Ep. 651: Artemis and the Decline of Single Use Rockets (2)
Frasier: Yeah.
Dr. Gay: – Proton. And there, they're looking at wild, “Let's catch things on helicopters.” But that's what we're gonna talk about in the next episode. So, come back for that in the next episode.
Frasier: Right, right. Now, the SpaceX enthusiasts in the audience –
Dr. Gay: Mm-hmm.
Frasier: – at this point are probably screaming just wherever they are in frustration.
Dr. Gay: You get a whole episode next week, folks. Next episode is all reusable. It's okay.
Frasier: It's all reusable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, we are absolutely gonna be addressing the elephant in the room, which is Falcon 9, the reusability of Falcon 9, and of course, the upcoming Starship.
Dr. Gay: Yeah.
Frasier: But we're in such a funny time. And I think it's –
Dr. Gay: Yeah.
Frasier: – important that we're in this weird limbo in-between the old world –
Dr. Gay: Mm-hmm.
Frasier: – and the new world.
Dr. Gay: Yeah.
Frasier: And the old world was, “Lets launch these single use rockets, and let's try to reuse chunks of them,” and the new world of, “Let's just launch the same Falcon 9 many, many times, and then let's launch the Starship and the Super Heavy, which is a fully reusable, two-stage rocket.” And so, we'll address that next episode, as well as the ideas from Rocket Lab and so on. And I think obviously there's a case we've made in the classic words of Elon Musk, “You don't fly your aircraft to Paris, and then you throw the whole thing –
Dr. Gay: Destroy it.
Frasier: – in the garbage, –
Dr. Gay: Yeah.
Frasier: – and then buy a new one to go somewhere else.” But a rocket is not an airplane. It is going far faster. It is experiencing a lot more stress on all of the metal, and all of the parts. One does not simply reuse a rocket.
Dr. Gay: And there's the added difficult with, for instance, the SRBs – and this is also true for the Falcon 9 first stage – that they're headed towards the ocean on their way back to ground. And the SRBs had parachutes on them. And they were literally scooping them out of the ocean after they had been exposed to salt water. And salt water is one of those amazingly corrosive substances. The Falcon 9s get their reusability by landing on a barge. And that is technology that when a lot of these rockets were developed, the processes just weren't fast enough to handle. And the SLS actually has the equivalent of a G3 processor from the ‘90s in it. So, that is not fast enough to do the kind of –
Frasier: Right.
Dr. Gay: – maneuvering necessary to land on a barge. So, they'd be trying to recycle something dumped into the ocean, partially corroded. And that's a lot of work.
Frasier: Not worth doing.
Dr. Gay: No.
Frasier: And if you're gonna try to save some fuel in your booster rocket, then you don't get the full amount of your launch capability. You've got a partial ability to launch. And then, you've got to save some of your fuel for you to be able to land the rocket. And I think one of the feelings that I have is that we're in this weird in-between stage between needing to launch rockets and space-based construction. Institute resource –
Dr. Gay: Yes.
Frasier: – utilization, space –
Dr. Gay: Yes.
Frasier: – construction. And our need to launch rockets off of the earth is going to decline into the future. And we may get to a point where we just no longer need to launch rockets, except for carrying human beings to space if we want to.
Dr. Gay: Yeah.
Frasier: But everything else is being manufactured in space. And so, you've got this huge capability, reuse capability, and yet nobody's actually needing to go to space because everything is already out there, being shifted around where it's energy inexpensive. But isn't it weird? I mean, I guess we talked about this New Glenn, we talked about SpaceX, we talk about their level of reuse, Electron, again, we're talking about this next week. But it's –
Dr. Gay: Yeah.
Frasier: – still, I think from our perception, and from a lot of people's perception, SLS is old tech, old methods, huge expense, –
Dr. Gay: Yes. Yes.
Frasier: – and less reuse. How do you respond to that, Pamela?
Dr. Gay: I think the way I respond is I point out that SLS also lacks the flexibility that we see in a lot of other rockets. We often see with the Chinese Long March series. And it is truly an entire series of different rockets. With the Long March series, they reconfigure those in all sorts of different ways, changing how many side rockets – they call them “Strap-on rockets” – that they have onboard, all of the different combinations. This kind of flexibility, by having different components that are kind of plug and play, allows them to have a lower cost, highly versatile system, compared to having, “This design is only used for this thing. This design is only used for this thing.”
So, I think there are other techniques that you can use to change your costing. We see similar diversity with the Japanese rockets to a certain degree. Many nations are trying to figure out how to have the side boosters, the core booster, and a variety of configurations to take them to varying degrees of medium lift and heavy lift. And I really am loving these plug and play kinds of designs that we're seeing that allow this diversity. So, I think there's multiple techniques. And with heavy lift, like you said, you want to use every ounce of fuel you can to get off this planet.
Frasier: Right. Right. And so, if the payload, if it's a $10 billion space telescope for example, and the thing that matter is that you get this payload to precisely the right orbit, then spending a billion dollars, or half a billion dollars on your launcher is worth it.
Dr. Gay: Yes.
