http://space.com/businesstechnology/060705_blue_origin.html
Tourism Update: Jeff Bezos’ Spaceship Plans Revealed
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 05 July 2006
08:22 am ET
The public space travel business is picking up suborbital speed thanks
to a variety of private rocket groups and their dream machines.
Joining the mix is Blue Origin's New Shepard Reusable Launch System. It
is financially fueled by an outflow of dollars from the deep pockets of
billionaire Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com.
The Bezos-backed Blue Origin, LLC commercial space outfit has recently
turned in a draft environmental assessment (EA) for their West Texas
launch site to the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Associate
Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (AST) in Washington, D.C.
The document is the best glimpse yet of what Blue Origin is scoping out
to develop "safe, inexpensive and reliable human access to space."
Privately-owned property
The more than 200-page draft EA is a necessary step required by the
FAA/AST for Blue Origin to get the needed permits and/or licenses to fly
their rocket hardware.
Blue Origin proposes to launch its reusable launch vehicles (RLVs) on
suborbital, ballistic trajectories to altitudes in excess of 325,000
feet (99,060 meters) from a privately-owned space launch site in
Culberson County, Texas.
As outlined in the EA, the Blue Origin launch site would be
approximately 25 miles (40.2 kilometers) north of Van Horn, Texas. It
lies within a larger, privately-owned property known as the Corn Ranch.
Access to the proposed launch site is from Texas Highway 54, which is
approximately five miles (8 kilometers) west of the proposed project's
center of operations.
Also on the group's to do list at the site is putting in place a vehicle
processing facility, a launch complex and vehicle landing and recovery
area, as well as an astronaut training facility, and other minor support
amenities [Map].
Incremental testing
The strategy is to build the New Shepard suborbital vehicle
incrementally, starting with low-altitude tests, progressing to
higher-altitude testing, and culminating with commercial flights. Early
testing would use prototype vehicles that are smaller and/or less
capable than the proposed final design.
Prototype craft would use the same or a subset of the same types of
propellants as the operational New Shepard RLV in smaller quantities and
would use the same ground facilities, infrastructure, and equipment.
Each new trial product would fly to higher altitudes and/or demonstrate
additional subsystems than the previous prototype. Eventually, Blue
Origin proposes to perform multiple flight tests of the actual
operational New Shepard RLV system carrying Blue Origin personnel before
commencing commercial operation.
As detailed in the EA, the New Shepard RLV system would be comprised of
a propulsion module and a crew capsule capable of carrying three or more
space flight participants on roundtrip treks from the ground to the edge
of space. The crew capsule is perched on top of the propulsion module.
The stacked vehicle would have a roughly nose cone shape with a base
diameter of approximately 22 feet (7 meters) and a height of
approximately 50 feet (15 meters).
The propulsion module would be fully reusable, would carry its own
avionics, and would operate autonomously under the control of on-board
computers. The propulsion module would use 90 percent concentration
hydrogen peroxide, called high test peroxide (HTP) and rocket propellant
(RP) grade kerosene as the propellants.
During an abort situation, the crew capsule would separate, using small
solid-rocket motors to safely recover the space flight participants. The
abort module containing the solid-rocket motors would then jettison from
the crew capsule. After the crew capsule departs, the propulsion module
would attempt to steer back to the landing pad using aerodynamic
surfaces and utilize its engines to make a controlled, powered vertical
landing.
Because Blue Origin's launch vehicle would ascend and descend
vertically, sonic booms would propagate away from the Earth's surface
during launch and towards terra firma during descent.
Powered landing
The New Shepard test pad would be up to 32,292 square feet (3,000 square
meters) in area. A separate flat landing pad of equal size would be
located 3.8 miles (6.1 kilometers) north of the Blue Origin vehicle
processing facility.
The New Shepard RLV launch, flight, and landing activities would require
less than a 10 minute period to complete. Powered to roughly 125,000
feet (38,100 meters) under thrust from its main engines, the spaceship
would chalk up some 110 seconds of flight. From there, the RLV would
coast up to a height greater than 325,000 feet (99,060 meters). At top
altitude, the vehicle would then return to the landing pad under gravity
free-fall conditions until the main engines are restarted to enable a
powered landing.
Blue Origin has not completed development of the New Shepard vehicle or
its engines, according to the EA, so no test results are available.
Nevertheless, as stated in the document, a thrust of 230,000 pounds
force is expected at vehicle liftoff.
Blue Origin would ship the New Shepard propulsion module and crew
capsule RLVs to the West Texas Launch Site separately. The RLVs would
originate at Blue Origin's manufacturing and assembly facilities in the
state of Washington and would travel via ground to West Texas. Blue
Origin plans no more than ten total RLV shipments during the five-year
period from 2006-2010.
