Cuddihy's Cut

Signing off

2006-06-15T11:32:00.000-07:00

As is probably obvious from perusing the date of posts, I haven't posted much lately. My wife is pregnant with our first and I'm at full throttle for the next few months trying to finish my Master's thesis, so I don't imagine I'll find much time to post much in the future either.
In all, I'm not sure I have all that much to say that others in the blogosphere don't say better and faster than me. I take exception to some things that Rand Simberg and Keith Cowing say because I think they're often unfair or extremely biased against government efforts.
But on the whole I have them to pick on because both of them are so prolific with content. (which I'm not) I do have an original perspective on some topics due to my position, but generally the things I would like to post--such as studies i've done, and some documents by others that I think bring an interesting perspective or introduce hard scientific facts where alt.space fancies run wild. But most of this content consists of files that can't be uploaded for free to services like Blogger. Since I don't right now have the time to run my own domain, I'm going to stop posting until I can back my opinions with content. In the meantime, check out Space Cynic for much needed doses of sanity in the alt.space or New Space world.

God bless and choose life.

Tom

Comments are hosed again

2006-05-15T12:37:00.000-07:00

Sorry, I was fiddling with the template and seem to have screwed up comments. I'll try and get this resolved tonight...

Fake but accurate? and, LH2 vs RP-1.

2006-05-15T09:10:00.000-07:00

NASAWatch posted the official cancellation of the reusable RS-25 for the CaLV. Presumably, this means that NASA is indeed going to the RS-68 with a 10 m rocket body, as originally reported in a now retracted article.

It seems like the RS-68 is indeed the new choice for the 'SDLV', which, as others have now pointed out, has very little left that is 'shuttle derived.'

In fact, as Chairforce Engineer has stated, the SDLV now bears more in common with the Saturn V rocket than the Shuttle. All that's left, in my opinion, is to shift from the absurdity of a LH2 powered first stage to a Kerosene (RP-1) first stage. Then, at last, we would be back to where we started. Von Braun proven right again.

Lately it's become pretty clear to me that using LH2 for a lower stage is pretty much a fool's errand. I recently had to run some launch numbers for class (capstone) project that required launching multiple heavy satellites to a high LEO orbit (500 km and 1000 km). The only two launchers I was allowed to consider were the Atlas V and Delta IV. Imagine my shock when I discovered just how bad the Delta is for LEO launch. It's so bad that Boeing doesn't even publish true launch curves for LEO in the the payload user's guide. I had to reconstruct them from published launch capacity to 185 km circ, estimated LEO launch mass, Is, and mass fraction.

I calculated the following numbers for payload to LEO(metric tons)*:

Rocket	payload to 500km(circ)	payload to 1000km (circ)
Atlas V 402	10.3t	9.1t
Atlas V 522	13.5t	12.0t
Atlas V 552	15.8t	14.0t
Delta IV 5,2	5.6t	5.1t
Delta IV 5,4	8.1t	7.2t
Delta IV Heavy	17.4t	16.2t

* these numbers included an inclination penalty to launch into a 64.3 degree orbit from the Cape, if anybody's looking at the actual payload curves.

Amazing, isn't it? the smallest Atlas V (402), with no solids on it, demolishes all but the Heavy, three core Delta IV. Which makes it all the more curious that the DOD still has contracts for Boeing to launch satellites to LEO with medium Deltas. WTF?

The Delta doesn't really gain any advantage until you start looking at higher altitudes. This is entirely due to the higher Isp RL-10B-2 (Isp 462s) vs. the RL-10A-4 (Isp 450s). It has nothing to do with the first stage.

Virtually any introductory course to rocketry will stress that higher ISP is 'better'. Most people liken it to miles per gallon in an automobile, an especially inapt comparison IMHO. By that measure, the first stage of the Delta IV, boasting the Isp 420s RS-68, should destroy the 'wasteful' Atlas V, w/ Isp 311s RD-180. The RD-180 has higher thrust to weight (70 for RD-180 vs 40 for RS-68) and overall thrust. But, of course, RP-1 weighs a lot more than LH2.

So what explains the discrepancy? The big problem as I understand it s that the Delta IV is thrust limited. In other words, the RS-68 has to limit its thrust while in the atmosphere to keep from structurally damaging the rocket itself. This has the effect of dramatically increasing the burn time of the first stage engine. As the Ambivalent Engineer makes clear in an excellent discussion on staging, more burn time for the first stage means higher gravity losses incurred for the same total impulse. So basically, Boeing developed this super-whamodyne LH2/LOX common core booster with a big honkin RS-68, for perceived higher efficiency, only to have to use it suboptimally because--oops, the first stage has to go through the atmosphere. It's a bit like dropping a high-torque truck engine into a small racecar, but forgetting that all that torgue goes to waste if the low-gear transmission and 10 inch wheels can't deal with it.

The Atlas V, on the other hand, with a much heavier mass at takeoff, is structurally stronger to begin with and runs at nearly its full thrust rating for the entire first stage burn. It incurs smaller gravity losses and the first stage is able to add a higher velocity increment as a result, which increases the payload on the second stage, despite having a lower 'efficiency' engine than the Delta IV.

Add to that the difficulty and expense of working with LH2, and the massive amounts of it you need on a lower stage, it makes one wonder--why use it on the CaLV lower stage at all?

