POPULAR SCIENCE OCTOBER 2005 4544 POPULAR SCIENCE OCTOBER 2005

TASKMASTER T/Space co-founder DavidGump takes in a full-scale mock-up of hisspace capsule, which could carry Americanastronauts into orbit long before NASA’sown space-shuttle replacement flies.

New technology, newmethodology: As NASA strugglesto create a space-shuttlereplacement, little-known t/Spacehas a backup plan that’s so crazy itjust might work

By Michael Belfiore

PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN B. CARNETT

Can a

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build America’snextspaceship?

POPULAR SCIENCE OCTOBER 2005 47

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It’s a scene reminiscent ofNASA’s glory days, back when men stillwalked on the moon. A space capsuledescends under a canopy of three orange-and-blue parachutes, swaying gently inthe breeze. The spacecraft splashes downin the Pacific at a leisurely 15 miles anhour, and the chutes settle into the waterbeside it. A recovery boat rumbles intoposition beside the spacecraft, and divershit the water.

But it’s not astronauts they’re after, it’sthe chutes; except for ballast, the capsuleis empty, a mock-up created to test thelanding of a familiar-looking but actuallyall-new spaceship design. The divers areracing to rescue the chutes before theysink, so that they can be reused in another test. The capsule, too, will goagain, after recovery by a cargo helicop-ter. This is space travel on a budget.

The test, conducted off the northernCalifornia coast on August 3 by a com-pany called, appropriately enough,Transformational Space Corporation, ort/Space, could signal a whole new direc-tion for NASA, one with the potential toput the agency’s manned space programback on track more quickly and afford-ably than its primary plan can do alone[see sidebar, page 48]. NASA groundedits space-shuttle fleet in July followingDiscovery’s near miss with foam insula-tion flying off its external fuel tank. Dis-covery’s launch this year was to beNASA’s triumphant return to flight afterthe Columbia disaster. Instead it seemedto highlight, yet again, the shuttle’snumerous design flaws and NASA’schronic inability to fix them.

It is unclear when the shuttles willlaunch again, but ultimately NASA plansto replace the system with a multibillion-dollar craft called the Crew Exploration

Vehicle (CEV), which will travel to themoon as well as to the low-Earth-orbitdomain of the shuttle. But that shipwon’t be ready until at least 2011, and aslong as NASA continues to pour moneyinto the aging shuttles, it may have trou-ble scraping up the cash necessary to

build it at all. What many think NASAneeds is something it has never had: ano-frills, backup spaceship it could fieldquickly to keep U.S. astronauts flying tothe International Space Station (ISS) oron other low-Earth-orbit missions if aprimary system encountered trouble indevelopment or operation.

Enter t/Space, which has been pushingexactly that strategy and which—in lightof the trouble with Discovery’s missionthis summer and a sudden shift inNASA’s previous all-eggs-in-one-basketapproach to manned spaceflight—is nowemerging as a dark horse near-term can-didate to replace the shuttle.

In the spring of 2004,t/Space was little more than two guys with a vision of economical space-flight—one of many plans that havebeen floated in recent years. Butfounders David Gump and Gary Hud-son’s approach, in addition to their tech-nology, was different. They proposed aradical idea to NASA: Use contracts thatNASA was offering for mere paper stud-ies on next-generation spaceships toinstead build actual, working hardware.In Gump’s plan, incremental progresstoward a fully functional vehicle wouldbe rewarded with additional funding,allowing the project to move forward.

“You’re crazy,” Hudson had told Gumpwhen the latter first broached the idea.“NASA will never give us any business.And even if they did, it would be agonyto work with them.”

Nevertheless, Gump had sensed thatchange was in the air at the beleagueredspace agency. The traditional NASA sys-tem of awarding expensive “cost-plus”contracts to a few big aerospace firms forits development work—contracts thatstick the space agency with the bill evenwhen the technologies prove unsuccess-ful—was showing cracks, and Gump sawan opening for himself and Hudson.

Both men were veterans of space start-

ups: Hudson was running AirLaunch,which is developing rockets under an$11.3-million Department of Defensecontract, and Gump had headed Luna-Corp, which brokered the first TV-commercial shot on the ISS, a spot forRadio Shack. They knew how to puttogether a good proposal, but Hudsonstill didn’t think much of their chances atNASA. In fact, he initially didn’t evenbother to formally incorporate t/Space asa company; he just sent in the proposaland assumed that would be the end of it.

