Private space - Per aspera ad astra

A few years ago, the prospects for private space were very vague. This is not surprising - developments related to the launch of spacecraft of the road, and the slightest errors lead to disastrous consequences. That is why for many years - from the dawn of space flights, and until recently - space remained available only to the governments of the leading world powers. But everything is changing. New players come to the market, the industry becomes a little more open and commercial, a little less bureaucratic and old-fashioned.

Cases of bygone days

Oddly enough, the first commercial attempts to develop a spacecraft were made quite a long time ago. In the distant 80s of the last century, the German company OTRAG announced its intention to create what is called the Common Rocket Propulsion Units (CRPU).
This missile was noticeably different from the multi-stage systems used at that time: the principle of its operation was based on the use of parallel, rather than sequential, steps. The company has developed unified missile modules - tubes with a diameter of 27 centimeters and a length of about 6 meters. Four such tubes, mounted one above the other, would turn into a 24-meter fuel tank, on one end of which a rocket engine was installed. These modules, in turn, were combined into concentric layers forming the stages of the rocket: the role of the first stage was played by the outer layer, the role of the last by the innermost. After working off the blocks of each stage, they had to be reset, reducing the mass and exposing the inner layers - an approximate start process is shown in the figure on the right.

The company conducted several test launches of single stages, but this did not go beyond this - in the mid-80s the project was closed, largely due to political pressure.

Roton

Now, let's move a dozen years ahead and several thousand kilometers to the west, to the Mojave desert in the western United States.


^{KMVH - Mojave Air and Space Port airfield}

Here, in the late 90s, a man named Gary Hudson founded the company Rotary Rocket, setting an ambitious goal to build a single-stage reusable manned spacecraft. Hudson believed that his creation would be able to reduce the price of launching goods into low Earth orbit by 10 times.

The initial idea was very interesting. Hudson and his partner Bevin McKinney (Bevin McKinney) were going to combine a traditional spacecraft with a kind of helicopter. The spacecraft had to have a rotor, at the ends of the blades of which there were special nozzles - a kind of miniature rocket engines; end jets from these nozzles were supposed to set the blades in motion. It was planned to use this rotor at the initial stage of launch in order to lift the spacecraft into the air. Then, after reaching the altitude at which aerodynamic flight of such a scheme became impractical, rocket engines would have come into play, and the rotor would have played the role of a giant turbopump. Initially, the company planned to use a unique rotating wedge-air engine, somewhat similar to the engine of the N-1 rocket, developed in the 60s in the USSR.


^{One of the test flights.}

Calculations showed that such an approach did increase the specific impulse a little, but only so much that it would "free" raise the mass of the rotor itself. In other words, the rotor did not give any advantage at startup, but also did not interfere. So why then do you need it, you ask. And he was needed to make a landing. The traditional schemes that were used then (and now are not far gone) for soft landing of the spacecraft were either a parachute system or wings. Helicopter landing has several advantages over them. Parachutes, unlike a propeller, do not give any opportunity to control the reduction process, and an apparatus with wings and an “airplane” landing depends on the infrastructure — it needs a strip to land. In addition, the weight of the rotor is less than the weight of the wings by about 5 times.

Alas, Hudson's dreams were also not destined to come true. In 2001, the company went bankrupt, and the Roton device they created for atmospheric testing today adorns the space center in Mojave as an eternal monument.


^{Roton today. It is quite high - 19 meters}

NASA, government and money

As I said, space launches of the road. Moreover, they are very expensive. According to Wikipedia, the launch of the Shuttle cost $ 500 million. The launch of the Union is approximately 50-70 million. Proton - 25-100 million. Atlas 5 - 180 million. This is an important reason that launches have remained the prerogative of governments for so long.

During the Cold War, when NASA struggled to overtake the USSR in the lunar race, its budget grew to incredible proportions - in the early 70s it amounted to almost 5 percent of the entire US national budget. Today, NASA receives about 10 times less - about $ 17 billion a year. This forces them to take various measures to reduce costs. One such measure is contracting with private for-profit companies. And if earlier such contracts provided for full government control over development, today NASA acts exclusively as a technology buyer, and not as a mentor overseer.