Enough Already

2006-05-08T22:01:00.000-07:00

One of my pet peeves about the blogosphere is the instant piling on that takes place whenever somebody makes a 'politically incorrect' statement in public.
*I don't in any way condone* what Peter Diamandis said, and the very fact that I have to state that to keep from receiving angry links or comments is exactly what I'm talking about.
There is a certain element in the blogosphere that takes extreme delight in calling attention to any and all slips of the tongue, inappropriate wording, and mistakes. It's a gotcha mentality that represents all the worst of reporting and the relative anonymity of being behind a keyboard.

NASAwatch does this all the time--a significant percentage of the postings are gotchas about this or that NASA release that doesn't exactly match up with an internal document, or two Griffen statements at different events that appear to contradict--more the point, often completely irrelevant to any major issue dealing with NASA.

The real joy, I guess, is in intimating that someone else has not done their homework or done their job right or some aspect of their job.

But personally, I'm just sick of the whole atmosphere. Our society should be secure enough that we don't have to go demanding self-flagellation whenever someone makes a slip of the tongue.

Accuracy in metaphors

2006-05-08T20:54:00.000-07:00

Among the visionaries of the new frontier at the ISDC conference 2006, I'm sure it's tough to find naysayers about our (meaning humanity's) progress towards actually becoming a spacefaring civilization. Without a doubt, most of the speakers are preaching to the choir. I'm afraid that I mostly agree with Jeffrey Bell of UH (Hawaii). Jeff wrote this article a few years ago-- I read it at the time and agree with most of its major points. If you're going to use a historical analogy, better use it appropriately, and accept the positives AND negatives.

I saw it again tonight when I was trolling usenet--somebody reposted it. Probably the part of Bell's thesis that's most distressing to alt.space types is the contention that our technology level is currently too low. Here, I'll quote:

I think we are in the same position with respect to space flight that the Norsemen were in respect to colonizing Canada. Our chemical rockets are just as inadequate as the Viking longboats. Our spacesuits are as clumsy as chainmail armor. Our means of defense from solar and cosmic radiation are as ineffective
as the Viking spears and axes were against the Indians. Our ideas for using local resources are as primitive as the farming and mining techniques of 1000 A.D.

Say that at ISDC, or worse, Space Access, and visionaries and alt.space geeks will fall all over themselves telling you that it's not true, that the technology exists today and just needs to be 'done right.'

I'd say that's a category I fell into until I got to school and started studying the actual physics and engineering required to get off-planet. TANSTAAFL is an excellent motto to keep in mind. Want higher performance engines? Be prepared to pay a hefty price. Reusable engines? Be prepared to pay a performance penalty. You have a completely new way of doing things? Be prepared for it to take 3 times as long, 4 times as much money, and 5 times as many failures as you initially budget for.

I do think there's one big hole in Bell's perspective of NASA as our society's version of Cheng Ho's journeys to nowhere: Cheng Ho's journeys may not have been able to challenge western technology, but as Bell himself stated, that was because Ming dynasty China could not compete with the real advances taking place in the West. The fact is, we ARE the West. The outward expansion begun in Prince Henry the navigator's day may be confined to our humble planet at the time, but the rational mind and the scientific method are alive and well. The cause of the technological advances that gave Western Europe the advantage over other cultures (for a time at least), is still currently in motion. Given enough time, we will develop more powerful engines, better ISRU techniques, and sufficient political will to really colonize space.
The real question is whether our society will stick around that long or lapse into decline because of ever-falling birthrates.

A rational solution to immigration

2006-05-04T10:02:00.000-07:00

OK, I get tired of hearing the pundits of both sides argue about turning illegal immigrants into felons or about another amnesty that would encourage more law breaking.
First, a disclaimer: although I am a legal native-born American, my grandfather, Thomas Long, illegally entered the US from Canada after immigrating there from Ireland. He worked on the docks in NY as a longshoreman for several years until he saved enough money to go back to Ireland, immigrate legally, and then fought in WWII shortly after receiving his legalization status. I don't condone my ancestor for working here illegally, but he desperately wanted to be a real American, so he rectified the situation as soon as he had sufficient means to do so.

I would submit that there are several truths that both sides can agree on:

There's no practical possibility of deporting 11 million illegals, if the number really is that high. It's just not possible. Every single one of those people pretty much gets a hearing. As if the federal courts aren't clogged enough as it is, dumping an extra 11 million cases on their hands is just not feasible, especially as they would be heavily concentrated in the border districts. That doesn't mention the likely effect this would have on the economy, as the cheap labor is suddenly taken off the market. That fact alone would make the INS's job even more unworkable than it already is, with politicians from both sides screaming about specific enforcement efforts killing their constituents.

Encouraging future lawbreaking is not desirable. However, there has to be some answer to the current rampant lawlessness with regard to immigration laws. Any solution has to take into account not only the specific cause of current lawbreaking but the concerns of a labor market producing more jobs than native-born Americans can fill.