He didn’t count on Michael Lem-beck, head of the Requirements Divi-sion of NASA’s Exploration Systems

“WE’LL ALWAYS BE COMMERCIAL TOOUR CORE,” GUMP SAYS—THEY’LLPURSUE TOURIST FLIGHTS AS MUCHAS GOVERNMENT WORK.

WORK IN PROGRESS

DROP TESTS T/Space asked Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites to help test itslaunch strategy. Scaled’s Proteus aircraft dropped a quarter-scale mock-up of the booster and capsule [left, in time-lapse image], which orienteditself flawlessly. A helicopter drop of the landing configuration [above] wasalso successful, although one chute failed to open completely.

CAPSULE The crew transfer vehicle (CXV) capsule accommodates three or four crew membersand their supplies. Its design is based on the Corona reentry vehicle used to return film from spysatellites—its blunt shape dissipates heat well and automatically orients the craft for re-entry.During the CXV’s descent, two layers of inexpensive silicone and ceramic tiles protect it fromthermal buildup, and the seats swivel to face the rear, easing G-force strain on the crew.

MOTHER SHIP A “Very LargeAircraft,”either a 747 with extendedlanding gear or a custom vehicle, willcarry t/Space’s rocket to a launchaltitude above any bad weather.

BOOSTER The two-stage QuickReach rocket will heftthe capsule into orbit, fueled by propane and liquidoxygen. To avoid complex turbopump machinery,vapor pressure, created by heating the propaneprior to fueling, forces the fuel into the engine.

Stage-one engine

Liquid oxygen

Stage-two engine

Propane

Crew capsule

Rocketthruster

Entry hatch

Parachute storage

Storage

Trapeze stabilizesrocket during drop

Lanyard pitchesrocket towardvertical

Drogue chute stabilizesrocket in flight

Parachute tunnel

Crew cabin Rocket approaches ideal launch position

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Mission Directorate. The directoratewas tasked with developing systemsboth for sustaining the ISS and return-ing to the moon, and Lembeck and hiscolleagues had been looking for ways tostart working with entrepreneurs withfresh ideas as well as the usual big aero-space contractors. T/Space fit the billperfectly. He and Exploration Systemschief engineer Garry Lyles sent Hudsonand Gump’s proposal straight to CraigSteidle, head of the Directorate, andtalked him into signing off on an initial$3-million study, with an option foranother $3 million that was later alsoapproved. “Within Exploration Sys-tems, we have been pushing for new,innovative ideas,” Lembeck says, “andwe cut t/Space loose to get out of therealm of theory and into the practical.”

Some of what t/Space built with its $6 million in initial fund-ing dominated an exhibit hall in Washington, D.C., at this past spring’s International Space Development Con-ference, a gathering of scientists, engi-neers and entrepreneurs from both theprivate and public sectors. A full-scalemock-up of the company’s proposedCrew Transfer Vehicle, or CXV, filled theroom, crowding the booksellers, spaceartists and other exhibitors to the edges.Attendees climbed through a rear hatchfor tours guided by former NASA astro-naut Jim Voss. Now t/Space’s engineer-ing manager, Voss flew on the spaceshuttle five times, lived on the ISS forfive and a half months, and holds twoaerospace engineering degrees. His expe-rience with the shuttle, Soyuz (the Russ-ian capsule NASA has relied on since theColumbia disaster) and space-station sys-tems make him ideally suited to over-seeing the building of the CXV.

The CXV comprises three systems: thecrew capsule; a two-stage booster rocket

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NASA’S NEXT-GENERATION GIANTS

GOOD OLD-FASHIONED SPACE CAPSULES HAVE BEENFLYING SINCE THE EARLY 1960s WITH FEW PROBLEMS.

(CONTINUED ON PAGE 94)y

powered by propane and liquid oxygen;and a carrier plane the size of a Boeing747, called, in typically understatedt/Space fashion, the Very Large Aircraft(VLA), which will haul the capsule andthe attached rocket to a launch altitude ofup to 50,000 feet. The capsule’s struc-tural components and the VLA are to bebuilt by entrepreneur and designer BurtRutan’s company Scaled Composites,which last year sent the first commercialastronauts into space on board its Space-

ShipOne. The booster, QuickReach, willbe a larger version of those under devel-opment for the Department of Defenseby Hudson’s AirLaunch. Neither of therocket’s stages is reusable, but after para-chuting to a nose-first landing in anyconvenient large body of water, the cap-sule will be refitted and flown again.

