Conventional wisdom as to why industry and government choose not to invest in this or that promising launch technology is that there aren't enough payloads to generate the volume to recoup the development cost and, in all likelihood, there never will be.
How much would it cost to find out if this is true?
Vehicle Mission cost, US$ millions
------- --------------------------
Scout G1 12
Pegasus 13.5
Soyuz 15
Long March 3 33
Titan II 43
Delta 45 - 50
Proton 35 - 70
Zenit 65
Atlas 45 - 85
Ariane 4 65 - 115
Energia 110
H-2 110
Titan III 158
Titan IV 315 - 360
I've deliberately not included data on performance, reliability, or
anything else because that would distract us from the most striking
observation about these vehicles; each and every one of them, whatever
the technology, country of origin, original design intent, launch
history, fuel and oxidiser, success or failure in the commercial
launch market, have mission costs in ranging from tens to hundreds of
millions of US$.
Why is this? Why do rockets cost so much?
Well, it consists of a collection, often vertically stacked, of:
Cylindrical fuel and oxidiser tanksplus other ancillary details like range safety receivers and telemetry sensors and transmitters and the like, and that's about it, isn't it?
Rocket engines (including turbopumps, gas generators, etc.)
Guidance mechanisms (gimbal joints, hydraulic actuators, APUs)
Guidance and navigation system (IMU, GPS, radio command receiver)
Now the question that comes to mind is this: why should something like that cost tens to hundreds of millions of US$?
Cylindrical fuel tanks aren't that expensive, and they make up most of the rocket. (Sure, if you're striving for every last gram of throw-weight in an ICBM, you can push the tankage cost as high as you like, but in a commercial launcher?) And rocket engines are finicky, complicated, and intolerant of defects. Well, yes...but so is a DOHC 4 valve per cylinder turbocharged, intercooled V-8 internal combustion engine, and nonetheless one can purchase such an engine, integrated into a ground transportation vehicle, from a number of manufacturers at a cost three orders of magnitude less than that charged for the rocket, and expect it to function without catastrophic failures or extensive maintenance, for five years, tens of thousands of kilometers, and thousands of mission cycles. Guidance? Again, as long as we aren't gram-shaving, this is pretty mundane stuff--the hydraulics can mostly be adapted from airliners, and the electronics from a PC--"mem'ry for nothin', chips for free". (For an LEO launcher we don't need radiation-hardened electronics.)
Number manufactured: 6,240
Number launched: 3,590
Successes: 2,890 (81%)
Failures: 700 (19%)
In inventory: 2,100
Work in progress: 250
Expended in development: 300
Development program cost: US$ 2 billion
Development cost per launcher: US$ 350,512
Total manufacturing cost per launcher: US$ 43,750
Marginal cost, launchers 5000+: US$ 13,000 (Yes, 13K!)
These are actual figures for the first mass-produced rocket vehicle,
the V2 (A4)--fifty years ago. Prices are in US wartime dollars.
Stating the obvious.... The V2 was a suborbital vehicle, intended to lob high explosive over relatively short distances. Quantity production of the V2 at Mittelwerk was accomplished with unpaid slave labour under the brutal rule of the SS. And the failure rate was unacceptable by current standards.
And yet...consider that this was the very first space-capable rocket ever built. That it was manufactured under the constraints of a war that Germany was losing, subject to aerial bombardment by night and by day, with continual supply shortages. That, as a consequence of Nazi slave-labour, the desperate war situation, and the state of current technology, no significant automation was applied to its manufacture. In February 1945 the underground Mittelwerk V2 factory delivered 800 ready-to-launch V2s; after the war U.S. intelligence expert T. P. Wright estimated that at full production, unconstrained by wartime shortages, the Mittelwerk plant could have produced 900 to 1000 V2s per month.
One thousand rockets per month...fifty years ago. Think about that.
Sounds a lot like NLS/SpaceLifter, doesn't it? STMEs may have marginal advantages over sea-level-optimised derivatives of RL10 or J2, but otherwise what's the difference?
What if we launch one every day?
Three hundred and sixty-five a year.
That would be less than one twenty-fifth the production rate of the V2 under concentrated Allied bombardment in 1945.
How much would each one cost?