So what is the cause of current law breaking? As this graph from a study done at Mizzou shows, the numbers of immigrants coming into the United States peaked around 1900 at close to 1 million/year, then dropped sharply, and has only recently come back to that level. But how many of those are legal? In 2003, only 463,000 people were made legal residents of the United States. Less than half the number of people immigrating(Legally!) in 1890. Keep in mind that the US population in 1890 was somewhere between 62-65 million. In other words, legal immigration was 2-3% of the total population per year. I think most Americans today would agree that that worked out pretty well in the long run. In contrast, in 2003, there were somewhere around 278 million Americans, and yet we only allowed short of 500,000 to join us in the greatest nation on Earth. That's 0.001% of our population. What the hell is wrong with us? Are we really that scared that 88 million Mexicans are going to overwhelm us 280 million Americans? Have math skills decayed that badly?

What, is the cause of the lack of assilimation that plagues many Mexican immigrants, especially in California? Conservatives like to blame the problem on liberal multi-culteral philosophy that is entrenched in our education system. Perhaps that plays a role. But I would argue that the main cause is the fact that so many of our immigrants are here illegally, never given the opportunity to raise their right hand and swear allegiance to this country and our consitution, is the main factor. When did our society lose the concept that words are important, even to those who barely understand what they are speaking? Keeping a noticeable percentage of the population restricted to the barrio, where they can hide safely in their illegal identity, is NOT a solution, and only perpetuates a 'seperate' identity. Granting amnesty to those already enmired in the current proto-slavery of illegal immigration would only perpetuate the current seperation in that population.

I would challenge conservatives who say that the problem is 'not immigrants, but "illegal" immigrants,' to put their money where their mouth is and start calling for drastically increased LEGAL immigration. I mean where the only requirement to immigrate and obtain a green card, beyond health issues, should be the ability to show up at a US port of entry and not be on a terrorist watch list.

This one stroke would solve a LOT of immigration problems. Illegals already in Amercia would find themselves competing against legals with the same hard work ethic, but much better prospects, raising immigrant wages. Many would be forced to go back to a port of entry and enter legally, or go home altogether. The very act of reentering the United States at a port of entry will act to break the 'barrio' mindset of many of these immigrants. Ceremonies and words have important effects on the human psyche.

Couple increased legal immigration with slightly stronger enforcement, especially on the payroll tax side, and suddenly the agricultural and meatpacking industries that rely so heavily on illegal labor, would have little reason to continue to do so.

There is no need to condone past illegal behavior, but there are ways to discourage future illegal behavior without throwing our economy under the Homeland Security bus.

Oooooh I won a free play on Space Shot!

2006-04-17T15:02:00.000-07:00

Evidently Sam read my post and already commented on it. This internet thingy is pretty fast!

I evidently got a free play by pointing out the 'finalizing . . .' bit. That's pretty neat.

Some other comments by Sam:

Our standings page is in development and should be ready by the time a player reaches the finals if not sooner.

We can only have the weather as specific as the National Weather Service Reports it. No sense in getting more granular when the NWS reports in whole degrees.

. . .

Right now, Space-Shot.com is the only way to win a trip to space for $3.50 as many as you want. No other way will have as broad a population that will be competitive in the skill.

I would definitely argue the granularity bit... Sam, you're thinking like a scientist, not a game player. If I say 50.20 and I am randomly matched up against someone who picked 50.25, I will win if the high is 50 or below. I'll lose if it's above 50 degrees.

It's not about scientific accuracy, it's about the ability to choose your proximity to the higher and lower numbers. It's about positioning.

Let me clear the air on Space-Shot.com

2006-04-17T14:35:00.000-07:00

Just want to make it clear to anyone that finds their way to this post or the one below that on a personal level, I admire Sam Dinkin's efforts to get the rest of us to space. I admire his optimistic take on the challenges and rewards of getting spaceflight for the masses. That's one of the reasons his articles on The Space Review are usually one of my first reads of the week.

Try here.
or this one.
or this one.
or what about this classic?

Starting up a new enterprise is an enormously challenging and backbreaking endeavor. Add in vagaries like domain squatters and eclectic interests of state Attorney Generals, and it can truly be a perilous and challenging journey.

All that said, my criticisms of the gameplay of Space Shot.com result from my experiences as a paying customer. In the end I can say whatever I want, but I'll put my money down to play again if I think it's worth the while of doing so. Right now I'm not there.

Trying out Space Shot

2006-04-17T11:26:00.000-07:00

Okay, Lent's officially over, which means I get to post and surf the Internet whenever I choose.

I've been wanting to post on this topic, because it really is Space for everyone: Space-Shot.com. The overall idea by Sam Dinkin is great--the best part being that it's legally accessible from all states.

So far I've tried three plays. I won once and lost twice. Here's my overall impression:

1. Domain names matter. Twice early on I tried to get to the website by typing "www.spaceshot.com". Suprisingly, that takes you not to the official Space Shot website, but to a (perhaps different?) company with the message "space shot..this page under construction," with no pointers or links to the actual Space Shot website. I'm suprised that domain name wasn't also bought by Sam in an effort to ensure that everyone who tries to get to the correct website actually gets there. It'd be like Amazon.com not having the rights to 'amazon.com,' so they have to use 'amazon.net' instead.

2. 'Playing' it is actually not much fun. Especially when you can't try again till tomorrow. Sam Dinkin wanted to create a game where the chances of winning are the same for everyone, so that certain 'skill' players wouldn't dominate the competition and discourage beginners from trying. (See last week's article in The Space Review.) Great, that's part of the reason I was interested in trying it out. So I got the deal of 6 plays for $18 and sat down to try it out.

