Chase For Space - The Book

INTERVIEWS WITH BURT RUTAN, BRIAN BINNIE AND YURI IVANOVICH MALENCHENKO

AN ARCHITECTURE CHALLENGE FOR THE FUTURE NEJC TROŠT PROLOGUE BY PETER GABRIJELCIC FOREWORD BY JOHN ZUKOWSKY WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM ŠPELA HUDNIK JAN TROŠT MARKO PELJHAN

AN ARCHITECTURE CHALLENGE FOR THE FUTURE NEJC TRO Š T PROLOGUE BY PETER GABRIJELCIC FOREWORD BY JOHN ZUKOWSKY WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM ŠPELA HUDNIK, JAN TROŠT AND MARKO PELJHAN INTERVIEWS WITH BURT RUTAN, BRIAN BINNIE AND YURI IVANOVICH MALENCHENKO

John Zukowsky

43 ZERO GRAVITY ART

13 A BRIEF HISTORY OF AEROSPACE

09 INTRODUCTION

06 PROFILE: John Zukowsky

07 FOREWORD

Peter Gabrijelcic

05 PROLOGUE

04 PROFILE: Peter Gabrijelcic

13 AVIATION

42 PROFILE: Marko Peljhan

43 Gravity rainbows and other fantastic discoveries - the renewed culturalization of space

15 SPACE

44 PROFILE: Nasser Azam

45 LIFE IN SPACE - NEW WORKS BY NASSER AZAM

46 PROFILE: Bradley Pitts

47 SINGULAR OSCILLATIONS

19 Herman Potocnik Noordung 24 PROFILE: Jan Trošt

25 ARCHITECTURE AND FLIGHT - FROM VISIONS TO ARCHETYPE 25 Pioneering times 25 Utopian Visions 27 Flight and the theory of Modernism

