the commercial spaceflight revolution
DESCRIPTION
Slides from talk given at British Science Festival, University of Bradford, 15 Sept 2011TRANSCRIPT
The Commercial Spaceflight Revolution
Duncan Law-Green, University of Leicester
Thursday, 15 September 11
Commercial SpaceflightThe What & Why of “NewSpace”
• What: Innovative, low-cost, efficiently managed programmes
• Why: To open the space frontier to all of humankind
Thursday, 15 September 11
Sponsored by Trans World Airlines
Opening Centrepiece of Tomorrowland, Disneyland
Adjacent to “Rocket to the Moon” movie exhibit
TWA Rocket: 1955 - 1961
Thursday, 15 September 11
1968: Space Tourism in Film
Thursday, 15 September 11
2001: A Space AdventureUS company Space Adventures forms agreement with Russian Space Agencyfor space tourism trips to International Space Station. Cost $20-30 million
2001
2002
2005
2006
2007/2009
2008
2009
Dennis Tito (US)Soyuz TM-32
Mark Shuttleworth (SA/UK)Soyuz TM-32
Greg Olsen (US)Soyuz TMA-7
Anousheh Ansari (Iran/US)Soyuz TMA-9
Charles Simonyi (Hun/US)Soyuz TMA-10/TMA-14
Richard Garriott (UK/US)Soyuz TMA-13
Guy Laliberte (Canada)Soyuz TMA-16
Thursday, 15 September 11
Peter DiamandisFounder of the X-Prize organisation
Thursday, 15 September 11
Ansari X-PrizeDevised by Peter Diamandis, inspired by Orteig Prize for first solo transatlantic flight, won by Charles Lindberg in 1927.
$10 million for first vehicle to carry 3 people (or one person and equivalent mass) to 100km altitude and back, twice in two weeks.
Prize funded by Iranian/American telecoms entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari Prize won 4 October 2004, by SpaceShipOne, built by Burt Rutan, funded by Paul Allen (co-founder of Microsoft).
Anousheh Ansari
Thursday, 15 September 11
Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwoUnder construction at Scaled Composites, Mojave
Thursday, 15 September 11
SpaceShipTwo & WhiteKnightTwoCompleted, official rollout 8 Dec 2009
Thursday, 15 September 11
Spaceport AmericaWorld’s first purpose-built commercial passenger spaceport
Thursday, 15 September 11
SpaceShipTwo Drop TestsAerodynamic glide tests started 10 Oct 2010
Thursday, 15 September 11
XCOR “Lynx” suborbital rocketplaneArtist’s impression
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Thursday, 15 September 11
VTVLVertical Takeoff, Vertical Landing
• Several companies including Masten Space Systems and Armadillo Aerospace working on fully-reusable VTVL rockets
Thursday, 15 September 11
Armadillo AerospaceSUPER MOD TEST
CADDO MILLS, TEXAS, 16 SEPT 2010Thursday, 15 September 11
Armadillo AerospaceSUPER MOD TEST
CADDO MILLS, TEXAS, 16 SEPT 2010Thursday, 15 September 11
Blue Origin• Founded by Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, working on
suborbital and orbital manned spacecraft
• Private spaceport at Van Horn, Texas
• Unmanned PM-2 launched 24 Aug 2011Achieved 45,000ft, Mach-1.2 before loss of vehicle
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Thursday, 15 September 11
To Orbit and Beyond...Thursday, 15 September 11
SpaceX• Founded by software entrepreneur
Elon Musk in 2002
• Developer of low-cost launch vehicles (Falcon-1, Falcon-9), spent ~$500M
• Dragon: orbital spacecraft for cargo and crew. Winner of a NASA COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) contract.
• Successful Falcon-9 first launch 18 June 2010
• Successful Dragon flight test and re-entry 8 Dec 2010
Thursday, 15 September 11
Falcon 9/Dragon launch, Cape CanaveralThursday, 15 September 11
SpaceX Dragon in orbitThursday, 15 September 11
SpaceX Dragon
LAS (Launch Abort System) to enable powered landings
Thursday, 15 September 11
SpaceX: Falcon Heavy53 metric tons to LEO
Thursday, 15 September 11
COTS & CCDev
• COTS: Commercial Cargo to ISS
- SpaceX (Dragon)- Orbital (Cygnus)
• CCDev: Commercial Crew to ISS
- SpaceX (Dragon)- Sierra Nevada Corp. (Dream Chaser)- Boeing (CST-100)- Blue Origin
• Funding in low hundred million $
Thursday, 15 September 11
Bigelow Aerospace
• Founded by construction magnate Robert Bigelow in 1999
• Commercial space stations, based on “Transhab” inflatable habitat technology developed at NASA JSC
• Two subscale demonstrators already in orbit (Genesis-1, II).
• Leases access to stations, $8 million/month
• Oct 2010: Signed MOUs with Japan, Singapore, Netherlands, Sweden, Australia, UK. Full-scale due to launch 2014.
Thursday, 15 September 11
Bigelow Aerospace: Full-scale mockups of space station modules
Thursday, 15 September 11
Thursday, 15 September 11
Private Space Stations• Excalibur Almaz
(US/Russia/Isle of Man)
• Orbital Technologies(Russia)
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Return to the Moon... ...this time to stay
Thursday, 15 September 11
• £30M prize for first commercial rover on lunar surface. First landing by 2015.
• 29 teams competing, includes major universities and aerospace companies
• Rover must land, travel 500 metres, return science data and HD video
Google Lunar X-Prize
Astrobotic (US) Odyssey Moon (US, UK)
Thursday, 15 September 11
Circumlunar flight
• Space Adventures planning circumlunar flight ($150M/seat)
• One ticket already sold, one under negotiation
• Modified Soyuz plus boost stage, “free return” trajectory (similar to Apollo 13)
• Flight expected around 2016.
DSE Spacecraft
Thursday, 15 September 11
Mining the Moon & Asteroids
• Helium-3 from lunar soil, fuel for fusion reactors (Harrison Schmitt et al.)
• Platinum group metals (Paul Spudis et al.)
• Rare earth elements (MoonEx)
• Iron, aluminium, titanium...
• Oxygen from lunar minerals
• Water (Shackleton Energy Company)
Thursday, 15 September 11
Satellite Solar Power
• April 2009: Pacific Gas & Electric makes agreement to purchase space solar power from Solaren
Thursday, 15 September 11
Future NASA PolicyThursday, 15 September 11
NASA Budget Challenges
SLS: Space Launch System
Commercial Crew
Science Missions
$$
$$
$$
Exploration Tech$16bn to first flight
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Deep Space Missions?
Design for a “true spacecraft” proposed by NASA Technology Applications Assessment Team
Thursday, 15 September 11