Of course, such contracts are a tidbit, so young and ambitious companies want to get them by tearing a significant chunk of the market from such giants as Boeing or Lockheed Martin.

Perhaps the most famous of these private companies is SpaceX. On Habré there are quite a lot of articles devoted to this company; for example, you can find a bunch of very impressive videos with Grasshopper launches.

Spacex

SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who is also the founder of Tesla Motors, said that he always wanted to change the world, and space is exactly what will change the world to the greatest extent. SpaceX has come a long way from its founding in 2002 to the moment when it became the first commercial company that managed to put into orbit and successfully return to Earth a spacecraft, as well as the first company to which the spacecraft docked with the ISS.


^{Musk against the backdrop of Falcon 9}

The first step of the company was the Falcon 1 rocket, of which five out of five launches were successful. In September 2008, the rocket first reached orbit with a mass-scale model on board, and six months later it launched the RazakSAT satellite into orbit.

Falcon 1 was followed by Falcon 9. More than twice the size of the Falcon 1, it was the two-stage Falcon 9 that marked the success of the company. This rocket is capable of delivering cargo to both low Earth (up to 12 tons of payload) and geosynchronous orbit (up to 4 tons). At the same time, the cost of putting a kilogram of cargo into low orbit is about $ 4,000, and according to Mask, this figure is quite realistic to reduce to the level of $ 1,000. By 2015, SpaceX intends to make it possible to fully reuse the first stage through propulsion landing technologies that are now being honed on Grasshopper rockets. Then the company plans to make the entire rocket reusable, which will further reduce the cost of launches.


^{Launch of Falcon 9}

In addition to delivery vehicles, SpaceX's assets also include spacecraft. Firstly, of course, Dragon - it was he who docked with the ISS on May 25, 2012. This is a reusable ship, the return of which to Earth occurs by splashing in the ocean. SpaceX plans to equip it with a vertical landing system using the thrust of 18 accelerators that Dragon is equipped with. It should be noted that in its current form Dragon is a cargo ship. As part of the NASA Commercial Crew integrated Capability program, SpaceX is also developing its manned version of DragonRider, which will have to deliver a crew of up to 7 people into orbit.


Finally, the company has a Red Dragon project - a landing module, which theoretically can be delivered to Mars by 2018. At the company's suggestion, he should deliver equipment to the Red Planet to collect samples and return them to Earth. Unfortunately, as of the fall of 2013, NASA has no plans to finance this project due to budgetary constraints. However, SpaceX already has a number of profitable contracts with NASA, the last of which, providing for 12 launches to the ISS over the next few years, will bring SpaceX almost 1.8 billion budget money

Sierra nevada

Naturally, SpaceX is not the only candidate for NASA contracts. For example, the Sierra Nevada company, which developed the Dream Chaser reusable ship - a kind of Shuttle replacement - received a number of large grants from the Agency, the total amount of which is approaching $ 500 million.


^{Dream Chaser}

Dream Chaser is a vertical take-off and horizontal aerodynamic landing apparatus; it can deliver up to 7 people to low Earth orbit. Launches are planned to be made using the Atlas-5 launch vehicle. It is also worth noting that the ship can also be used for suborbital flight - for space tourism.

The configuration of Dream Chaser allows you to reduce the overload when entering the atmosphere to 1.5g, which is very, very small. Moreover, for landing he does not need any special infrastructure - he can land on any runway capable of receiving commercial airliners. By the way, it was Sierra Nevada who developed the engines for SpaceShipOne, which in 2004 received the Ansari X-Prise as the first private aircraft to cross the Pocket line.

October 26, 2013, that is, more recently, the first test flight of Dream Chaser took place. Using a helicopter, the device was raised to a height of about 4 kilometers and thrown down. His task was to independently get to the runway and make an automatic landing; the flight duration should have been about a minute. After breaking away from the helicopter, Dream Chaser successfully reached the airfield, perfectly aligned with the axial lane, and began to land, however, for some reason, the left landing gear did not come out of the device, and after touching the lane, it landed on its side and moved into the desert .


^{The same Dream Chaser flight.}

Observing it after leaving the strip was almost impossible due to the large amount of dust raised. However, when experts began to inspect the ship, they found that the cabin was not damaged, and that all the equipment was working properly.