50 PROFILE: Dragan Živadinov, Miha Turšic

51 POSTGRAVITY ART 51 Blank-body directing

29 Airport design reality

51 Vector directing

31 An airplane in every garage

53 Biomehanika Noordung, 1999

33 Visions from the 60’s

53 Fifty-year theater perfonrmance, Noordung 1995-2045

33 Visions from the 21st century

57 Cultural Center of European Space Technologies - KSEVT

35 Epilogue

37 AEROSPACE / ARCHITECTURE TIMELINE

109 BLUE ORIGIN

63 SPACEPORT MARIBOR

111 SPACE EXPLORATION TECHNOLOGIES - SPACEX

65 Applying the flight experience to architectural design

82 PROFILE: Xavier Clarmunt

86 PROFILE: DDOCK Design Development 88 PROFILE: ONL, K. Oosterhuis, Ilona Lénárd 92 PROFILE: Reed Finlay

113 COPENHAGEN SUBOTBITALS 115 TALIS ENTERPRISE

75 MOJAVE AIR AND SPACEPORT

119 XCOR AEROSPACE

77 SPACEPORT AMERICA

121 EADS ASTRIUM

83 GALACTIC SUITE SPACEPORT

123 DREAM CHASER

85 SPACEPORT SWEDEN

127 BIGELOW AEROSPACE

87 CARIBBEAN SPACEPORT

129 GALACTIC SUITE SPACE RESORT

89 SPACE EXPEDITION CURAÇAO

131 ORBITAL TECHNOLOGIES COMMERCIAL SPACE STATION OT-CSS

93 EARTHSTATION SPACEPORT SCI-Arc

135 SKYLON SPACECRAFT

93 A New Building Type 95 Opportunity 95 Capitalizing

138 PROFILE: Burt Rutan

139 INTERVIEW WITH BURT RUTAN

146 PROFILE: Brian Binnie

147 INTERVIEW WITH BRIAN BINNIE

154 PROFILE: Yuri Ivanovich Malenchenko

169 PICTURE CREDITS

167 BIBLIOGRAPHY

165 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

155 INTERVIEW WITH YURI IVANOVICH MALENCHENKO

175 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

107 VIRGIN GALACTIC

61 SPACEPORT WORLD MAP

63 Conceptual design

76 PROFILE: Foster + Partners

163 EPILOGUE

59 Extraterrestrial socialization

171 INDEX

58 PROFILE: Špela Hudnik

139 INTERVIEWS

59 SPACEPORT ARCHITECTURE

103 SPACESHIPS AND ORBITAL HABITAT STRUCTURES

CONTENTS

1 Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded R&D center and NASA field center located in the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles County, California, U.S. 2 Marshall Space Flight Center, March 1998, NP-1998-3-11-MSFC, accessed at: http://www.spacefuture.com in October 2010.

3 Space Tourism Market Study by Futron (orbital space travel & destinations with sub-orbital space travel), October 2002.

4 The Ansari X PRIZE was modeled after the Orteig Prize, won by Charles Lindbergh in 1927 for being the first to fly non-stop from New York to Paris, and mirrored the hundreds of aviation incentive prizes offered early in the 20th century that helped create today’s $300 billion commercial aviation industry. Dr. Peter Diamandis designed the prize, supported by the Ansari family, after reading The Spirit of St. Louis about the winning of the Orteig Prize.

In 1996, he formally announced the prize in St. Louis.

LEFT (1) AND RIGHT (2) Pam Am First Moon Flight Club membership card

5 The twenty five teams were the following: Acceleration Engineering, Advent Launch Services, Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association, Armadillo Aerospace, American Astronautics Corporation, Bristol Spaceplanes, Ltd, Canadian Arrow, The da Vinci Project, Pablo de Leon & Associates, Discraft Corporation, Flight Exploration, Fundamental Technology Systems, HARC, IL Aerospace Technologies, Interorbital Systems, Kelly Space and Technology, Lone Star Space Access Corporation, Micro-Space, Inc., PanAero, Inc., Pioneer Rocketplane, Scaled Composites, Starchaser Industries, Suborbital Corporation. TGV Rockets, Vanguard Spacecraft.

6 The Google Lunar X PRIZE is a $30 million competition for the first privately funded team to send a robot to the Moon, travel 500 m and transmit video, images and data back to Earth.

7 Architectural Digest published the “2000+” issue related to space already in February 1967 and the same magazine published the Space Architecture issue, edited by Dr. Rachel Armstrong in 2000.

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Chase For Space

Introduction

INTRODUCTION One could argue that the commercialization of space and the start of space tourism started on Christmas

After the Ansari X Prize, the “unmanned” Google LUNAR X Prize6 was announced, demonstrating that the

Eve in 1968, seventeen minutes after the direct TV transmission from the Apollo 8 orbiting around the Moon,

commercialization of space travel, the leisure industry, tourism and private space research is definitely on the

when Juan Trippe, the legendary founder of Pan American World Airways (hereinafter Pan Am) announced that

rise again and things are really starting to happen. The current commercial success of the Space Exploration

his company would start taking reservations for commercial flights to the Moon. The following day the New York

Technologies Corporation - SpaceX, with their Falcon family of launch vehicles and Dragon spacecraft, the seven

Times reported the story and the fact that Pan Am started the “First Moon Flights” Club, and Trans World Airways

private space researchers on the ISS from 2001 to 2011 and the establishment of Virgin Galactic and the design

followed suit soon after. By 1972, over 100,000 people had joined the club free of charge. The era of space tourism

of SpaceShipTwo, are proof that there is a clear movement toward private citizen access to space, and with it, a

had officially started, helped in no small way by the appearance of the Pan Am Orion III Space Clipper spaceplane

redefinition of spaceflight from a highly complex operation that needs years or at least months of training to one

in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in the same year, when the movie premiered on April 2, 1968. Despite

that is open to whomever can afford it and wants to experience orbital or sub-orbital flight, without much prior

the fact that the promised Pan Am commercial flights failed to materialize by the year 2001, the quest for private

training and preparation. This in turn brings us to the topic of this publication, which is to understand what kind

and civilian access to sub-orbital space, the orbit and beyond continued and we have witnessed several important

of designs, what kind of architecture and what kind of practice needs to be envisaged in order to make this shift

developments in this direction in the last two decades.

possible.