The CXV has controls for a singlepilot and seating for up to three addi-tional crew members. It has compart-

WORKING PLAN NASA’s CrewExploration Vehicle, or CEV, willsend four astronauts to the moon by2020, but a three-seat variant willalso service the International SpaceStation by 2011. Although planshave yet to be finalized—theseillustrations are from a proposal byspace-systems contractor ATK— a wingless space capsule will lift offatop a version of the space shuttle’ssolid rocket booster and a to-be-developed second-stage booster.

Like NASA’s Apollo moon shipsbuilt in the 1960s and the RussianSoyuz capsule still in use, the CEVwill parachute back to Earth afterreentry. Like the space shuttle, it willbe designed for reuse, but it won’thave to pull double duty as a cargohauler, which should make it safer,smaller and lighter than the shuttle. Itwill need less powerful engines andless fuel for liftoff, and it will have lesssurface area to expose to the blast-furnace heat of reentry. A separate,350-foot-tall cargo ship will sendsupplies and hardware to orbit on amore massive launch vehicle that willuse the space shuttle’s external fueltank as its core structure.

Lockheed Martin and a teammade up of Boeing and NorthropGrumman, each fueled by a $28-million NASA study contract, aredeveloping competing designsfor the CEV capsule. NASA willselect one of these designs inMarch 2006.—M.B.

350 feet

267 feet

Proposedcargolauncher

Proposed CrewExplorationVehicle, atoptwo-stagebooster

Spaceshuttle182 feet

94 POPULAR SCIENCE OCTOBER 2005

ments for supplies and equipment, anda zero-G commode. Innovative fabricseats, designed by Voss and a team ofengineering students at Auburn Univer-sity, can take loads of up to eight Gs, areas comfortable as hammocks, and canbe easily stowed to create more spaceafter the craft reaches orbit. The seatshave one other unique design feature:They swivel 180 degrees. That’s becausethe capsule will leave the atmosphereand reenter it nose-first, using a modernized ceramic/silicone-tile heat-shielding system. The swiveling seatswill allow the crew to take the G-forcesof both launch and reentry in the mostcomfortable way—through their chests.

Gump was also on hand at the con-ference to show off the technology andexplain his unconventional develop-ment strategy. “What we’re proposingto NASA,” Gump said, “is a type of incre-mental side bet” to the big aerospaceeffort to build America’s next space-ship—that is, a scaled-down backupand supplement to the CEV. “Every 6 to

12 months we have performed a set ofhardware milestones, and NASA hashad a chance to say, ‘Well, have youactually performed what you prom-ised?’ So they never are betting theentire amount of money.” The big aerospace effort to build the next-generation CEV, which will be led byeither Lockheed Martin or the team ofNorthrop Grumman and Boeing, willhave no such requirement. But t/Spacewon’t compete with those companiesfor the contract to build NASA’s pri-mary space-launch system; it will justquietly build a backup machine morequickly and at a fraction of the cost.“We are trying hard not to claim to be aspace-shuttle replacement; we are aSoyuz replacement,” Gump said, “a sim-ple craft to ferry people up and backrather than a self-propelled space sta-tion like the shuttle.”

A series of three testflights over Mojave, California, in Juneput key elements of the CXV launchprocess through their paces. Scaled Com-

posites pilot Chuck Coleman took aRutan-designed research jet called Pro-teus up to altitude with a 23-percent-scalemock-up of the capsule and boosterhooked to its belly. When released, themock-up deployed a drogue parachuteand tipped its tail toward the ground as itdropped. The drogue slowed the mock-up’s rotation to the vertical and stabilizedit until it fell, tail-first, perfectly straight.The actual CXV would have fired its first-stage motor at this point, poweringthrough the upper atmosphere behindthe carrier craft and into space. Themock-up simply plummeted, as planned,until it slammed into the desert floorwith a puff of dust. But it proved the via-bility of a new method for air-launchingspacecraft that was developed under thedirection of t/Space engineer MartiSarigul-Klijn, a former Navy test pilot.

In a conventional air launch, the rocket separates from the mother shipand fires while still horizontal, pitchingup under full power. But the launch loadsare more severe, requiring heavier struc-tures, and the wings add weight. Sarigul-

Klijn’s Trapeze-Lanyard Air Drop, ort/LAD, rotates the ship to the vertical bykeeping its nose attached to the carrierplane with a tether and a trapeze-likemechanism for a second after the drop. “Iwas astounded that you could get thisbooster to do a 90-degree turn and justkind of hang there in space,” Colemansaid after the tests. “I mean, this thing justdropped straight off. It didn’t roll, yaw,anything. It was like it was elevatingstraight down. I was very surprised athow stable the whole system was.”