You should not think, however, that NASA has completely switched to supporting private development. The Old Guard - those companies that have received defense contracts in the aerospace industry for years - are also not averse to grabbing a piece of their pie. Perhaps the most powerful player among them is the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed-Martin. These guys have vast experience - Lockheed was involved, among other things, in developing Atlas-5 missiles, which I mentioned above, and Boeing - in developing rockets of the Delta family. Everything does not prevent, however, private space from successfully expanding its sphere of influence.

Blue origin

Another player, this time focused on space tourism, is Blue Origin, founded by Amazon co-founder Jeff Bezos. Initially, the company set itself an ambitious goal to carry out one suborbital launch per week in 2010. Unfortunately, such plans were too optimistic. The dates were shifted to 2011 for unmanned, and 2012 for manned flights. But the company did not fit into this framework. As of the end of 2013, alas, there is no new information about the approximate dates of the first launch.

But what does the Blue Origin asset have? First, they cannot be denied enthusiasm. Bezos dreamed about space at school, and at the age of 18 he talked about how he wants to launch space hotels and amusement parks so that up to 2-3 million people could be in orbit at the same time. Secondly, they have several successful projects.

The first development of Blue Origin was the Charon system, which on March 5, 2005, successfully climbed to a height of about 100 meters, and then made a controlled landing at the launch point. The second step was the Goddart, which took off for the first time in November 2006 and, according to the FAA, completed two more test launches.

One of the main developments of the company is the ship New Shepard, designed for suborbital flights. As planned, the control of the ship should be completely carried out by the on-board computer. The first test flight took place on August 24, 2011, and ended in failure - according to the company, at an altitude of 14 kilometers and a speed of 1.2 Mach, the device went beyond acceptable values ​​of the angle of attack, and the security system turned off the engines. This is another reminder that space does not forgive mistakes.


^{New Shepard}

At the end of 2012, the company successfully conducted tests on the emergency shooting of the capsule from the prototype of the launch vehicle. The capsule rose to a height of about 700 meters, and then successfully made a soft landing with parachutes.

Blue Origin also has a reusable orbital spacecraft project. Any suitable reusable launch vehicle should bring the ship to a suborbital trajectory, and then return to Earth. The spacecraft itself, using its own engines, must continue acceleration until the specified parameters of the orbit are reached. Entrance to the atmosphere and landing should be provided by means similar to those of New Shepard. To date, the company has successfully tested propulsion systems.

Naturally, Blue Origin successfully collaborates with NASA, having received from the Agency about $ 30 million for various stages of development, mainly we are talking about work on propulsion systems.

Heading to Mars!

But what about our beloved Red Planet? After all, probably interplanetary flight is a much more complicated matter, and inaccessible to private companies?

Not really.

First, all of you must have heard of Mars One. This ambitious project, conceived by Bas Lansdorp, has already started, and has even gathered more than 200 thousand volunteers who are ready to participate in the selection of applicants for a manned flight, which should take place in 2022. By the way, for the flight to Mars, the company plans to use a modified version of the Mars One Dragon from SpaceX. Well, the Falcon 9 Heavy rocket of the same company will have to lift it from Earth.

The first unmanned launches under the Mars One program are scheduled for 2018, so there is not much time to wait.

The creators of the project assure us that the cost of sending people one way, and supplying them with everything necessary until their death, will not exceed $ 6 billion. From all this, they also want to arrange a grand reality show, on the funds from which it is planned to finance the expedition.


^{Something like that, the creators of the project imagine a Martian colony.}

Although there are a sufficient number of specialists on the list of project advisers, many are still very skeptical of this undertaking, believing that the founders of Mars One do not have a sufficiently deep understanding of all the problems that they will encounter. Time will tell who is right.

But Mars One is not the only private attempt to send people to Mars. For example, the first space tourist Dennis Tito founded the Inspiration Mars organization a few months ago, the purpose of which is to launch an expedition in 2018 to fly around Mars and return to Earth.

The flight, whose pericenter height is 160 km from the surface of Mars, will have to last 501 days. A crew of two people will try to take advantage of the rapprochement of Mars and Earth, which will happen in 2018, and will minimize the cost of fuel for the flight.