Assume we expense the development cost or amortise it over a sufficiently large number of vehicles that it can be ignored. Further, assume that our bigger, more complicated (two-stage), and higher tech (LH2/LOX instead of Ethanol/LOX), launcher costs ten times as much as the V2, and that 1945 wartime dollars convert into current dollars at 10 to 1. Then, starting with the US$13,000 marginal cost of a V2, we arrive at a cost of US$1.3 million per launch vehicle. If we launch one a day our total vehicle budget will be US$475 million per year--comparable to a single shuttle flight (no, I don't want to re-open that debate again; let's just say it's the same order of magnitude, OK?). If our mass produced LH2/LOX launcher equals the performance of the Delta 6925 by placing 3900 kg in LEO, the cost to LEO is US$333/kg; if we achieve better throw-weight, this figure goes down accordingly. If we build the thing so cheap, dumb, and heavy that its payload is only 1000 kg--one metric ton--the cost rises to US$1300/kg, which is still a factor of ten lower than the comparable cost to LEO for Ariane, Atlas, Delta, and Titan.
Well, why should it? Again consider the V2. In the two weeks from September 18-30 1944, a total of 127 V2s were launched from five different launch sites. That's an average of almost ten a day. This was accomplished by two mobile groups totaling about 6,300 men and 1600 vehicles, forced to relocate frequently due to the Allied advance, and subjected to frequent aerial bombardment. It was estimated that, given adequate supply, one hundred V2s could be launched per day in a "maximum effort" by the mobile units, and that a rate of half that, 350 per week, was sustainable.
Parkinson's law notwithstanding, why, after fifty years of technological progress and experience in launch operations, should it take tens of thousands of people and hundreds of millions of dollars to achieve a launch rate one fiftieth that of a V2 group launching the very first operational ballistic missile from a launch site with tanks and infantry advancing toward it and airplanes flying over dropping bombs on them?
Yes, LH2 is trickier to handle; a multistage rocket requires a more complicated launch and service facility, and so on. But if we design up-front for a sustained launch rate of one per day, can we not find ways around these problems? Perhaps a mobile transporter / erector / launcher like SS24 or Pershing II, with fuel and oxidiser delivered by underground pipes that attach to the launch truck. Or something.... Let's tell the engineers to go figure it out and see if they come up with something that works.
It can't be impossible; the Soviet R-7 series launchers (Vostok / Voskhod / Soyuz) almost furnish an existence proof. These launchers, despite their mechanical complexity (4 liquid boosters and 20 first stage engines), are typically launched one to two days after horizontal delivery to the pad. On several occasions beginning in 1962, two manned launches were made from the same pad less than 24 hours apart. On October 11-13 1969, three manned missions (Soyuz 6, 7, and 8) were launched from the same pad within 48 hours.
If we use contemporary sensors and computers to automate the fueling and checkout, why does the "launch team" need to be huge? Bob drives the launcher out to the middle of the circle of concrete, hooks up the hoses, then goes back to the blockhouse and presses the green "Start" button. An hour later, or so, the "Ready" light comes on, and at High Noon he pushes the red "Go" button. Sitting immediately to his right Fred, in the blue suit, follows the proceedings on a laptop computer with his index finger on the orange "Oops" button.
Assuming things go OK, ten minutes after the ship lifts, Bob goes out and drives the launch truck back to the garage where it's reloaded with the next rocket (assume we have ten trucks, or so, to pipeline the setup process and account for attrition). Then it's off the cafeteria for lunch.
This is the heart of the chicken-and-egg problem that is blocking the development and exploration of space.
As long as launches cost tens or hundreds of millions of US$ each, only governments and the very largest corporations will be able to afford them, and only for the most obvious and essential purposes, such as communication, earth resource, navigation, and reconnaissance satellites. And as long as the number of such payloads is less than a hundred per year, who is realistically going to pay to develop a launcher capable of sustained rates many times as great, however cheap it ends up being? You'd just end up with a huge pile of rockets gathering dust waiting for payloads, wouldn't you?
Would you?
Consider the following scenario. The Agency announces a procurement in which bidders are invited to provide launches, one per day, of 2000 kg or more to a standard Low Earth Orbit, mating with a specified payload and shroud interface and to a prescribed set of services on a flat concrete pad. A suitably derated payload is specified for polar orbit. Bids of more than US$1.25 million per successful launch will be returned unread. The winner of the bid will be awarded a fixed-price contract for 1000 launches at the agreed price. The first 100 launches will be considered development flights and will be purchased at the bid price regardless of success or failure; afterward only successful launches will be purchased. The procurement will be re-competed every 1000 launches; if a new vendor wins with a substantially lower cost per launch, they will be granted the same development period for the first 100 flights. The vendor retains all rights to the launcher design and is free to offer it on the open market independent of the Agency.
