DC-X reunion - from Space.com

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We had a SSTO platform going well, and we killed it. For what. Read
on.
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41 minutes ago



ALAMOGORDO, N.M. — Creating routine, aircraft-like, low-cost access to
space is not only technologically challenging, it will require
enormous tenacity to overcome the inevitable bureaucratic, political
and funding hiccups. These are just a few of the lessons learned by
veterans of the Delta Clipper-Experimental (DC-X) rocket ship program.
Created by an entrepreneurial-like pact between industry and
government from 1991-1997, the DC-X project showcased the technology
and operational concepts for a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle capable
of supporting an array of military and commercial applications,
including public space travel.

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The DC-X was first managed by the Strategic Defense Initiative
Organization, under a contract with the U.S. aerospace firm, McDonnell
Douglas (now a part of Boeing). The initial goal was to rapidly
prototype the spacecraft as a step toward a single-stage-to-orbit
launch vehicle. The first vertical takeoff and landing demonstration
vehicle flew Aug. 18, 1993, two years after receiving the funding go-
ahead.


At the neighboring White Sands Missile Range, the U.S. Air Force flew
DC-X eight times between August 1993 and July 1995. Subsequently, NASA
and the U.S. Air Force managed an advanced DC-X design that was flown
four times in 1996. On its last flight, however, the vehicle tipped
over and was destroyed in an accident caused by human error — not
connecting hardware related to one of the craft's landing legs.


DC-X engineers and program officials reviewed the venture during a
15th anniversary reunion, held here Aug. 17-19, but also assessed the
status of space transportation for the 21st century. The event was
hosted by the New Mexico Museum of Space History and was a kick-off
for fundraising to develop a permanent DC-X/XA exhibit at the museum.


Limited schedule and budget


"The DC-X and XA showed that a small dedicated government and industry
team with focused objectives could make significant advances within
the boundaries of a limited schedule and budget," said Bill Gaubatz,
former director for Delta Clipper Programs at McDonnell Douglas.


According to Gaubatz, the total amount of money spent on the DC-X/DC-
XA efforts was less than $100 million, including range and lab costs.


Gaubatz said the DC-X experience was made possible by a small,
independent team of selected people. "We were, in effect, a little
entrepreneurial team working within a big company," he told Space
News, all committed to a "this-can-be-done" philosophy and a vision to
drive launch costs below $100 a pound.


"I'm convinced that if the DC-X program hadn't been terminated, we
would have been in regular trips to orbit now. We may or may not have
been a single-stage-to-orbit, but we would have been a totally
reusable, safe, rapid-turnaround transportation system," Gaubatz
added. "Cheap, unsafe access is not the way to go."


Aircraft-like space access operations and experience with rapid
prototyping development — as evidenced by DC-X — have a lot to offer
the so-called "newspace" companies, Gaubatz suggested, adding that
they might perhaps prod the "old" space companies to again get
involved in the development of less-expensive space vehicles.


Ambassador Henry Cooper, the first civilian Strategic Defense
Initiative director in 1990 who provided funding for the DC-X effort,
said he thought the step-by-step DC-X rocket program would pay for
itself during its development by launching suborbital targets for
missile defense interceptors. He bemoaned U.S. President Bill Clinton
administration's action in 1993 to cut the agency's funding in order
"to take the stars out of star wars." That deed canceled the DC-X
program and turned off all innovative technological progress within
the Strategic Defense Initiative era, Cooper said.


"The regrettable part is that we knew how to do this job 15 years ago.
It can be done better today. The technology has moved on in spite of
the government not investing in it in some cases ... or not investing
as much in it," Cooper said.


That DC-X termination brought about two great losses, Gaubatz added:
dispersal of the team that worked on it and the loss of time.


Catching "the vision"


Jess Sponable, U.S. Air Force program manager for the original Single
Stage Rocket Technology program (now retired from the Air Force), said
the DC-X focus was demonstrating a reusable rocket that operates with
aircraft-like operability. "We learned a lot about what to do ... but
we learned a lot about what not to do," he said.


Sponable flagged the transportable elements of the DC-X, including a
trailer-filled flight operations control center. "There's no reason we
can't take a similar approach in the future for how we do launch
systems," he explained, underscoring the cost per flight of the rocket
that was roughly in the range of $200,000 to $300,000.


"We were the last program to actually combine and accomplish faster,
cheaper and better ... all at the same time," Sponable pointed out.
"The seeds have been planted. The future is coming and it won't be
stopped by bureaucratic setbacks. Low-cost space access is coming and
it will happen."


Several DC-X veterans at the meeting see a legacy from DC-X,
spotlighting a proliferation of private groups that "caught the
vision." Examples cited were Scaled Composites and its work on the
WhiteKnightTwo flying launch pad to support, in part, suborbital,
passenger-carrying spaceline operations, as well as efforts now under
way at XCOR Aerospace, Armadillo Aerospace and Masten Space Systems,
among others.

Bolstered by the success evident in entrepreneurial start-up ventures
is Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, said Rick Bachtel, general manager of
Huntsville, Ala., operations. "What I see in the future is not
government funding as much as it is going to be commercial," he said.

To that end, Bachtel told Space News that his company has spun off a
smaller group called Power Innovations to harness inventive and
entrepreneurial ideas.

Bachtel said the approach is to tap the firm's 3,000 to 4,000
engineers and bring ideas into the smaller group to spin off
innovative technologies.

"We have to recognize that a venture might have a good business case,
but may not go somewhere. But I might be able to combine it with a
couple of other thoughts and come up with something different. That's
usually how a lot of the breakthrough or disruptive types of things
are," Bachtel suggested.

Band of brothers

Prior to taking his NASA administrator post, Mike Griffin was the
former deputy for technology of the Strategic Defense Initiative
Organization and a leader in getting the DC-X program started.

Calling those who built and tested the DC-X a "band of brothers,"
Griffin said: "It is people that make the hard work of aerospace
engineering indistinguishable from magic," he told meeting attendees.

"Today a small private team can accomplish suborbital human
spaceflight, a feat that once took the resources of a government to
achieve," Griffin said. "I'm personally convinced that manned orbital
flight is within reach — just barely — of private enterprise today."

Griffin said the United States has not followed up the DC-X with the
kinds of technology investments that could revolutionize space
transportation. "We need better propulsion, better materials...we need
more investment into the technology of operations, which is at least
half the cost," Griffin said. "We need to create new paradigms in
thinking of how we operate, just the way DC-X did. That doesn't come
for free. And right now, policy makers don't seem to be willing to
allocate that kind of money," Griffin said.

Gary Payton, deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for space
programs, drew lines between the work 15 years ago on DC-X and today's
quest for Operationally Responsive Space.

Payton, a former shuttle astronaut, also worked in the Strategic
Defense Initiative Organization as well as served as NASA's deputy
associate administrator for space transportation technology where he
initiated, planned and led the Reusable Launch Vehicle technology
demonstration program, which included the DC-XA flight test project.

"The military needs short notice, quick response, easy changes to the
launch vehicle's ascent guidance," Payton said, in order to
reconstitute lost space assets. "Sounds like it fits some of things we
were doing in DC-X."

Work started on DC-X in the early 1990s "is coming home to us through
a variety of systems that could play a big role in our Operationally
Responsive Space program," Payton said.