The first play, I picked a bunch of numbers pretty much close to the forecasted numbers. Within a few hours, I was matched up against 'Veomega.' We both picked numbers close to the forecasted highs,lows, humidities, and precipitation. I was 1/2 a degree lower than forecasted, he was 1/2 a degree higher.

Here's a confusing bit: When you pick your plays, and finalize predictions, the site says "Finalizing predictions ...", but then never lets you know that it's done. It looks like it locked up on 'Finalizing...', although if you go back to the front page, it shows the picks as actually finalized.

Then we waited...and waited.. In effect, it was a 3 day play. We picked our plays on the 8th, sat through the 9th while the weather data was collected, and couldn't actually check it out till the 10th. I certainly wasn't going to try again until I knew how the first one went.
As for the results..frustrating. Both of us were way off, the actual temperature was nearly 20 degrees higher than forecasted. Nevertheless, since I was lower than 'Veomega', he advanced and I lost.

The next time I tried it I tried a double combo 'higher' and 'lower'. I picked numbers as close to the forecasted as possible, with one higher, and the other lower, than the forecasted values. Unsuprisingly, I lost one and won the other.

So I did three plays in a week, one advancing and two losing. And to be honest, I have no real interest in continuing. Oh, I will play out my remaining hands. But I won't be paying any more money unless some changes are made.

In fact, here's the big problem--it is actually a game of chance when you get down to it, which would argue for a fast, casino style of play. But each play takes DAYS. There's no hurrying it. So, any excitement from a win is gone by the time the next play comes. There's no hope of getting a win to salvage your pride following a disappointing loss until the next play is over--that's two days from now!

3. No Standings: This is a big mistake in my book. Part of the reason I have no interest in continuing is because I have no idea where my two losses and one wins place me. How many people are at level two? how far would I have to go before I have trouble getting a match? How close are we all total to getting someone to orbit? How many would I have to win to get my name in the neon lights? Status is an important motivator. This is stuff that should be on the front page.
There's a reason most bloggers check their TTLB ecosystem standings every day. People want to know just where they stand.

4. Top frustration with single hand gameplay: In order to reduce ties, the highs and low temperatures are forced into a 'x.25 degrees', 'x.75 degrees'. But you can play out number of inches of rainfall to the hundreth of an inch. Remember, the order of competition is highest temp-->lowest temp-->rainfall-->humidity. So you have less granularity in your initial pick to tie than you do in your tiebreaker. What kind of crap is that?

As it currently is, it feels like the pace of playing the stock market, but you lose your investment entirely if you don't gain, instead of just losing a percentage of it. So here are my top three suggested improvements for Space Shot:

1. get standings on the front page, as a minimum with the levels and names of top players, along with the numbers of players at each level.

2. get the domain name for www.spaceshot.com and point it to the homepage, so everybody gets there on their first try.

3. fix the 'finalizing predictions' to update when it's done so that first-time users don't think it locked up.

Here's a suggestion for the long term, if this is intended to continue beyond the initial interest phase: allow some type of game to be played that allows instant matching and feedback. This is not a simple fix, and would radically change the way space shot is structured. But as it is now, there's no real fun to playing Space Shot. The only 'fun' comes from knowing you're closer to winning that prize to space. But that's not real fun. I get closer to buying my own trip to space for every dollar I earn too. Which means Space Shot is more like work than fun--the difference being it costs you money.

For example, one way that might be fun is a 'skill' game involving an element of luck--like an online version of 'Lemonade Stand','Monopoly,' or 'Risk'. The chance could be reduced below the threshold at which it becomes a game of chance, with the advantage that feedback would be instantaneous. Losing that way is actually kind of fun.

Anyway, I think there's ways to do this better that would be more fun. The lure of eventual spaceflight, however, is far too distant with Space Shot as it currently plays.

comments stuff

2006-04-08T13:32:00.000-07:00

Okay, I was having problems integrating the Blogspot and Haloscan comments. I prefer Haloscan, so that's what I'm going with, as you can see below.

attacking ATK --Updated 4/10/06

2006-04-07T13:34:00.000-07:00

The usual suspects of Big Aerospace tomfoolery, Boeing and Lockheed, appear to have been shut out of the CEV launch market. The sole source provider, ATK, is therefore in the unusual position (for ATK as compared to BLoMart)of bearing the brunt of angry alt.spacer's tinfoil hattery.

Rand first complains about the sell:

Nice bait and switch--you have to admire ATK for their marketing, if nothing else.

Okay, that's reasonable. But then he implys EELVs could have done the job if it wasn't for human rating:

And tell me again, what was the estimate to "human rate" an EELV? And more to the point, how many very juicy first, second and third prizes for low-cost crew access to LEO could three billion dollars fund?

I won't even touch the rather laughable politics of basing a federal multi-billion dollar program on the possible success of a prize-award system.

But as for human rating an ELV, is that true?

Griffen pretty clearly stated last year that if the next manned launcher was going to pass muster, it could not have multiple cores or a side-mounted crew compartment because of the increased complexity and numerous failure modes that impact surviveablity. When I get some time I'll find the studies that backed that up.