Immediately the launch contract awarded, the Agency announces the availability of daily flights of 2000 kg to LEO or 1500 kg to polar orbit. Commercial enterprises may purchase launches for whatever purpose they wish at a price equal to the Agency's cost per launch plus 25%. Unsold flights are offered on a first-come, first-served basis to researchers, government agencies, and individuals. In the event of excess demand, non-commercial proposals will be selected by a peer review process similar to that used to allocate telescope time at astronomical observatories. All risks of launch failure are borne by the provider of the payload; clients should note historical failure rates and build appropriate spares. Provider of the payload assumes all liability for it once it separates from Agency's rocket. Payloads shall be delivered by truck to the loading dock of the Agency's Rocket Garage. All payloads must be supplied with adequate documentation to verify their content and safety. The payload interface specification handbook is available for US$5 from the Agency's toll-free order line; payload test and integration jigs are available in the Agency's regional centres and many major universities around the world. Plans for building your own are available for US$5.
Payloads delivered to the Rocket Garage are inspected to ensure they are not nuclear bombs, sacks of gravel, or otherwise unacceptable. Payloads containing propulsion hardware are reviewed especially closely. Assuming no big no-nos, the payload is bolted to the top of the next free rocket, the requested orbit inclination is dialed into the rocket's guidance system, and it moves down the queue toward the pad.
The adventurous will recall that the Project Mercury capsule had a launch weight of 1935 kg.
If fewer than one payload a day arrives at the Rocket Garage (as is certain at the outset), the Agency will store the excess rockets in the Rocket Warehouse out back, while continuing to launch at least one per week with an inert concrete payload (in a rapidly decaying orbit) to maintain launch team proficiency and verify the continuing quality of rockets supplied by the vendor.
This procurement and offering of launch services is explicitly intended to punch through the chicken-and-egg problem. In essence, the Agency would be spending US$475 million a year on a flock of 365 hens, then waiting to see if eggs started to show up. This runs the risk, of course, of ending up with egg all over one's face.
Suppose it isn't possible to build a rocket that will orbit half the payload of a Delta, launched 50 times less frequently than the V2, at a cost ten times greater than that primitive fifty year old missile. In that case nobody responds seriously to the Agency's bid, and the Agency goes and blows the money on something else, vowing to try again in ten years.
Now suppose the rockets do start showing up one a day, and departing on schedule with a success rate that makes the supplier's profit margin juicy enough to fund further R&D, but the payloads don't appear. The Agency rapidly becomes the butt of every stand-up comic and a motion is introduced in the Legislature to re-name it the "Orbital Ready-Mix Delivery Agency". Well, if that's how it plays out, I guess we all ought to pack up and go home then, shouldn't we? Because that would demonstrate, in a real-world test, than there really aren't very many useful things to do in space, after all. That even if we push the marginal cost of launches down to zero, nobody will be able to think of anything to use them for, not for Venus probe science fair projects, personal spysats, hypersonic surfing demonstration/validation flights, nor microgravity research, material processing, life sciences, remote sensing, VLBI radio astronomy, optical astronomy, or anything else. That other than the existing big-market space applications, there's no earthly reason to leave the Earth, that much of the "space age" was based on faulty premises, that the "final frontier" isn't worth exploring.
Is this likely to be the case?
Country % Defence Budget
--------- ----------------
South Africa 13.6%
Switzerland 10.3%
Sweden 7.7%
Australia 6.3%
Israel 6.3%
Spain 5.5%
China 4.0% (approx)
Italy 2.1%
France 1.4%
Japan 1.3%
Germany 1.2%
United Kingdom 1.1%
United States 0.15%
Any country whose government became convinced that a scheme like this
might give it a long-term (literal) leg up in the world and beyond,
eventually, could implement it by reprogramming a small percentage of
its existing military spending, much of which would flow right back
into its own industries and economy and might be seen to have military
value it its own right. For that matter, US$475 million is just about
what Microsoft will spend on R&D in fiscal year 1993 and a third of
their pre-tax profit, and it's less than 3% of Motorola's sales for
the same year, so well-heeled and forward-looking companies (or
consortium of such) could play as well.
