely recalled Elon mentioning that reliability study. So over the 20-year survey period, propulsion failures dominated at 52% of failures. Separation failures were the #2 cause at 28%.

[Lar]

... And their first customer was DARPA.
... Privately developed, but in large part enabled by indirect public funding.

So many parallels with SpaceX over 15 years later.

Yes. So it looks like Blue Origin might be the first to go orbital in a truly "privately funded" enterprise that didn't have some kind of Gov't funding source.

Not that we need be fixated on where the money comes from. But lesson #1 is surely that you can't get to orbit without a boatload of it. Some boatloads, like that of Pegasus, can be relatively small. Jeff Bezos' boat will have to be quite a bit bigger.

Some of you count money made on previous contracts or sales, which are not related to this project, as "government funding".[1]

I think a stronger argument can be made that any technical assistance is also government funding. Blue  has received zero dollar SAA based technical assistance.... and so no. I think we want to use a stricter standard. Was there direct government monetary assistance? Not use of facilities etc...

So I think I'd give OrbitalATK the nod on this one. Despite getting to use Balls 8 and the other help they got. And SpaceX is on the other side of the line for the F9 and Dragon, they got development money. Not a lot but some.

1 - I wouldn't count it. Because then we get to argue that Amazon has sold things to the government and made a profit and because Amazon is the source of Jeff's wealth, Blue is government funded that way. No.

[rpapo]

Because then we get to argue that Amazon has sold things to the government and made a profit and because Amazon is the source of Jeff's wealth, Blue is government funded that way. No.

Agreed.  Boeing has done many things on government contract.  Does that make the 777 a publicly subsidized project?  I don't think so.  The buyer agrees to pay a price.  What it costs the provider to deliver the product is (presumably) less.  What a company chooses to do with their profits from whatever source is their business.

[edkyle99]

Pegasus is the "world’s first privately developed commercial rocket" according to Orbital ATK.  I can't think of another that was successfully developed earlier than Pegasus and went to orbit.
http://www.orbitalatk.com/news-room/PrinterFriendly.asp?prid=208

 - Ed Kyle

The reality was a bit more nuanced than "privately developed" suggests. ...

Agreed, and as others have mentioned all "commercial" launch providers depend on government money to a significant extent, if not for launch vehicle development then certainly for launch contracts. 

The key point, in my mind, is that Orbital decided to spend its money - money the company earned no matter its source - to develop Pegasus.  It did not have to take that gamble.

 - Ed Kyle

[Danderman]

There is some question here about what is government funded or not.  What it comes down to is whether the product in question suffers a market risk; conversely, if the developer already has a government contract for some item that cocers its development cost, then there is no market risk.

So, in the case of Falcon, there were government contracts that covered some of its development costs, so it is clearly partially government funded.

the Lockheed C5 was government funded. The Boeing 747 was not. Boeing could have gone out of business if no one bought the 747.

[savuporo]

Does that make the 777 a publicly subsidized project?  I don't think so.

Uh, yes it does. Both Boeing and Airbus are heavily subsidized, being a de-facto duopoly. Ask WTO

[Kabloona]

The key point, in my mind, is that Orbital decided to spend its money - money the company earned no matter its source - to develop Pegasus.  It did not have to take that gamble.

 - Ed Kyle

Quite so, and Dave Thompson and his management team at Orbital,  and Hercules management, deserve credit for taking the risk. In fact, Dave Thompson's offhand remark to a WSJ reporter that he was having nightmares that the first Pegasus might blow up led to the infamous WSJ "space nuts" article about Orbital that hurt their public image made them delay their IPO. So they did pay an unexpected price for the decision, even though Pegasus was ultimately a success.

A Pegasus failure would not, in fact, have sunk the company, whose mainstay at the time was the $200M+ NASA/TOS contract, compared to which Pegasus was a drop in the bucket, but it wouldn't have helped. As it turned out, Thompson's careless remark to a reporter turned out to be more damaging to Orbital than any Pegasus failure.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1990/03/24/stock-sale-for-orbital-is-canceled/9705db49-9cab-48e9-8a99-4f881ad73117/?utm_term=.b3324c418cd4

So another lesson from the '90's: never admit to a reporter that you have bad dreams of your rocket blowing up. Especially if your IPO is tomorrow.

[ringsider]

Today, turbopumps are getting ridiculously cheap, so there is little reason to go pressure-fed.  If I was to embark upon another LV project, it'd be pump-fed.

Spacex spent at least $1m - probably significantly more - on their first Barber Nichols turbopump for Falcon 1.

I think that is quite cheap at that scale but what if you wanted to build a real turbopump for a 22kn engine like Rocket Lab but not electrical? What would you consider reasonable for that, and is there really anything off the shelf? It's still an r&d project with the usual fixed costs.

[john smith 19]

And yet the "Sea Dragon" concepts were all (AFAIK) pressure fed.

OTRAG was a victim of Russian disinformation.

I'm guessing Von Braun went with turbo pumps to side step issues with triggering combustion instability caused by (potential) pressure fluctuations of positive displacement pumps. Which John Whiteheads groups reckon are the best option up to about 5 Klbs. Today a turbine can be CNC machined in 19 hours, as is done for the turbochargers on Mack trucks.

AMROC died on the death of it's CEO basically. His advice on buying parts IE buy what's on the spec, don't insist on mods when buying from aerospace parts houses, is part of what drove SX into mfg in house.

Ablative cooling sounds like a good idea for a single use engine but IRL only solids are really fired once. All others are fired at least twice for testing and that makes ensuring the state of the ablative char inside the rocket after that firing critical. That is there's still enough left for the launch and that it does not go on cooking after the test fire.  I think this was the single worst idea Boeing had for the engine on the Delta IV.

For anyone worried about coking they should consider that LO2 cooling of a 40 000lb combustion chamber was done 25 years ago by NASA, including deliberate holes in the wall to make the LO2 leak into the chamber during firing. It did not sustain any further damage. It's time the fear of LO2 cooling was put to bed. Both HTP and NTO have been used as coolants on other rockets (IIRC because amines have a tendency to explode in cooling channels).