The Victory of Low-cost or The changing space race This little article for December holidays is really
just to play with your imagination. However, it is all factual stuff (as usual) so lean back and let the imagination flow a bit. Did you see the news about the SpaceX’ Falcon 9 rocket? That it launched, delivered eleven small satellites in orbit and returned its first stage to
Have you seen that they carry their own laptops and USB sticks and so on? Like off to the office in the morning. Instead of flying spare parts up there, they have a 3D printer. So if a part is needed, just download the image file and print it. Then suit up and get outside to replace it. So, it is now a daily routine and nothing out of the extra-ordinary. How did it come to this? Outsourcing equals low-cost Supplying the space station is now outsourced. NASA is not flying those missions anymore. So when there is a need for more milk and bread and so on, a supply vessel is typically coming around.
land back in a vertical position? It was proclaimed as a major break-through. Why was that? After all, a first stage of a rocked landing. Wow. The space shuttle did that. Engineering not science All this space stuff has gone from being science into engineering. When something has been done for the first time – science – it can be done again. But then it is just engineering. Difficult maybe, but known stuff. No more white lab coats, time for the hard hats.
All of that is now outsourced and one of the contractors is SpaceX. SpaceX is founded by Elom Musk who was also the inventor of PayPal. His goal is to lower the cost of space initiatives and enable colonisation of Mars. Sounds ambitious? Maybe not. It is about competition. Mr. Musk had to compete with a few others to get a contract to supply ISS. One of the companies who is also supplying ISS is from Japan. Another was from Europe (the ATV module) but now focused on other parts of space transport.
No more lab coats, time for hard hats
Have you seen the people on the missions to the space station now? A pilot and some science people and some of the practical one’s. One was sent there to fix the toilet. The plumber. The caretaker. The handyman. It really says that a trip to the space station is now a part of the daily routine. Just another day in the office. The latest person there (Tim the Brit) is a 42 year old man.
Simple calculation. Even I can still do it (I think). In essence. It is an industry now. And the one who can do it cheapest is the winner. Have you heard about a company called A4H? it stands for Astronauts for Hire. It is a company which is aiming at providing the pilots for different space transports. So, if you for instance like Bigelow who is aiming at building his own space station, you can actually outsource the transport and the pilots. Just like you will hire DHL to fly your stuff from Johannesburg to say Amsterdam. You wouldn’t build the jetliner yourself, would you?
But if you can re-use the rocket business? In the old days the equation would look like: if I need to put x tons into orbit, I need a rocket of x1 tons. If I cannot re-use it (the rocket drops into the ocean when burned out), the cost is:
… and the one with a bit of imagination (and admittedly a big wallet) who can do it cheapest and best will win.
Total cost: cost of fuel + cost of rocket + sundry If I can re-use the rocket say 100 times, the equation per launch is: Outsourcing in this end of the industry has unleashed the potential of business. And that means doing things according to business principles. That is cost and profit margins and share price. Nothing new. Laws of physics The horrible truth is that the laws of physics are to be obeyed. If you have to take say x tons of equipment into space, you need y energy to do it.
Total cost: cost of fuel + (cost of rocket/100) + sundry. THAT is the significance of landing the SpaceX Falcon 9 back on earth – vertically. It is not like the space shuttle where you had to do all kind of things before it could launch again. Here you just fill it up with fuel and off you go again. Let us look at real numbers: Total cost of launch of Falcon 9: $61 million. Let us call it a billion rand per launch. By re-using the first stage (and that is expensive stuff) AND make the software so much better (which is the next step), I might be able to reduce the launch cost to say $10 million. That is now down to 150 million rand per trip. Now all can be onboard.
What does it really mean? It means a lot. And there are some funny things in this mix: Bigelow wants to build his own space station. It can probably be used for space tourism as well – If the cost is low enough to get masses of people to buy – Cost per trip needs to go down so middle-class people can do it. We are aiming at the Ndlovu family, de Jager and so on. The people from Midrand and Brakpan, not necessarily people from Houghton and Hyde Park.
It will be a bonus if the raw materials could come from the moon (avoiding the launch cost from earth), but that is a bonus. Here is a ‘funny’ with space manufacturing: insofar as online commands will take a little while to get to a space station and also TV pictures, there is a need for remote manufacturing. It has to be a system that can react and do things on its own. That means ROBOTS!
The Victory of Low-cost
The next one which is much more fun is manufacturing. There are certain things which are just dangerous and toxic to manufacture here. But if we can manufacture it in space? Any toxic fumes will just disappear in space, literally. Or things which can really only be manufactured in space – weightless environments really? Like crystals. And remember the compressor blade in a jet engine is really just one metal-crystal. The efficiency of a jet engine will go down dramatically if it can be done at a reasonable launch cost to space.
So, we will have a fully robot-manned factory in space, where raw materials are automatically flown in and finished products picked up. All automated. Robots doing the actual manufacture without any intervention. And if something breaks? Download the design to the 3D printer and the robot will go fix it. Sounds too far out? Not really. Space is now just your back-yard. This is the conclusion: nothing to see here, just get on with it.