In 2001, Dennis Tito, an aerospace engineer and an investment consultant who had a stint at JPL1 and runs his own

Humans have from time immemorial built structures that have astronomical relationships to the sky, sun, planets and

quantitative investment consultancy in Los Angeles, first started discussing the possibility of traveling to the now

constellations. For fifty years, the architecture discipline has ventured into the creation of orbital and extraterrestrial

de-orbited Mir space station with MirCorp. He started training and was accepted as a candidate cosmonaut by the

structures and started thinking about them in depth7. With current prospects of mass space travel, architecture

Russian Federal Space Agency. His flight was arranged through Space Adventures in the end, which became a go-to

is again re-thinking the design of infrastructures for space on Earth and in orbit, with all their complexities. This

agency for all future civilian and private space flight participants who could afford the price tag. Tito traveled to the

publication is a short overview of some of the current trends in this direction and should in no way be seen as

Earth’s orbit aboard the Russian Soyuz TM-32 spacecraft and spent almost 8 days on the ISS. Civilian orbital space

a definite list and enumeration. It is more popular science writing than research for a purpose, since we want to

travel, at a cost of approximately $15-30 million per passenger, is still far too expensive and reflects the complex

bring it closer to a wider audience. We are here, just scratching the surface of a field that will in our opinion see an

cost structure of government-led space programs.

expansive growth in the very near future.

Despite advances in technology since 1961, when Yuri Gagarin first orbited the Earth in the Vostok 1 spacecraft, the costs of access to low Earth orbit (hereinafter LEO) have not decreased. In 1998 NASA published a study entitled “General Public Space Travel and Tourism - Volume 1 Executive Summary”2 and in 2002 a market research study conducted by the company Futron3 revealed that the interested target group is prepared to pay approximately $100,000 per person for a flight into space. The announcement of the $10 million Ansari X Prize4 in 1996 challenged engineers and private sector investors to develop an innovative spaceship which would bring three people twice within a period of two weeks to an altitude of 100 km above the Earth’s surface. Twenty five teams took part in the competition5 and the prize was awarded on October 4, 2004 to the Scaled Composites team for their twostage system SpaceShipOne, created under the leadership of the notorious and innovative aerospace designer and engineer Burt Rutan and the investor Paul Allen, one of Microsoft’s co-founders.

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Earth seen from Space Shuttle, mission STS-127 (3)

ÂťMan must rise above the Earth - to the top of the atmosphere and beyond - for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives.ÂŤ Socrates

RIGHT (12) Potocnik’s illustration of inhabitable wheel

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Chase For Space

A Brief History Of Aerospace

therefore not surprising that a version of Potočnik’s space station appeared in Collier’s weekly magazine when Von

The introduction in Noordung’s book:

Braun presented his vision for a U.S. space program in March 1952. This type of space station was also featured in

Already in the past, a man believed that he is chained

the 1955 Walt Disney documentary film Man and the Moon. It also later appeared in Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001:

to the Earth because of his ground-term weakness and

A Space Odyssey in 1968 and in many other films.

inadequacy to liberate himself from the mysterious weight. The concept of supersensible is not without avail

The Problem of Space Travel - The Rocket Motor is a masterpiece, which at the time of release was certainly a

always linked with the thought of zero gravity and the

visionary piece of work. It is highly technically oriented and tries to explain the problems related to space travel in

power with which we could be lifted up into the sky.

a simple and accessible way. The book acted as a manual for a whole generation, through facilitating mankind’s

And even today a kind of dogma still dominates so that

first steps into space. Potočnik imagined a journey into space as a problem with many obstacles, but he believed

humans cannot imagine being lifted above the Earth. Is

that technically these obstacles could be overcome, if there was enough determination to do so. Methods of travel

this view in fact justified? As we can remember: a few

to the lower orbit, as described by Noordung, are now becoming a reality in the form of sub-orbital space tourism.

