starship-design: Is The Air Force The Enemy Of Space?

["L. Clayton Parker" <lparker@cacaphony.net>]

Is The Air Force The Enemy Of Space?
by Publius Rex
Los Angeles - Aug 20, 2003

In the Profile section of the July 14, 2003 issue of Space News was the very
telling interview with Gen. John P. Jumper ("Space As A Means - Not An End
In Itself.")

No wonder our spaceflight prospects are as poor as they are what with
Blue-Suits like him running everything. I can't believe this man had the
gall to say that his pro-space critics "should worry more about winning wars
and less about protecting 'pet' projects."

Isn't that what the Navy said to Billy Mitchell, when he used (then new) air
power to sink a battleship?

I guess that $36 billion F-22 couldn't be a pet project too, now could it?

Or how about that $200 billion Joint Strike Fighter or the $10 billion
dollar Crusader (a self-propelled howitzer!) Or the OSPrey heliplane/
air-a-copter, helicopter/airplane contraption that only knows how to kill
Marine pilots?

Despite Jumper's challenge to debate anyone on his obvious bias against
space - his bad attitude is all too apparent. For him to say that space
hasn't been neglected is beyond belief. Our space-flight infrastructure is
hurting because of both him and the very Air Force he serves under - and I
can prove it.

But first, a little history is in order...

Before NASA, NACA and Air Force could build decent rockets, we had the Army
Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) that was under the fine leadership of
General J.B. Medaris, whose book Countdown For Decision should be required
reading for anyone in the military.

I will say more on this in Part Two - A Leader Out of Time Speaks: The
Legacy of General J.B. Medaris.

It was the ABMA that gave us the Redstone that launched our first, small
satellite and Alan B. Shepard Jr. To space. It and the Jupiter bodies became
the propellant tankage of the Saturn IB's first stage cluster (like Proton)
while the Navy was blowing up Vanguards and McNamara was trying to kill the
Apollo Program.

Outside of the Titans, which have become more expensive to launch than the
Shuttle, the Air Force has been no friend to large liquid-fueled rockets.
Their penchant for shrinking warheads to ride atop small, easily siloed
solids - which give a fast but harsh ride unsuitable for all but the most
hardened payloads - has come back to bite us all.

Though the Soviets bankrupted themselves with the development of too many
ICBMs - their very largest missiles, though failures in a military sense,
have become their bread-and-butter commercially.

Early Soviet warheads were unsophisticated and very large. This allowed
their Chief Designer Korolov a chance to make a space-booster from the
get-go. Though many howled in his country, finding the R-7 too large even
for their heavy nuclear devices, calmer heads prevailed and the R-7 went on
to launch Sputnik, Vostok, Voskhod, the Zenit spy-sat (still being built as
automated Vostoks), Soyuz (Dennis Tito) and Progress re-supply ships to ISS

(International Space Station) - saving our butts after Columbia's loss.

The future of the R-7 is still bright, as proved by the new plans to build a
pad for it in Kourou. It can now carry around seven-to-eight tons to LEO. In
2007, the R-7 turns 50.

The Soviets fielded an even larger rocket called Proton, which started out
as a Super-ICBM that was to launch the huge, 25-ton RDS-220 warhead - a
150-megaton bomb-that would have rivalled the 1883 eruption/explosion of
Krakatoa in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra. Thankfully, the
UR-500 Proton never carried a warhead as far as we know.

But Proton went on to launch 20 metric ton payloads to Low-Earth-Orbit
(LEO), like the DOS core-blocks for their Almaz/Salyut, Mir and Zvezda
(ISS), and like the equally large TKS ferries/FGB tugs that are service
blocks and station modules in their own right. These are plugged into the
DOS core blocks (Kvant on Mir, Zarya on ISS, etc.)