Rocketry was originally developed as a branch of artillery. Proponents of various reusable launch technologies argue that as long as an artillery-like model is maintained, affordable launches will never be possible. But to be effective, artillery must not only have adequate throw-weight, it must also provide a rapid rate of fire while minimising the cost of expended rounds. Today's space launch "artillery" costs tens to hundreds of millions of US$ per shot and fires at intervals measured in weeks or months. Yes, expendable launchers are artillery, and the ones we have today are, as artillery pieces, extremely overpriced and under-performing.
The last time liquid rockets were truly treated as artillery was the very first time they were used in war, the A4/V2, fifty years ago. Despite an increasingly desperate war situation, constant supply problems, and aerial bombardment, V2s were manufactured at rates of up to 800 per month, launched at a comparable pace, and produced at a marginal cost of US$13,000 (1945 dollars) for each additional rocket after the first 5000.
Making allowances for all the differences between Nazi Germany and the modern world, between a not very militarily useful nor reliable weapon and a viable space launcher, between a one-stage Ethanol/LOX missile and a multistage LH2/LOX launcher, between 1945 wartime dollars and current currency, still one must ask why, after 50 years of technological progress and rocket experience, our current rockets cost not five, not ten, not twenty times as much as a V2, but between one hundred (Pegasus) and two thousand four hundred (Titan III/SRM) times as much. Is what a Delta 6925 does, lobbing 3900 kg into LEO, fundamentally three hundred times more expensive than what a V2 did fifty years ago?
It is interesting to observe that current launchers are bought and launched in quantities about a thousand times less than those of the V2 at peak production. In no sense are they mass-produced, and therefore they do not benefit from either the means of mass production (investment in highly-automated manufacturing), nor from the learning curve that results when one builds hundreds and thousands of an identical product. Could it be that a large component of the present unacceptably high launch cost is both cause and effect of the present low rate of launches? That, if we thought the problem through carefully and aimed for a very high launch rate by present standards, we could sustain such a rate with a "standing army" of the present size or smaller, and by spreading that cost over a much larger number of payloads, drastically reduce its impact upon the launch customer.
One sure way to determine whether such a launcher could be developed and operated would be to go the market and attempt to purchase it; if a vendor, presented with a large initial guaranteed order and the expectation of follow-on business and perhaps an expanding market thereafter, developed and supplied a suitable launcher, then launch services could be provided to space scientists and engineers in a quantity and with a frequency few imagine possible today. Commercial launch services could be made available at perhaps a tenth the current cost, putting to the test the proposition that new profitable space applications await only a reduction in launch costs.
Some may fear that success of such a program would merely reinforce the "artillery mentality" of current space launch operations and thereby further defer its evolution into an airline-style transportation system. But, even though I've discussed conventional V2-descendant expendable rockets exclusively, nothing would prevent a vendor from bidding the launch-a-day contract with an innovative launch technology, so long as it met the payload, cost, launch frequency, environmental, and safety constraints specified in the procurement. Even if a brute-force approach did initially prevail and sparked the emergence of a burgeoning market for launch services, the existence of such a market, previously thought not to exist, could spur the decision to invest in new launch technologies to further reduce cost and expand the market.
Others will argue that there is simply no way an expendable rocket can deliver daily launches at the price suggested herein. But before we spend billions developing technologies which, if they work, might be better but which involve great uncertainties, shouldn't we make sure expendables can't do it? What better way to find out than going out and offering to buy them? If we can, we jumpstart the payload business and start building a market for the next generation of launchers to serve. If we can't, then we've proved that next generation launchers are required to truly open the frontier.
Clark, Phillip. The Soviet Manned Space Program. New York: Orion Books, 1988. ISBN 0-517-56954-X.
Internet Space FAQ 13/13: Orbital and Planetary Launch Services. Much of the information is this FAQ is derived from "International Reference Guide to Space Launch Systems" by Steven J. Isakowitz, 1991 edition.
Central Intelligence Agency. The World Factbook 1992. Project Gutenberg Etext edition.
Technology Research Report, Edition 6.9, August 12, 1993. Bear Stearns & Co. Inc., New York.