That constraint limits EELV's options to the Delta-IV and Atlas-V single core, medium versions.
Max payload for medium Delta IV, 10.3 metric ton(t) and for Atlas-V 17 t. If you follow the (usual alt.space) mantra that solids are deadly --especially the ones that have explosively destroyed a mountain like Delta's--cut that medium to a no-solids medium. Now you're at 7 t for Delta and 12 t for Atlas.

That might be enough for a CEV designed by George W. Herbert, but NASA has evidently decided it needs much...much...much more, so it would seem man rating the EELV is not the issue here--it's uprating and manrating.

As for the tin hat part:

Also, for any enterprising muckraising space journalists out there, this has been a juicy scandal waiting to happen, what with Scott Horowitz' recent job change, and all. Moreover, it could potentially be one that kills the Satay (or as Henry Spencer calls it, Porklauncher I).

okay, now we're implying a Darleen Dryun size contractor steering scandal--maybe an inflation of costs to improve ATK profit. At first glance, seems plausible. After all, Scott Horowitz moved directly from developing the plan at NASA to selling the plan at ATK to managing the Exploration systems that will buy the ATK booster. Fishy fishy fishy, right?

Here's the reality of that--unlike with Boeing's scandal, there is no existing system that could fulfill NASA's requirements for cheaper. (Darleen Dryun was getting the Pentagon to overpay for renting KC-737s when it would have been cheaper to buy them outright.) In fact, there's no existing system that can fulfill NASAA's requirements anyway, which is why ATK is going to be awarded a single-source contract to help with the new launcher booster with little fuss.

As for the Horowitz connection, Scott Horowitz developed the CLV plan at the JSC spaceflight office when it became apparent that OSP was not going to go anywhere(2001 timeframe), but O'Keefe refused to make any movement on a new launcher, which is why Horowitz left for ATK(in 2004). Griffin then brought Horowitz back to NASA after he became the new administrator (late 2005). In other words, Horowitz got the ATK job offer after O'Keefe had declined to pursue the idea(in 2001). It was Griffin who brought Horowitz back.
That's not steering government contracts to a specific contractor to the disadvantage of the government(as with Boeing). That's getting the contractor on board with governmental intentions.

Second of all, as I said in the comments on Rand's site,
the original estimate for the CEV mods was assuming 2 things
1. a 4 segment SRB w/ one J2S or J2X and
2. a lighter CEV.

When ESMD said the CEV had to be nearly 20 t, that mandated a 2-J2 or 1-SSME soln instead; the airstart SSME, while reasonable at first glance, was on the whole a dead-end, which is why it was dropped in favor of the more architecture-friendly J2X.

So it would seem the root cause of the problem here is the excessive weight of the CEV, not a Darleen Dryun style conflict of interest.

Rand replied in his comments that

No one said that the root cause was the appearance of the conflict of interest. Nonetheless, there is an appearance of a conflict of interest.

um, I'd say the quote above pretty clearly suggest malfeasance of some sort, not merely the appearance of it. Nor will something so thin in any way affect the politics of the CLV.

Updated 4/08/06 to add the Horowitz NASA-->ATK-->NASA timeline.
Updated 4/10/06 to correct spelling of Griffin's name and abbrev. for metric tons.

There's no such thing as an incrementally tested space launcher

2006-04-02T23:02:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize how hard it is to stay off the internet. I've already messed up a few times during the last work week--now here it is on the weekend, when I should be catching up, and it's not until Sunday night when I can find some time to blog around a little bit.

I admit, first of all, that I fell off the Lent non-blogging wagon on wednesday to comment on Rand's blog, on the SpaceX failure.

Blogging is all about responsiveness, so when I can't legitimately post on a subject till the weekend, I'm not sure there's much point in sounding off about it. But it's definitely a challenge not to respond to things I think are off the deep end.

Like the meme about SpaceX's chosen method that has been forwarded by quite a few members of the space blogosphere: namely, that ELVs are more prone to failure than a launcher that you can 'test incrementally.' as opposed to one you 'have to test all-up.'

I'd like to point to statistics proving this to be a fallacy, but I can't. Those statistics don't exist.

Because, of course, there never has been a working RLV space launcher built, and there won't be for a long time. I would estimate at this point that breakeven on controlled nuclear fusion is closer to implementation (hey--we're just 20 years away!) than a fully reusable launch vehicle.

So, space vehicles you can test incrementally, rather than all-up are less prone to failure? Woop dee doo. I'm sure the East Indian Tea Company had people telling them it'd be quicker to sail to India through the Northwest passage than around Cape Horn. Until somebody did it though, the smart money kept sending ships around Africa. In fact, the ships still go around Africa.

The point is that, reusable, incrementally tested vehicles run into many of the same problems that incrementally tested ones do. Sometimes worse ones. Incremental testing probably wouldn't have prevented a fuel leak. A fire that depressurized the helium system 200 feet up would still have crashed the rocket. The difference is if it had been resuable, the rocket would have been much more expensive.

The truth is that a resuable vehicle would have taken longer to test, would have cost more money to design and build, and would have been more disasterous when it crashed.

Musk probably would have gotten out of the launch business by last Thursday if that had been a $700 million dollar fully reusable Falcon 1.

Comments are enabled

2006-04-02T23:01:00.000-07:00

Ok, I've enabled comments.
We'll see how long it takes to spam me out of business...

