Space Mining Operation Imagined

Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resouces want to mine asteroids and perhaps comets.  For years many people imagined that asteroids and comets were good for extracting minerals.  How would such an operation work in space?  We will look at what these small space bodies are made of, the scouts, the miners, and processors that are needed to extract the goods.

Stardust

To find out the content of comets and asteroids, NASA had some significant missions that provided answers.  Deep Impact spacecraft was successful in giving us analysis of the composition of comet Tempel 1 in 2005.  Stardust was a spacecraft that collected samples of comet Wild 2.  It finished its primary mission in 2006 and then had an add on mission to look at Temple 1 after Deep Impact's mission.   NEAR Shoemaker mission did some spectrography on an asteroid in 1997.  The findings of these missions are posted in the journal Science (membership required - a free one is available).  From what I read in Science articles, comets are full of water, carbon-dioxide, and hydrogen cyanide.  Asteroids seem to have elements to include iron, magnesium, silicon, and calcium, among others.  That's important because that is what is peaking the interest of companies to go and perform mining operations.

To really get a good understanding of what particular asteroids are made of, the companies will have to send out scouts.  Instead of a geologist, they will be remotely operated unmanned spacecraft.  Now, until recent history, unmanned exploration spacecraft either did flybys over specific routes, or went to orbit only one space body.  After their launch, which gave them the velocity they needed to get to their destination, they only had thrusters to steer themselves and no real main propulsion.  DAWN is the first unmanned spacecraft to have its own main propulsion via an ion drive.  Now its on its way to Ceres after orbiting and orbiting Vesta.  That's what you want in a scout.  It needs to orbit several asteroids by jumping from one to another.  Ion drives were first tested on NASA's Deep Space 1 mission with a mission manager that felt like Captain Kirk, Marc Rayman.  He also manages DAWN.



Marc is a pretty neat guy.  After the video interlude, let's get back to our topic.  As for finding the needed materials, and impactor and a spectrograph could be a quick way of determining the composition of asteroids or comets.  A scout could have several impactors.  This would be similar to the Deep Impact mission, but I imagine smaller and simpler impactors would be preferable.  Another way is to simply spectrograph the surfaces of the asteroids or comets.  I also would imagine marking the asteroids and comets by landing a small radio code transmitters.  This would be useful for the miners to come to them and find them.  Then on Earth, an automatic ground based system could track them without the need of an astronomer.

Deep Space 1

After marking the asteroids, miners come to extract the ore.  What would a robotic miner look like?  Now landing on an asteroid would seem tricky because of their irregular potato shape and the fact that they are spinning.  In 2005 Hayabusa landed on an asteroid and collected a sample.  A miner could do the same, but it must collect a lot of soil, do some preliminarily sifting (optional), and send the soil to a processing plant.  The container for the soil would have to be large and have its own service module (like a reusable space tug).  There should be several of these container ships going from the mining site to the processing plant.  They could be refueled at the processing plant and, if necessary, refuel the miner.

The processing plant should not be on Earth.  It should be in a place that is easily accessible from Earth and from deep space.  Earth-Moon, or Sun-Earth  L2 could be ideal places.  The processing plant would be a complex piece of machinery that perhaps would need humans to maintain it when it breaks.  Now such a plant would process the ore and have some material left over.  The waste material could be either sent to the moon or be collected next to the station, effectively making a ever growing pile of rubble that becomes an asteroid itself.

NEAR Schoemaker

After the ore is processed into some usable material, it could be sent to Earth, but why?  Well the simple answer is: that's where the factories are.  Yet, it seems rhetorical to get useful material in space to be only used on Earth where such material already exists.  That would be economically unsound.  An alternative is to take the material and make it usable for 3D printers to create whatever is needed for infrastructure in space and sell these items to other space companies for parts or new space structures.  These structures would use the elements from asteroids like iron, calcium, magnesium, and such.  The other types of product these processing plants could create would be consumables like water, oxygen, and hydrogen.  These consumables would be used by space stations, and even unmanned systems for fuel as well as the obvious.

Now, I've heard an alternate motivation for mining asteroids and that is for precious and rare minerals.  Whether such minerals exist in asteroids, I don't know nor have I read anything to that effect.  In such a case, bringing such material to Earth would be appropriate.  Such minerals could be sold in existing markets.

The use scouts, miners, and processing plants is the heart of my imagined space mining plan.  Now this little thought exercise is nice but is by no means the only way.  I just laid out a way that I thought would work.  It's fun to let you imagination run with a solution.  I even thought of an alternative which would make the miner and processor into one vehicle.  Yet, every plan will have different benefits and liabilities.  I'm sure you can come up with your own space mining operation plan.  It's a fun activity.

A Rocketless NASA?