Raymond Sedwick, associate directorof the Space Systems Laboratory at MIT’sDepartment of Aeronautics and Astro-nautics and a consultant to NASA onspacecraft design, thinks t/Space has theright stuff. “I have to agree with their capsule approach, based on heritage andsimplicity,” he says. In other words,good old-fashioned space capsules havebeen flying since the early 1960s with fewproblems. Sedwick also likes t/Space’s air-launch scenario because it allows NASAto move the launch point above or aroundbad weather or to pursue a more ideallaunch trajectory, and it gives astro-nauts a fighting chance to survive a rocket misfire or other launch emer-gency—they’ll just separate the capsulefrom the booster and land with their para-chutes as they would for reentry. Overall,Sedwick says, “I would say that they arethinking about all the right issues. It’s justa matter of whether or not, at the end ofthe day, things will pan out as theyexpect” in terms of NASA’s interest.

Getting things to panout may be less dependent on overcom-ing the technical challenges, whicht/Space seems to have well in hand, thanon a far more capricious endeavor: win-ning continued support from NASA. Butthe company’s prospects brightened con-siderably this summer, when, withoutfanfare or formal announcement, NASAcreated a set of programs within Explo-ration Systems called Innovative Pro-curements. Program executive BrantSponberg explains that the direction hascome directly from NASA chief MichaelGriffin to “try to bring new actors intowhat we do,” to open NASA’s mannedspace program to entrepreneurs, whowill be paid fixed fees for building work-ing hardware. Whereas companies liket/Space were once pursuing contracts todesign and build NASA-owned-and-

(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 48)

operated vehicles, they now have theoption of being the owners and operatorsthemselves. “The idea,” Sponberg says,“iswe can enter into a contract where wepay for milestones, so someone has to dosuch-and-such demonstration or such-and-such test. They have to do it on theirown nickel, but if they’re successful, thenwe’ll pay for the milestone. Ultimately,the last milestone is getting to orbit ordoing the final demonstration.”

Gump estimates that t/Space needs$500 million to complete its CXV by2009 in a cost-conscious program. That’sabout what a single space-shuttle launchcosts, and it’s a bargain compared withthe billions NASA plans to pay big aero-space for a ship that won’t be ready forat least another six years. The companyhas already accomplished a lot on justits first $6 million. It’s gathered a crackteam of engineers and contractors,including Scaled Composites, built afull-scale mock-up of its proposed spacecapsule, conducted a series of drop teststo demonstrate an innovative methodfor air-launching spacecraft, and testedsplashdown techniques with anotherfull-size mock-up.

That first $6 million will run out bythis fall. To take the next step, t/Spacewill have to win more money fromNASA—a good bet, given the spaceagency’s new direction—and also attractit from private investors. One investor inparticular has a pressing need for a com-mercial orbital spaceship: RobertBigelow, whose Bigelow Aerospace isaiming to launch the first commercialspace station by 2010. Bigelow says he’sprepared to buy an orbital spaceship andthat he’s started talks with several com-panies, although he won’t yet saywhether he favors t/Space.

Gump says t/Space will always be“commercial to our core” and that it willpursue private space-tourism flights asaggressively as it does governmentalwork. But as NASA struggles under amandate from President Bush to keep thespace shuttles on life support until 2010,complete the half-built InternationalSpace Station, and somehow send peopleback to the moon and then on to Mars atthe same time—all without significantadditional funding from Congress—itfaces a hard road. T/Space just might pro-vide a solution to some of its problems. ■

Michael Belfiore wrote about the Bigelowspace hotel in the March POPSCI.

METATAGS: Transformational Space Corporation, t/Space,

Crew Exploration Vehicle, CEV, NASA, space shuttle, Discovery, Inter-

national Space Station, David Gump, Gary Hudson, AirLaunch, Luna-

Corp, Michael Lembeck, Exploration Systems Mission Directorate,

Garry Lyles, Craig Steidle, International Space Development Confer-

ence, Crew Transfer Vehicle, CXV, James Voss, Very Large Aircraft, VLA,

Burt Rutan, Scaled Composites, QuickReach, Chuck Coleman, Proteus,

Mike Alsbury, Marti Sarigul-Klijn, Trapeze-Lanyard Air Drop, t/LAD,

Innovative Procurements, Brant Sponberg, Michael Griffin, Raymond

Sedwick, MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics Space Sys-

tems Laboratory, Robert Bigelow, Bigelow Aerospace

Web hed:

Can a SmallStart-up Build America’s Next Spaceship?

Web dek:

New technology. New methodology. T/Space has a plan for getting to

space that’s so crazy it just might work