Where did you come from, where do you go....

2006-03-26T16:23:00.000-08:00

Probably no one's been checking back here, but in case anyone wondered--I gave up blogging--actually, screwing around on the internet in any non-work related way(during the work week)--for Lent.

I normally waste an incredible amount of time per week on the internet, when I really should be helping my wife unpack all the wedding gifts, writing thank yous, etc. So I gave it up.

So anyway, just last weekend I got back from a two week (actually 12 day) trip around the country. It was boondoggle actually. I got to visit a lot of the DOD and contractor space facilities, among them a detachment of the command I'm working at next--Naval Space Operations Center, or NAVSPOC.

The highlight of the trip for sure was visiting JSC in the company of a retired astronaut, Dan Bursch. Three time shuttle flier and member of ISS Expedition Four, Capt Bursch, USN (ret) holds the US record for time spent in space. That's him below, standing next to a picture of expedition Four. He's the guy on the left of the picture.

Anyway my in-laws are coming over, so I'll finish this some other time.

Amazing...

2006-02-13T20:56:00.000-08:00

Wow, my first serious post gets linked to! Lesson: trackback works.

Thanks to all who offered well wishes. Even though this is a (as may be expected) hectic week, strangely enough I have more free time than usual. I mean, I budgeted it that way when we set the wedding date, but somehow I expected to be more behind anyway. hmm.

Rand's right that some of the assumptions I made for the numbers doom the architecture from the start--nobody would seriously consider a fully reusable lunar architecture at this stage. I ran it out of curiousity to find out 'why not,' and there's many little things that can be done to trim the propellant requirements.

But that's part of the conclusion I drew from the exercise--it suggests that a lunar (or any kind of deep space) sustainable architecture is probably not a near term thing, even after you get launch costs down an order of magnitude from current prices. When you get down to it, there are some hard facts of rocket science and economics, having to do with delta v, mass ratio, launch rate, and market.

There's an excellent paper on the Colony Fund website by Transterrestrial musing's own Sam Dinkin, David Livingston, and John Jurist that is a detailed discussion of a lot of those considerations. In fact it's titled "When Rocket Science meets the Dismal Science."

For NASA, the problem is worsened because they have to meet not just the realities of the technology and marketplace (as a customer, not provider), but also the political reality of convincing Congressmen that their architecture is worth paying for. I don't think Congress is ready to fund an architecture that requires an alternative market to spring up in order to be feasible. It would be like funding ARPAnet in the 70's because of potential Amazon.com tax revenue. Congress just isn't that clairvoyant.

update 10:38 PM

The link to the Dinkin paper goes to the correct paper, but the title appears to have changed some time recently from "When Rocket Science Meets the Dismal Science" to "When Physics, Economics, and Reality Collide" . I'm not sure when that changed, as I have the same paged saved on my hard drive with the old name at home. Either way, it's a good read.

Welcome to Competent Management

2006-02-13T09:13:00.000-08:00

Keith Cowing seems to think that competently managing a large beaureacracy involves extreme deference to any random manager who has a different opinion than the top management.

This isn't a one time freak-out by Cowing: every time someone at NASA gets canned or transferred for refusing to follow orders, Cowing posts it as crushing of dissent, as if the courage to speak out against job realingment is of the same importance as shuttle safety.

The truth is, if you are a manager, people like Scott Hubbard are who you pray you never have working for you. People who put the security of their individual fiefdom above the overall mission. That is exactly how NASA has gone in circles for decades. Thousands of individually well-intentioned people, each trying to maintain their own particular niche without regard to the overall picture.

Yet when a competent manager comes in and starts organizing the beaureacracy to actually accomplish a task, people like Hubbard (and Cowing) throw up so many roadblocks that it's very tough to accomplish anything.

The truth is this: as a NASA civil servant, you do NOT have the right to your job. You do not have the right to pursue whatever space science tickles your fancy. Just because you work for the federal government does NOT give you the right to blow off top management and obstruct every effort that you do not happen to agree with.

Griffen laid out a plan, asked Hubbard to implement it for the good of the entire VSE (which in reality should be more important than the maintenance of the NASA beaureacracy.) Hubbard refused, so Griffen had to put in someone who would actually 'kowtow' to the actual plan.

I respect Keith Cowing a great deal, and his news reporting has had an overall extremely positive effect on NASA over the last 8 years. But I wish he would allow Griffen to organize NASA in a competent way without complaining whenever some golden cow has to be melted down to a productive purpose.

Lunar Architecture

2006-02-12T23:10:00.000-08:00

Okay, evidently Blogger lets you post pictures now, so I'm more willing to spend some time blogging

I'm just starting this out (again), and I'm getting married next weekend to an awesome babe, so don't expect too much this week. (ha. nobody will read this for months if ever.)

Here's a start:

Over at Selenian Bookdocks Jon Goff posted an idea that piqued my interest: an entirely reusable LEO-->Moon-->LEO architecture, using depots in LEO and L1. The interesting thing to me was the idea of using propulsive braking for the return--even when it costs you Ginormous amounts of fuel.