decades ago it was a firmly rooted belief that it would be

This was originally designed through the process of a vertical climb to a height of 100 km, where passengers

arrogant to hope that we will ever fly through the air like

would enjoy few minutes of zero gravity state. This technology will also be used in the future for point-to-point

birds. And today, with the evidence and the effectiveness

transportation in the lower parabola, which will drastically transform the experience of flying to a completely new

of science and art, should mankind not try to solve the

dimension and significantly reduce flight time around the globe.

last outstanding issue, the problem of space travel? As if on purpose, the technical fantasies, which until now were

With the development of more powerful engines for such flying devices and some reentry innovations, flights

present only in the fantasy novels, have been researched

into Earth’s orbit will be possible in the future. This could open up many new opportunities and accelerate the

in recent years by several experts and engineers in their

commercialization of space flight. Increased human presence in space will require careful consideration of the living

mathematical, physical and technical surveys - and they

environment in a zero gravity state. As a result this will introduce a new interdisciplinary branch of architecture -

found out that the technical issues can be solved.

space architecture - which is often defined as one of the professions with the greatest perspectives for the future .

What is more, we already have studies program at Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA),

[Source: The Problem of Space Travel, Herman Potočnik

which is internationally recognized for its leadership in the field of space architecture.

Noordung, pp. 9, 1929.]

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Chase For Space

TWA Terminal at Idlewild airport, designed by Eero Saarinen (13)

»The purpose of architecture is to shelter and anhance man’s life on earth and to fulfill his belief in the nobility of his existence.« Eero Saarinen, 1968

10 The view from above - the perception of architecture from the air changed the architects’ view on future designs. Form is reshaped and size reduced when viewed from above. This was an important shift from the renaissance relationship between the horizon, the observer and the observed object. The freeing of the point of view meant new design possibilities and opportunities but one thing was certain from that point on - architects will have to design the shape from the bird perspective even more carefully in the future.

LEFT (22) H. Alvater - Lehigh Airports Competition entry, 1929 RIGHT (23) L. Wright - Lehigh Airports Competition entry, 1929

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Chase For Space

A Brief History Of Aerospace

a narrow structure that was wrapped like a lasso around a circular runway. The jury believed that this strange

flight attendants and stewardesses, who in a way became fashion models. The 1960s were marked by increasing

and marginal placement did not meet any of the criteria in terms of what an airport should actually look like. His

mobility. The Beatles, for instance, traveled by jet plane during their worldwide tours and created true little cultural

vision was so futuristic and advanced that it was not taken seriously. However, it had predicted the development

revolutions upon arrival at the airports. In the summer of 1960, more than 120,000 young Americans spent their

possibilities and design guidelines for the future10. At the dawn of WWII both the U.S. and Germany knew that

summer vacations in Europe. During the 1960s airports started to expand rapidly. This expansion created new

airport infrastructure would have a crucial role in the case of conflict. Adolf Hitler propagated aircraft research as

challenges for urban planners and architects: airports were not merely traveling infrastructure but were in fact

one of the great achievements of the Third Reich. Tempelhof in Berlin became an important point in the European

becoming self-sustainable urban centers. With their own police, fire department, hotels, stores, power plants,

aerial network and Roosevelt on the other side of the Atlantic was well aware of that. In fact, it was Tempelhof the

conference halls and sometimes even theaters and night clubs, airports were becoming small cities. The connection

Americans were thinking of when they began the construction of LaGuardia in New York.

to the city and integration into its traffic systems had become increasingly difficult and thus crucial in the earliest urban design phases.