Frasier: But if you're trying to launch 40,000 internet satellites, then the economics change.
Dr. Gay: Yes.
Frasier: Yeah.
Dr. Gay: Yes. And again, it also depends on what orbit you're getting to, because they aren't putting those 40,000 satellites up in geo, they're putting them in lower earth orbit. And it takes a whole lot less fuel to get there.
Frasier: Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of missions that have been proposed right now, that there is just no launcher capable of doing it.
Dr. Gay: Yeah.
Frasier: Even the Space Launch System, with its block 1 configuration, couldn't do some of these missions. Things to the outer planets, heavier cargo to the moon, things like that. You're gonna need to get to the block to be, which is the heavier upper stage, before you can even pull off some of these bigger missions. The –
Dr. Gay: Yes.
Frasier: – SLS is amazing, but it's still not as powerful as the Saturn V.
Dr. Gay: And we won't have those additional heavy lift capacities until they turn on the factory lines to build the new RS-25 engines, to build the new casings and electronics for the SRBs.
Frasier: Yeah.
Dr. Gay: They're still in the reuse stage. So, this is where next week, we are going to be taking a look at Starship. And this week, we have to say, there are other heavy lift vehicles in the process of being developed. Arianespace is looking at what they can construct, China's looking at what they construct. Russia, we're going to set them aside –
Frasier: Right.
Dr. Gay: – and say, “We don't know what's going on over –
Frasier: Yeah.
Dr. Gay: – there.”
Frasier: Russia says a lot of stuff.
Dr. Gay: Right.
Frasier: Yeah.
Dr. Gay: Right.
Frasier: That we don't take very seriously.
Dr. Gay: Yes.
Frasier: But China has a lot of very powerful launchers right now, and even more powerful ones in the works for their missions to the moon. Yeah. Yeah, I've gotta come clean here, right? I feel an enormous amount of – can you have an enormous amount of ambivalence? I feel extreme ambivalence in this situation, because on the one hand, this next generation of reusable rockets don't exist, and we don't have the capability to go to interesting locations, and haven't had it for decades.
Maybe 50 years. That finally, the SLS is the first rocket that will give us that capability. Falcon Heavy is kind of there, but SLS is the machine that would let you send out an interstellar probe, or go to send a heavy orbiter to Neptune, or visit multiple moons of Jupiter, etc. etc. etc. And we just don't have that. And yet, it does seem bonkers to me to throw away your rocket every time.
Dr. Gay: And more than that, they limited their potential with SLS by saying they had to reuse shuttle parts. They only get four launches from that reuse. And the factory lines have been shut down. They've been off since 2017, I think?
Frasier: Yeah.
Dr. Gay: And so, those people are doing different things. It was meant to keep those folks employed. So, we have a rocket that has late ‘90s electronics, and doesn't have the versatility because of the constraints put on it, largely for political reasons. SLS, Ares, either of those two series that were planned could've been amazing, if they gave the engineers the chance to say, “We're using modern processors. We're using modern fabrication. Let's see what we can create using –
Frasier: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Gay: – today's technology.”
Frasier: Yeah.
Dr. Gay: And that I think is the real place where everyone else is going to be able to fly ahead of us.
Frasier: Yeah. And everyone poopoos the SLS, but if you said, “Sea Dragon,” right? Now, they're excited again. Which is of course this gigantic, expendable rocket that took off from the ocean and lifted ludicrous amounts of weight into space. And it was featured in it for all mankind. Suddenly, now you've got their attention again. So anyway, all right. Let's wrap up this week, and hang on that ambivalence. We'll set it –
Dr. Gay: Yeah.
Frasier: – aside, and next week, we will come roaring back with a further investigation into reusable rocketry, and the case for not throwing away your stuff every time –
Dr. Gay: Yeah.
Frasier: – you use it. Thanks, Pamela!
Dr. Gay: Thank you, Frasier! So, once again, I'd like to say not just thank you to you Frasier, but thank you to all of our patrons out there. You are the ones that allow us to do this week after week. And this week, I am going to thank by name, Kyle Saint George, Arkham Fantasy, Daniel Donaldson, Laura Smith, Jeremy Gurr, Jorn Aslaxan? I'm sorry. I really like you. Your name is a deep mystery. John Lawson, James Roger, Steve Martini, Richard Alexander Hubbert, Bjor Andre Lizfall. Folks, you can put pronunciation guides in Patron where your name is.
Frasier: All the complex names showed up over the summer. Yeah.
Dr. Gay: Yeah, yeah! Theodore –
Frasier: We truly have an international audience.
Dr. Gay: Yes. Theodora Lip Barbara, James Sidel, Bill Cameron, Robert Wegner – you're giggling. I understand why you're giggling. Glenn Border, the – oh no. The Breviloquent Caveman? Folks, I'm going to make a plea. And I'm going to come back and try your names even more in the next episode.
Frasier: Oh, awesome! All right!
Dr. Gay: Please put pronunciation guides, please? Please? I heart –
Frasier: All right.
Dr. Gay: – all of you.
Frasier: All right. Well, we'll see you next week, Pamela!
Dr. Gay: Okay. Buh-bye!