Flight rate
Blue Origin has outlined within the pages of the EA the following
activities envisioned at the West Texas launch site over the next five
years. These are:
* 2006: The majority of facility construction at the site would
occur during this period. In the third and fourth quarters of 2006, Blue
Origin would ship the first prototype low-altitude test vehicle to the
site and conduct the first flight tests. Ten or fewer flight tests could
be conducted in 2006, each to an altitude of approximately 2,000 feet
(610 meters) for less than one minute.
* 2007-2009: Continued flight testing of prototype vehicles with
incrementally increasing capability. During these years, Blue Origin
proposes to gradually expand the operational envelope of its vehicles,
conducting 25 or fewer launches per year. A wide range of tests are
anticipated, ranging in altitude from under 2,000 feet (610 meters) to
greater than 325,000 feet (99,060 meters), lasting one minute or less to
over 10 minutes. Development tests of the crew capsule abort system
would be conducted during this time frame. During this time period, some
construction to upgrade the facility would also occur, adding additional
infrastructure to support the increasing capabilities of the system.
* 2010 and beyond: Commercial operations may commence with the
operational New Shepard vehicle in this timeframe. The flight rate would
depend on market demand, but Blue Origin anticipates rates up to
approximately 52 launches per year of the New Shepard RLV.
According to the EA, an experimental permit from the FAA would allow
Blue Origin to carry out testing of reusable suborbital vehicles that
would be launched or reentered solely for: Research and development to
test new design concepts, new equipment, or new operating techniques;
showing compliance with requirements as part of the process for
obtaining a license; and crew training prior to obtaining a license for
a launch or reentry using the design of the rocket for which the permit
would be issued.
Public comment
Last year, on June 14 and 15, Blue Origin conducted a series of
information meetings in Van Horn, Texas and Dell City, Texas. The firm's
plan to construct and operate a commercial launch facility in Culberson
County, Texas was detailed at those gatherings.
Now the Draft Environmental Assessment for the Blue Origin West Texas
Commercial Launch Site has been released for public review and comment,
explained James Stasny, spokesman for the FAA's Office of Commercial
Space Transportation.
A paper copy of the draft is available at the Van Horn public library in
Van Horn, Texas. A public hearing on the Blue Origin EA will be held on
July 25th at the Van Horn Convention Center, with the public comment
period about the rocket group's plans closing two days later, Stasny
told SPACE.com.
When queried by SPACE.com about their environmental assessment, Blue
Origin declined to comment beyond what is detailed within their EA document.
Thrust vectoring and responsive throttling
Blue Origin's spaceship is patterned after Department of Defense/NASA
work on the single-stage vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing Delta
Clipper Experimental (DC-X) and Delta Clipper Experimental Advanced
(DC-XA). It was repeatedly flown in 1993-1996 at the U.S. Army's White
Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
Among a list of distinctions, a 26-hour turnaround was achieved between
the DC-XA's second and third flights - a first for any rocket. The
flight program ended in July 1996 with the DC-XA suffering severe damage
due to a landing strut – one of four—that failed to extend. The
unbalanced vehicle tipped over on its landing pad and caught fire. Due
to lack of follow-up money, the program was ended.
John Garvey was the flight engineer during the DC-XA phase of testing
and now runs Garvey Spacecraft Corporation in Long Beach, California. He
told SPACE.com that he's keeping an eye on how Blue Origin operates New
Shepard in light of what was learned during DC-X/XA testing.
Garvey advised that if the descent and landing techniques for New
Shepard are similar to those employed on the DC-X/XA, then both thrust
vectoring and responsive throttling of the vehicle's engines will be
required. That likely means, he added, Blue Origin engineers will spend
loads of time on the test stand to flight qualify the spaceship's rocket
motors, especially for human-carrying operations.
Unique hazards
"Their reported choice of hydrogen peroxide and RP-1 as propellants is
interesting, particularly the hydrogen peroxide," Garvey noted. By
comparison, the DC-X/XA used liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.
"Numerous new entrants to the rocket business have favored—at least
initially – hydrogen peroxide as an oxidizer instead of liquid oxygen,
usually for perceived safety reasons, even though that means sacrificing
performance," Garvey observed.
However, highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide presents some unique
hazards relative to liquid oxygen in flight operations as well as
shipping and storage, Garvey said. Hydrogen peroxide can "rapidly
decompose" if contamination is present.
"Every so often there is a story about an amateur rocketeer burning down
the garage—or worse—due to such an accident," Garvey explained. "For
whatever reason ... no major operational launch system has employed it
for primary propulsion."
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