- Eric Haynes

I just felt I had to add this.

1) Stop personal attacks.

2) Progress in space launch will come through slow evolution of existing commercial orbital launch markets. You probably can’t have much of an effect here.

3) Reality check and tone down unrealistic rhetoric.

4) Get away from “build it and they will come”. You should not attempt to address currently non-existant markets.

5) There are currently no viable new space business plans out there that can provide market competitive risk-adjusted return. Key players that are making progress are self-funded.

6) Suborbital tourism is a niche not on the primary path.

7) Cannot get to suborbital point to point as evolutionary successor to suborbital straight up and down.

Scorpius is a good example of how progress in space launch might be made, but its success is not assured.

9) Don’t work on space launch, work on supporting technologies.

Here’s my response.

#1

Completely agree.

#2

Yes, if we left it alone the current orbital launch market would probably eventually evolve into the high flight rate, low marginal cost, successful, boring industry that we all want, and this might take 50 or more years. The new space vision is that we can somehow catalyze a revolutionary change that will shorten this schedule.

The specific mechanisms of how the change can come about are high flight rate and new markets. It is possible to make a significant shift in the economics of spaceflight just by going to high flight rates without any change in technology. This requires demand at those flight rates. I’ll talk about new markets in section #4. There’s no guarantee that it will succeed, but I think it’s at least possible, and worth trying for.

#3

Yes, people should try to have realistic expectations. However, I think there is a little more nuance here. I think it was John Carmack who said, “Building rockets turned out to be harder than the new space people thought it was, but easier than the traditional aerospace people thought it was.” In trying to make a revolutionary change new space people started with the vision that it was possible to be much cheaper and started trying things.

It would have been better if they had taken the attitude that this is going to be a money-losing learning experience of indefinite duration rather than thinking it would be a money-losing phase of no more than two to three years before profits start flowing. But it seems like the space cynic view goes beyond, “go in with your eyes open”, to be more like, “they shouldn’t have even tried”.

When you know there are lots of unknown unknowns then I think it’s a valid strategy to dive in and try the naive thing expecting to fail and learn something. There are situations where that is the best way to learn.

Another problem with unrealistic expectations is when you are looking for money. This is a valid criticism of the new space community. However, there are people willing to contribute money (notice I say contribute, not invest) to a project that isn’t a good investment on a purely financial basis in order to achieve the non-financial goal of advancing the new space vision. This, to me, is the key trait of angel investors. Not just an investor who is interested in a particular industry, but an investor who is willing to accept smaller or even negative returns to advance some non-financial goal.

As far as people who thought they were investing to make money and felt misled about the realism of expectations, I don’t have any visibility to say how often that happened.

#4

New markets are probably the hardest piece of the puzzle to implement the new space vision. You can’t know for sure what the market will be until the product is available. So the existence of new markets and the idea that they will be big enough to support a new product has been taken to a certain extent on faith. There are ideas of what those markets might be, and work to try to characterize the potential markets, but we really can’t know for sure until after developing the product.

However, we can know for sure that new markets are a necessary requirement for the revolutionary change we want to see. They might be there, or they might not. And if they are not there we are doomed to failure. And there’s no way to know if they are there or not except to make the product.

The existence of new markets is definitely a big risk factor for new space. But there’s only two choices, don’t try, or try and probably accept less than market competitive risk-adjusted returns for your money. There are a lot of people who feel the non-financial goal is important enough to choose choice two. The space cynics don’t feel that way, but they shouldn’t disparage people who do.

The situation is also rapidly changing. There is more and more concrete evidence that there are people willing to pay for suborbital tourism or suborbital science. I would be curious to hear if the cynics feel this is progressing toward the level where they could take it seriously, or if they still think it is just as much a fantasy today as it was ten years ago, and if that’s the case what do they make of the Virgin Galactic deposits and suborbital science workshops?

#5

If you are looking at new space business plans from the point of view of a traditional investor who just wants a financial return, then you are probably right at this time. But I think for an angel investor who looks at non-financial goals as part of the ROI there are organizations that will give you good value for your money.

And, with several groups getting closer and closer to revenue flights they could soon become attractive as traditional investments.

#6

It’s clear to me that a two stage (or even three stage) orbital rocket can be built where the first stage has performance requirements similar to an up-down suborbital tourist rocket. It would be bigger than the vehicles currently being developed, and there will be additional hurdles to overcome, but the technology and expertise should transfer. This is the technology evolutionary path from suborbital to orbital.

There’s also a business and regulatory evolutionary path. by going through the mill once and starting to get revenue suborbital companies will be much better prepared to deploy an orbital launch product.

#7

You are right that suborbital point to point is basically as hard as orbital. I think this was meant as a counterargument to people who say that point to point can be a stepping stone between suborbital and orbital. It doesn’t matter because there is a direct path from suborbital to orbital.

#8

I really like Scorpius. Low part count expendables are a good way to achieve low costs, but not the only way.

#9

Also good advice. We could use a lot more people working on supporting technologies, but I wouldn’t have people currently working on space launch abandon what they are doing.

As far as why Beal did not succeed, I believe Beal attributed it to chasing a moving target in that NASA kept changing the rules of the game. He also believed that NASA was deliberately working to make him fail. In Beal’s own words:

“The BA-2C program was the largest privately funded program ever in existence to build a large capacity space launch system. Unfortunately, development of a reliable low cost system is simply not enough to ensure commercial viability. Several uncertainties remain that are totally beyond our control and put our entire business at risk. The most insurmountable risk is the desire of the U.S. Government and NASA to subsidize competing launch systems. … There will never be a private launch industry as long as NASA and the U.S. Government choose and subsidize launch systems. While Boeing and Lockheed are private entities, their launch systems and components are derivatives of various military initiatives. Very little new effort takes place without significant government subsidy, control, and involvement. While we believed that we could compete successfully against the government subsidized EELV launch vehicles, the characteristics and depth of subsidy for NASA’s new initiative as well as its ultimate performance are impossible to determine or evaluate. … We have elected to cease operations.” [quoted in Ref. 15]