After WWII ended and societies worldwide relaxed, the expansion of air travel and airport development played a key role in post-war re-socialization. The transformation from military to civilian applied not only to ground

AN AIRPLANE IN EVERY GARAGE

infrastructure, but to aircraft too. After the B-29 bomber dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima it was later

After WWII, separated from the mainstream idea of big urban airports, a new idea arose - the concept

transformed into a passenger plane by Boeing. In post-war America runways were still too short, terminals too

of fly-in communities. With affordable cars and the freedom they represented, the idea of personal aircraft was

small, there were several security issues, and baggage claim still took more time than flying itself. LaGuardia, the

inevitable. Although the idea of a widely available airplane-automobile failed, the concept of the personal and

best known American airport, was literally sinking. Only two years after the grand opening, the artificial dune on

family oriented type of airport took root. One of the first conceptual plans for a fly-in community was envisioned

which the airport stood was sinking and consequently the airport was unable to expand. Plans for LaGuardia’s

by Frank Lloyd Wright in his Broadacre City (1932-1958) design. He saw the city as a new model of decentralization

reconstruction were abandoned since the project was too expensive. It had become clear that the city needed

- the inhabitants would own the land they lived on and they would be highly self-reliant and mobile using their

a new airport. This lead to the birth of Idlewild Airport, which was renamed to JFK in 1963. The design was

personal flying machines - aerators. This project was again an invaluable contribution to the paper architecture

remarkably symmetrical - hangars and warehouses were placed at the edge of the field. The initial proposal was

legacy - the highly utopian project was an inspiration for similar projects in future but was never realized. It is worth

truly immense in size. It was so enormous it was difficult to imagine. Because of logistical and financial issues related

mentioning that Wright’s ideas in Broadacre City differed from other futuristic projects - he for one did not see the

to the initial plans, the design was scaled down and the initial composition changed.

technology itself to be the savior of humankind but nevertheless believed that new models of transportation would be liberating.

In the 1950s, jet planes were not believed to be economically viable due to their high fuel consumption. They were not used for longer flights and a general mistrust developed around jet-powered crafts. This can also be attributed

After WWII there were only a few fly-in communities built and Sierra Sky Park in 1946 was probably the first. The

to a great number of accidents suffered by the British aircraft Comet. It was not until the development and unveiling

development slowly continued throughout the fifties and sixties but a real boost came in the seventies. McKinley

of the Boeing 707 that this perception changed. It was a revolution. Traveling in style and luxury, the U.S. was only

Conway was a key figure in the development of modern fly-in communities also known as airparks. He privately

seven hours away from Europe. Time zones were surpassed for the first time as the plane flew at approximately

developed the airpark Spruce Creek in the late 1960s and published the book The Airport City Development

600 miles per hour. As in the 1930s when the design of the DC-3 aircraft inspired architects, the Boeing 707 was a

Concepts for the 21st century in 1977. In his book he describes the main characteristics of fly-in communities. He

technological marvel that become the source of inspiration for designers in the mid-1950s. The term “jet” implied

argues that fly-in communities are planned with the runway as the main street or artery and the houses are placed

speed, luxury and modern technology. The speed of travel was reflected in fashionable design and well-dressed

alongside the airstrip in a pattern very similar to typical suburban settlements. He proposed two types of houses -

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Chase For Space

VSS Enterprise glide flight (31)

»Just like when early airplanes were flying in 1910, we didn’t know what the benefits are, but we were doing it because it was fun.« Burt Rutan

UP (50) Spaceport Maribor Atrium

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Chase For Space

Spaceport Architecture

The building blends into the park and vice versa. Passengers stand in a very advanced technological site, but have the feeling that they are within nature, since they are surrounded by it from all sides. Upon entering the facility the aircraft and spaceships are on display in the mighty central perspective, alongside columns and tree-structured pillars and an outer mesh structure. The interior is transparent as far as possible in order to maintain visual contact between the passenger and the spaceships. Despite the fact that the floor plan of the building is orthogonal, the outer roof is very dynamic and designed as an organic form. The floor design is divided into two symmetrical parts: the International passenger terminal is positioned on the North-West side and the Spaceport and aviation center is located on the other side. Programs are connected by a wide corridor, which flows into the central part of the park.