Proton is now the workhorse for the Russians who use it commercially (thanks
to ILS with Lockheed-Martin as a partner of sorts), while the kerosene
strap-on boosters for the Soviet Space Shuttle Energia-Buran are being sold
independently as the first stage of the Zenit booster (not the spysat) that
is being used in Boeing's SeaLaunch venture. The Zenit’s single, four-nozzle
engine is the RD-170, and has more thrust than the single chamber Saturn V
F-1 engine. When 'chopped in half,' the RD-170 becomes the RD-180, now the
main engine for Lockheed's brand new Atlas V EELV (Evolved Expendable launch
Vehicle.)

So now both Boeing and Lockheed-Martin are using Soviet Space Shuttle
engines for their commercial satellite business.

Zenit (the booster) is between R-7 and Proton in capability, and the single
nozzle RD-191 will be used in the new Russian EELV, Angara, and perhaps in
the Baikal and Zvityaz winged boosters.

Commercially speaking, the Russians are still winning the space-race, even
if they lost their biggest battle to go for the moon.

Practical Army men knew that it was better to build bigger rockets than to
over-shrink payloads which would be far more costly and complicated. Some
Navy men knew this too, like Bob Truax.

Where Russian army men, who were deferential to their chief designers, made
big, capable rockets from the start, we had to play catch-up - fighting Air
Force antagonism toward liquid-fueled rocket development coming from the top
down.

By the time brave EELV-backer General Moorman dragged the rest of the Air
Force (kicking and screaming I might add) to build the first big non-ICBM
rocket launcher in our history (save for our Shuttle and the Saturns), it
was too late. The market fell out, and demand for com-sat rides diminished,
due in part to a glut of big Russian launchers already saturating the
market. They and the Europeans dominate 2/3 of all launches now.

You can thank the Air Force for this sorry state of affairs.

Because of them, our aerospace giants are doing poorly and are wasting money
fighting each other with lawyers over a vanishing com-sat market, while both
still have to use Russian Space Shuttle engines to service it.

For the Air Force to blame the 'space people' as Gen. Jumper calls us for
their failures of foresight - when it was their obstructionism that kept us
from having big rockets all along, is beyond gall. By the time the EELVs
were brought to market it was already too late. With the growing gigantism
of space assets, the EELVs are already on the verge of being obsolete.

Only China, passing us while standing still, has a medium-heavy lift system
in development large enough - and capable of growth—that will compete with
Proton upgrades. We wouldn't even have a threat from their Long March to
space were it not for the ugly way their chief designer Tsien Hsue-Shen was
treated in this country, even after meeting Von Braun and helping our Army.

Even Ariane 5, first thought too large (made primarily to launch Hermes)
has, as a reason for its most recent failure, an upgrade program to keep it
competitive.

The reason behind ever-growing space assets may shock you. It is the
miniaturization of electronics.

Thinking money could be saved, the Air Force (and others) neglected rocket
development in favor of over-complicated electronic gadgetry. Early on, this
worked well enough, what with older, but larger and more numerous computers
on the ground sizing up evenly with newer, faster tech aboard spacecraft.
But things worsened with time, when computers were put in the hands of
consumers.

Russians placed whatever electronics were available inside simple, rugged
spacecraft with an internally pressurized climate-controlled environment
safe for any electronics at hand. This allowed cheap but rugged design. The
(R-7 launched) Vostok/Voskhod type spacecraft became a spy-sat for many
years.

Our solids were rather rough on craft, and our liquid-fueled launch
capability was behind the Russian R-7 from the start. We could not encase
our assets in heavy pressurized spheres for our launchers had no margin. So
we had to shrink, toughen and space-rate our satellites - make them
rad-hardened and vacuum-proof and heat resistant and...

After many years of work, the latest computer we have in space is
a.....486 - now already obsolete by the throngs of much newer, much faster
and much more numerous computers and Tvs, and Satellite Dishes and On*Stars
that all want to communicate with that poor, little 486 now.

This scenario can only get worse. The only thing for it is to launch larger
spacecraft with more power and more antennas and...

The shrinking of computers made our assets ever larger, like the monster
MILSTAR. The poor old Atlas' and Deltas and even Titans were stretched
beyond sense...the Delta III being an abortion from the start. By the time
the EELVs came on the horizon, they were already in danger of being maxed
out with Project Prometheus.