I did a little excel check and found that, although it's physically possible, it's kind of nuts: for example, using LOX/Ker (Is 340s), with a bare-bones module of 7 tons, and a payload-to-drymass fraction of 0.17 (slightly better than any existing rocket), you need 223 metric tons of propellant at L1 to fuel your 40 ton LM.

Lets say you brought that propellant to L1 in a reusable LEO-L1 transporter that drops off 10 tons at a time, and uses aerobraking to get into LEO. that's 22 trips. Plus one additional trip to bring the lunar module. 23. And each of those trips is going to cost you 264 mT propellant in LEO. That's 6077 mT of propellant you need in LEO, just to accomplish one lunar mission.

One thing most depot-advocates argue for is that cheaper launchers with higher launch rates will lower the cost/lb to orbit. It becomes clear why they have to argue that if you actually run the numbers. At 6077 mT of payload, even if you use the (currently) hypothetical Falcon 9, at 9.3 mT to LEO, you need 653 Falcon 9s ($27 mil a pop, $17 bil total).

It's not hard to see why even CEV proposals that use L1 stayed away from depending on reusability .

That doesn't mean the resuability architecture idea should be thrown away, however.

MTF

nope, gotta try something else

2005-06-06T12:46:00.000-07:00

unsuccessfully tried to upload some files into my yahoo! free public briefcase--only to discover that there's a 5 MB limit on public files. all that or $20 a month to SBC

Scott Horowitz SRB-J2 stuff

2005-05-25T13:43:00.000-07:00

I've never uploaded stuff before, but let me give this a try.

Pathetic dung beetles on the ass of history.

2005-01-21T18:29:00.000-08:00

http://derekrose.com/wp/index.php?p=254

Derek, your own words damn you. Your choice of words reveals your mindset--which mimics that of the wire service. Unsuprising since you admit that's your only source for the news on which your opionions are based. You doubt the LTC's estimate of enemy dead, ascribing it to 'best guesses by commanders on the ground.' Yet what information do you have to refute it? An article written by someone who TOURED the area FIVE DAYS after the battle was over. Whose source of information is more likely to be accurate? But perhaps Dexter Filkins does have a better source of information than the commanders on the ground. What would that be? Where would it come from? Could it be the insurgency press release that declares they got away without major injury? The MSM (and your own) admitted insistence on placing less trust in the word of the American military than on the word of Baathist and Islamist thugs reveals exactly why the average American finds his opinion of you lower than Iraqi shit, you despicable dung beetle on the ass of history. You cannot claim to value the life of an American soldier when you openly distrust the American soldier and willingly swallow every morsel of shit the Islamists flick in your direction.

trackbacks and more ID

2005-01-04T23:15:00.000-08:00

ok I just started trackbacks using Haloscan, we'll see how well it works. Of course, by the time I got it figured out the posts I was linking to were hopelessly out of date. c'est la vie, it's all about the practice.

UPDATE 2321 2005.1.4: Here's a further link to more of the ID discussion at Rand's site.

Logic would dictate, of course, that we aren't all correct--either there's a God or there isn't, but then, logic only applies if one's belief system thinks that a requirement. Which is why it's impossible to prove something to someone whose means of attaining knowledge isn't logic driven, and who uses a different set of axioms.
It's entirely plausible to me that for those who feel His presence, God is as real as anything else in this existence. But not for me. And because of this, while what happened in south Asia this past week is unspeakably tragic, it disrupts my worldview not at all. I have nothing with which it must be reconciled.

I do feel the presence of God, and tragedies like this disrupt my worldview not at all either.

I just watched tonight's Scarborogh country where they debated the same topic. Joe's finally back. It's fun seeing Jennifer Giroux duking it out with Rabbi Shmuley. What, did Joe not watch the chaos that ensued with these clowns 'moderated' by Pat Buchanan while he was gone? Whatever. They invite these guests for the same reason people (used to) watch hockey--for the fights. Fun, but not very instructive. Jennifer Giroux was taking the unlovely position that the tsunami disaster was a warning from God to repent. Rabbi Shmuley was taking the equally unlovely position that it is justified for humans to be angry at God for cutting off so many lives, and that we should--what, yell at God and shame him into acting nicer to us? Well, they always were a stiff-necked people.

My own view is that if disasters like the tsunami did not occaisionally happen, I would not be able to believe in free will. My experience of God and every understanding of real interventions that God has taken in human history have been for one purpose and one purpose alone--freedom. Specifically, the maximizing of free will with the minimum of human discomfort. In fact, it's a very enlightening lens with witch to view all of biblical history. You don't even have to believe in the literal validity of it, just use it as a filter. First he made himself known to Abraham--freeing his descendants from worship of other, less friendly (human created) Gods like Baal that demanded human sacrifice. Then he handed down a code of behavior to Moses (the Ten Commandments) that promoted social integrity and lawfulness while still maximizing human freedom. These strict rituals and rules freed at least fellow Isrealites from slavery and being terrorized by local strongmen and enslaved by human weaknesses. Next, when the foundation was built, he sent Jesus to loosen the bonds of ritual and blood--to say that all humans could lay claim to the freedom provided, and that they did not have to follow the rituals of Judaism solely for the sake of ritual--but reconsidering every aspect of ritual and religion has become the quitessential Christian experience from the very first council of Jersusalem to the reformation and beyond.

I'm too tired to flesh it out right now, but standby, I'll get back to it...