The passenger terminal is designed in a classical way as a half-level terminal. The spaceport section is designed in a similar manner. The departures floor is connected throughout the entire facility to facilitate further expansion of the airport. The information office, where people can buy tickets for various types of flights (panoramic, acrobatic, charter flights, flight simulators, zero gravity flight, etc.) is located in the main spaceport hall. The central terminal space also serves as a museum space. Flight simulators, stores, a medical center and classrooms for training pilots are located on the ground floor next to the information office. This space could eventually also serve as a convention center. The balcony in the central part is open to visitors and it accommodates restaurants, shops and a security control point, which leads into the departure hall. There are rooms designated to preparing passengers to fly with sub-orbital spaceships and zero gravity flights, with integrated chairs for required relaxation before this unique flight experience.

APPLYING THE FLIGHT EXPERIENCE TO ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN Hypothesis Airport terminals have been built in a variety of ways in the past. While not much importance was attached to the design of the first airports, architects and designers further down the line started using architecture to produce a variety of different sensations amongst passengers. Flying is still linked today with a certain degree of fear and stress. In the early period of aviation, flying meant travel into the unknown; an experience where passengers were confronted with new perspectives and time differences. Over time this has started to be reflected in the architecture of the passenger’s terminals. The airport terminal should represent an experience, which is repeated in the air. In this respect, the flying experience is brought closer to people through certain architectural designs and the airport terminal starts to imitate the flight experience itself. The majority of today’s airports comply with the fundamentals

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Spaceport Maribor, apron view (52)

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Earthstation Spaceport, perspective view (76)

Nejc TroĹĄt is an architect and designer who also works in the field of aerospace, art and technology.

He completed his studies at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Ljubljana writing a thesis on future commercial space travel and its influence on the architecture discipline.

Extreme environment design is one of his main fields of interest. During his studies, he was greatly involved in projects related to extreme living conditions and extreme spatial situations. In 2009 and 2010, he participated in expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic, where he and his colleagues were involved in the design of new environmentally friendly mobile living units.

In 2008 he participated in weightless flights in Star City in Russia, where he helped set up and organize experimental art projects that were implemented in a weightless state inside airplane llyushin IL-76MDK. In the 30’s parabolas, he and his team experienced an unforgettable 12 minutes of weightlessness. His consequent fascination with the experience of movement in weightless space lead him to devote the last two years of his study and research to spaceport architecture design.

In 2010 he lived for 5 months in Japan where he worked in an architecture design office. He has been collaborating with intermedia artist Marko Peljhan since 2004 on many different projects and he is a co-founder of C-Astral unmanned aerial systems company.

TROŠT, Nejc, 1982-

Text © Nejc Trošt 2011

Chase for space : an architecture challenge for the future / Nejc Trošt ; prologue Peter Gabrijelčič ; foreword John Zukowsky ;

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

[contributions by Špela Hudnik, Jan Trošt & Marko Peljhan]. - 1st

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

ed., 1st printing. - Ljubljana : Faculty of Architecture, 2011

including photocopy, recording or any information retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN 978-961-6823-14-2 First edition, first printing, 1000 copies Proofreading by Amy Skinner Publisher:

Designed by Janja Gomezel and Nejc Trošt

University of Ljubljana,

Printed in Slovenia by Božnar in partner

Faculty of Architecture, Zoisova 12 SI - 1000 Ljubljana

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“It is no coincidence that the author of ‘Chase For Space’, Nejc Trošt, with his complex review of aviation and space technology offers new perspectives and standards in spaceport design. His fascination with continually advancing technology, his immense curiosity and inquisitiveness, combines with in-depth reflection

Fakulteta za arhitekturo ISBN 978-961-6823-14-2

on the symbiosis of the natural and extraterrestrial. In addition,

List 1 it is no coincidence that he comes from the environment where both Eduard Rusjan, aerospace engineer and flight pioneer, and Herman Potočnik, space station engineer and architect, operated.

Potočnik’s space station became an inspiration for Kubrick’s Odyssey 2001 and the science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke.”

www.chaseforspace.com

Špela Hudnik