What is needed now is true heavy lift (80-100 tons to LEO) that can serve
both NASA and Military interests for years to come - with plenty of growing
room seeing as we ask more and more of space on a daily basis.

Liquid-fueled rockets have had the Air Force for an enemy for far too long.
When launch vehicle developments are delayed the space people are unfairly
blamed when Air Force obstructionists like Gen. John Jumper are the true
cause of our problems and continue to make things worse.

When General Jumper was asked by Space News " Does the Pentagon need a
separate space force?" He said that he saw "no reason for it."

Naturally he would say that, because the Air Force would no longer have
space under its massive heel as has been the case ever since the
blue-suiters and their buddies robbed the ABMA. This way, they can neglect
space and indulge their fighter-jock fantasies at taxpayer expense. MIGs are
not the enemy now. As of 9/11 our new enemy is the 757, 767, 727, etc.

Jumper said "'space people' just like fighter people and bomber people and
ground people and naval people need to worry first about winning the war."

It is very easy for him to say that, seeing how Navy and Air Force people
already enjoy huge defense budgets they don't need to fight for every day of
their lives - with some weapons programs larger than NASA's yearly budget!

These titans already have too much their own way. When space advocates
proposed their own branch, naturally the other services, who agreed on
little else, ganged up on them - or else they might not have another
super-carrier this, or a $200 billion Joint-Strike-Fighter that.

Space people NEED a much bigger budget, but get the least money and are
railed at for failures that come from under-funding.

When Billy Mitchell shocked the old Navy brass with his "stunt," he got in
trouble instead. I wonder how many admirals told him:

"You up-start airplane people need to quit being parochial in begging for
funding. We need to worry about 'winning the war!' So we will be putting our
finest battleships out in Pearl Harbor. Enough with your airplane projects!"

Imagine if the 'plane people' had to answer to folks like Jumper in the
early 1900s. We wouldn't be flying at all now.

We do have good people in the Air Force, but they are not in power.

So shouldn't we listen to rocket and space enthusiasts now?

Not if Air Force men like Gen. Jumper have their way. Not when the man
currently inhabiting the White House wants to play President of the World
instead of the U.S. - blowing money here and there-while saying there is no
money for space.

Even after Columbia, all NASA got was a $470 million boost (small compared
to most expenditures) that was to have come anyway - though it was almost
cut. NASA's real buying power has in fact been on the decrease.

If I told the President to only spend 470 million more dollars than what the
military already gets for the War in Iraq, I'm sure he would ask;

"How do you expect us to win a war with $470 million?"

How does he and the blue-suiters expect us to have a good space program for
that same paltry sum?

It is not his job to blow my hard-earned taxpayer dollar on $10 billion AIDS
programs overseas when wealthy, knowledgeable people in this country still
contract it with risky behavior themselves.

While money is needed for equipment and uncommon genius, it doesn't help
with common sense. No wonder our space program is, quite literally
crumbling! Visit some of out facilities for proof of that.

It is not in fact, the primary job of Congress, the President, or the Air
Force to waste my tax-money dropping munitions among other things atop
someone else's buildings.

Their job is to make sure that no threats from the sky come down on any of
our buildings.

So far, they have done a poor job of that, what with skyscraper, airliner,
and Shuttle debris having rained down upon us the Nation over.

If anything, Congress is now considering a cut-back on anti-asteroid
research spending, which is foolish, seeing that it is nature's ultimate
Weapon of Mass Destruction.

It is also the only disaster we can avoid - with space spending.

The way things are going now, we can't blow them up, shoot rogue airliners
down, or destroy incoming missiles - not when we have SAC-happy B-52
"Buff"-drivers and fighter jocks running the show doing what they do best -
being elitist snobs all the while soaking up Defense dollars better spent
elsewhere.

We in the Space Advocacy movement should no longer have to ask "Mother, may
I?"

It is time for us 'space people' to demand our leaders in Washington and
have them give the Air Force a 'Jump-off.'

Fire General Jumper!

Neither General Jumper, nor this Administration, is a friend of space.

So what to do? I will answer that question in Part Two...