ID Debate boucing around the Blogosphere

2005-01-04T20:24:00.001-08:00

It looks like the Tsunami, along with calling God into question for some simple souls like the Archbishop of Canterbury, has spawned a monster Intelligent Design debate. The best discussion is over at Rand Simberg's blog, but lots of others have weighed in. Rand's obviously thought about this a lot more than I have, and despite the fact that I'm a very committed Catholic, I don't disagree with a single point he makes about the ID 'debate,' especially this:

The problem with creation theories is not that they're inconsistent with the evidence--they are totally consistent, tautologically so, as Eugene [Volokh] says. The problem is that they tell us nothing useful from a scientific standpoint. In fact, there are an infinite number of theories that fit any given set of facts. I can speculate not only that all was created, but that it was created (complete with our memories of it) a minute ago, or two minutes ago. Or an hour ago. Or yesterday. Or the day before. Or, as some would have it, 6000+ years ago. Each is a different theory (though they all fall into a class of theories) that fit the observable facts. They are all equally possible, and all (other than some form of naturalistic evolution) untestable.

As a Catholic I've always been curious just what exactly the thought process is behind fundamentalist philosophies to explain why a God who created the world in seven days and seven nights would leave around so much evidence that it took..well, rather longer. Did the Devil come along after the fall and go around salting Mongolia with dinosaur skeletons and the Galapagos with evolutionary oddballs? Did Jesus do it? Maybe it was the angel Moroni, fresh from telling Joseph Smith that one woman really wasn't enough, and still a little miffed that Joe had saddled him with a name that looks like the second declension plural of 'moron.' So he put evidence of evolution in there just to bedevil the doubters. It's a test, you see:

UPDATE: ok, I just spent about 40 min looking for some coherent reasoning from a solid creationist source for why so much evidence exists that contradicts the '6000 yr old earth' theory. I'm looking for a substantial counterargument. There is none. Apparently, creationists do not deal with the existence of evidence as a whole--that would be ceding the point I guess. Instead they offer lots and lots of internally inconsistent reasons to doubt specific pieces of evidence, ranging from the scientific bonafides of geologists and physicists to the sinister motives of a secret cabal of paleontologists that have been passing off artisitic fakes as dinosaurs, undiscovered for over 150 years. hmm. I've given up on finding a creationist who at least admits the existence of contradictory evidence and deals with it rationally. Even 'the devil did it to make people doubt the existence of God' would at least be rational.

Assurance by inference

2005-01-02T19:41:00.000-08:00

Ok I had to comment on this particular type of argument I keep seeing by literal creationists, last seen on a post about the tsunami on Dawn Eden's blog, originated by John Bambanek,

I've heard this before, that animals have a sense of nature that they use to get out of the way of "very bad things". We've known this for awhile, and it would seem intuitive that some animals wouldn't be able to get away from this, but that doesn't appear to be the case.I mention Darwin because this goes completely against the grain of evolution. People simply don't have the sense of nature around them. It's pretty much a fact that in strict survivability terms, the human race or at least the first pair that came from apes would be weaker and LESS likely to survive.Natural selection would explain why we never would have existed, not why we do.

The crux of his argument seems to be that intuitively some animals shouldn't have been able to get away from this,yet they did anyways. John then makes the intellectual leap that this is somehow contrary to Darwin. It's not. There's no corollory to the theory of evolution that says that because some undesirable traits have been selected against in the past (such as, say, the urge to go to the beach after an earthquake) that therefore there will always be large amounts of animals that exhibit these undesirable traits, to be selected against when disaster strikes again. Nonsense. Natural selection suggests that nearly all animals are decendants of previous tsunami survivors--therefore except for the small numbers of mutants who no longer have "after eathquakes stay away from the beach" instincts, most animals should be ok. In other words, natural selection would predict exactly the result that took place. What would have been a big suprise would be if hundreds of thousands of animals perished.

It takes a lot of arrogance about human knowledge to use the tsunami as an argument in the ID debate. Assuming that we know enough about nature to be able to say that there is no evolutionary or biological explanation for any one event is preposterously arrogant. We don't even have enough knowledge to be able to stop a sub-life packet of protein like HIV from running rampant--yet somehow we have the omniscience to say that there is no scientific explanation for the animal 'sixth sense?'

More to point, I jsut don't understand the conflict between the theory of evolution and creation. If God could beget an only son both human and god, and who is One with the Father and the Holy Spirit yet at the same time Three--surely it's not a stretch to say that same god could create a man out of clay who also happens to fit perfectly Darwin's theory of evolution.

Contact me

2004-12-08T15:44:00.000-08:00

If you want to email me, it's tom.cuddihy@gmail.com.

Hello all

2004-12-08T15:34:00.000-08:00

This is Cuddihy's Cut on the events of the day / week /whatever I feel like. I don't anticipate actually having enough time to do blog everyday, but hey, it's all about the experience, right?

Any of my friends who know me are probably wondering where 'Tom Cuddihy' came from. (Not my real name.) To answer, it's from my mother's mother's side of the family. I'm not sure why I picked that particular side of the family, but I just sensed a real connection between that part of my mother's family and my own personality. Spooky. When I get a chance I'll post a pic. I'm probably way off base actually, but for whatever reason I think it works.

Cead Mille Failte

Tom