Tito and his co-authors drafted a paper describing the technical side of the expedition and submitted it to IEEE for consideration. However, in connection with their calculations, a number of questions arise. So, for example, none of the existing media is suitable for putting into orbit modules of the weight and size that are indicated in the report. You could use the SLA NASA system to start, but it is unlikely that it will be completed by 2017.


^{Residential capsule and returnable module, in the artist's view}

This project, like Mars One, is subjected to some criticism. So, for example, one of the articles of the Economist magazine raises the question of the effects of cosmic radiation during flight, as well as the safety of returning to Earth due to the high speed of entry into the Earth’s atmosphere on the way back.

On the other hand, Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society, believes that the project is technically feasible, and the main problem is to obtain the necessary funds.

Representatives of NASA note a small amount of time remaining before the expected launch, space radiation, as well as problems of the psychology and physiology of the crew staying in a limited space for 500 days. In any case, as in the situation with Mars One, we will find out the answers pretty soon - after all, very little is left until 2018.

Outside of the USA

Private space is not limited only to the United States. For example, the British company Excalibur Almaz announced its readiness to begin commercial flights around the moon in 2015. Their ship has already completed 9 successful test flights, and the main problem, according to company representatives, is now obtaining all the necessary licenses.

The spacecraft developed by Excalibur Almaz is made on the basis of the return vehicle of the Transport Supply Ship, developed in the USSR in the 70s of the last century, and literally “made”. In 2011, the company received two spacecraft hulls used in the Almaz program, and plans to “Use these modules in order to provide additional space for tourists and researchers.” They approximately correspond to the Zvezda module from the ISS Russian segment, that is, they will provide about 95 cubic meters of space with their own weight of about 29 tons. All electronics modules will be completely replaced by modern.


^{The moon around the ship of the company, in the artist's view}

At the same time, company representatives also note that due to modernization, solutions have already been tested many times instead of development from scratch, they will be able to save a total of about $ 2 billion. Launches are planned to be carried out from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Proton rockets.

Copenhagen Suborbitals, a non-profit organization from Denmark, founded in 2008, also deserves special mention.

The first large missile developed by them was the HEAT-1X. It is a single-stage missile with a length of 9 meters and a diameter of 64 centimeters, which was launched on June 3, 2011. The rocket successfully launched and managed to gain a height of 2.8 kilometers, when the engine had to be switched off remotely from the ground due to the exceeding of the vertical deviation by the rocket.


^{Heat 1X on the launch platform}

SMARAGD and Sapphire rockets, launched in 2012 and 2013, respectively, followed. The launch of the first of them was only partially successful - some time after the launch, the electronics failed. But the launch of the second, which was designed to work out the flight control system, went without any problems. The company's ultimate goal is to develop the Heat-1600 rocket, suitable for suborbital flight.

At the same time, the company is developing manned capsules. The first pancake came out lumpy - the project of the Tycho Brahe experimental capsule, in which the astronaut was supposed to be standing, was rejected after the first test on a mannequin due to too large vertical overloads during launch.

The second capsule was launched as part of the emergency rescue system test. She successfully detached and released the parachutes, however, due to aerodynamic instability, she did not have time to gain a safe height, as a result of which the parachutes did not have time to fill with air, and the capsule fell into the water, having received some damage.

It is important to understand that the staff of this organization are volunteers, and none of them is a rocket science professional. Given this, as well as the fact that they work, in fact, for donations and own funds, the fact that they managed to build a full-size rocket is a very, very significant achievement.

In Russia, the bright representative of private space is the Dauria Aerospace company, which has its own blog on Habré, and Zelenyikot will probably tell you about the successes of which more than once .

Conclusion

So, today, private space is no longer science fiction, but reality. Of course, this is a titanic work. For example, Musk, who has to manage both SpaceX and Tesla at the same time, says that “Everything is complicated when things go well, and it is incredibly difficult if something goes wrong,” and he is undoubtedly right. Space does not forgive mistakes. One need only make a little mistake - and all efforts can be wasted. In this business, from success to failure is not even one step - but much less. But we, of course, will hope that all this will result in something big and serious. That launches will become cheaper, and their reliability will grow, and in a few years or decades, each of us will be able to afford to fly once into space.