SLS courtesy NASA

NASA is currently working on making the Space Launch System (SLS).  It's the latest rocket system that the government is working on to create.  The last one, was the Constellation program which failed.  Before that, the Space Transport System (Shuttle) was made in the 1970's by NASA.  Sure many companies were involved in these programs across the country, just like with the Apollo rockets.  This gives NASA full control and responsibility of success and failure with these systems.  Is this really the best thing that NASA could do?  Is NASA wasting their time?  I think NASA should get out of the rocket development business altogether.  Case in point, I found this article in Al.com (Alabama) by Lee Roop.  In it, some members of Congress state that SLS is too expensive.  Here we go again.  It's financial crunch just like in Constellation.  I'm starting to have doubts that SLS will ever fly.  NASA's strength is research for aerospace companies, and provide opportunity for scientific experiments off the planet.  They also do good in space exploration, manned and unmanned.  Why not have NASA major on these strengths rather than developing rockets while Congress refuses to fund NASA appropriately?  Much scientific experimentation is refused because of lack of money available.  Commercial Space can take over the development and responsibility for launches as they are demonstrating today.  They already are taking pressurized cargo to the ISS.  They are slated to take astronauts to ISS as well.  Let's see what we got as far as rockets and what a rocketless NASA would look like where it comes to space exploration.

So far, the major commercial players to launch NASA assets into orbit are ULA, Orbital Sciences, and SpaceX.  These guys represent the current launch might of the United States.  The rockets are:

ULA

• Delta II
• Delta IV
• Delta IV Heavy
• Atlas V (in all its configurations)

Orbital Sciences

• Pegasus
• Taurus
• Minotaur I, IV, and V
• Antares (yet to fly)

SpaceX

• Falcon 1
• Falcon 9
• Falcon Heavy (yet to fly)

Atlas V is being upgraded to be human rated to compete with Falcon 9.  Antares is also competing with Falcon 9 but in the pressurized cargo area.  ULA is a cooperation between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.  Before SpaceX, only Atlas V, the Delta family and Oribtal's rockets (not Antares) were the launchers plus NASA had Shuttle (STS).  Shuttle is gone.  You see that the commercial companies are responding to NASA's need and challenge to assist in the manned exploration effort already.

If NASA never gets SLS, how could it explore asteroids and Mars?  SLS represents an approach that was used for Apollo.  That approach was to put all your assets on one BIG ROCKET and go for your target.  Man has never been manlier (that's a joke).  There is another theoretical approach but it's never been tried.  That approach requires the use of medium size rockets (Atlas V, Delta IV, Falcon 9).  The idea is to use more than one launch to Earth orbit and put together your stack that goes to your target in orbit.  That stack would have a rocket big enough to leave Earth orbit, carry all the assets needed for the mission including a capsule to return the crew back to earth.  This would give commercial companies contracts and responsibility for launches.  Plus the old axiom is put to use that says "don't put all your eggs in one basket".  Launch from Earth represents the most risk to hardware and crew on any mission apart from landing.  Does this seem inefficient?  Perhaps to a rocket scientist, but it just may very well be more economically feasible than the alternative.

What about Orion?  The Orion capsule is the only asset to come out of the Constellation program to survive, albeit modified.  It is slated to launch on a Delta IV Heavy for its first space test run and return at high speed through the atmosphere.  That tells me it doesn't need SLS to get to orbit.  Delta IV or Falcon Heavy are capable of handling the job.

What could this stack look like?  If you look at SLS, the stack could be the upper stage that uses the J-2X engine, whatever space module needed form the mission, and the Orion Command Module.  2 or 3 launches should do the trick.  Later, they could make the J-2X booster into a reusable booster that comes back to Earth orbit ready to be refueled for another mission.

SLS is based on old idea of space operations.  This is a new century.  NASA has bigger plans for exploration than is SLS can economically provide.  SLS is really putting money in a rocket that is seldom going to be used.  That makes no economic sense.  NASA should stop reinventing the rocket.

NASA without its own rocket could open up the architecture of a mission to become more economically feasible, more reliable, and more evolvable.  I say let commercial companies lift NASA to orbit.  Then NASA can take care of exploration from there.

Learjet In Chahokia

This story made the national news.  A Learjet had landing gear trouble and took it's time to figure out how to land at St Louis Downtown Airport in Cahokia, Illinois.   The plane ended up making a safe landing at Lambert Airport at the pilots request for a wider landing strip.  The front gear was the one the pilot was concerned about.  Apparently it could come down and retract, but it was 30 degrees tilted off center.  That was revealed to the pilot after a flyby of the tower at the St Louis Downtown Airport.  The crew and eight passengers were aboard.  I'll comment about the aircraft and the landing.

Learjet 45

Learjet is the maker of business jet aircraft that have better speed than airliners.  The Learjet in the story was a model 45.  It has a cruise speed of 500 mph and a range of 1968 mi.  It was developed in the early 1990's so it's not a new aircraft.  In fact, there was an upgrade to this model called the model 45XR.

With nose gear problems, a pilot might try keeping the nose in the air while landing and slowing the plane to a near stop.  I've seen this maneuver done by F-15 pilots.  Apparently they like to see who can keep the nose up the longest.  I don't think a Learjet could do such a stunt.  The pilot might have preferred to let the nose down as slow as possible.  The Grimli Glider had a nose gear that didn't want to lock as one of its problems.  The gear collapsed on landing and the front part of the fuselage halted the aircraft.  The pilot of the Learjet took a long time to land apparently figuring out the best way to minimize damage to the plane and injury to the passengers.  He tried a couple of times to land but aborted before landing at Lambert.  To his credit, he succeeded without incident.

As to emergency landings, this one ended on a good note.  Too often they don't end well.  I suppose it made the national news because the pilot requested the main airport rather than the smaller one.  The story was covered by Fox 2 News. 

Looking At AugustaWestland

Growing up making model aircraft and learning about all kinds of craft, I bought a book on helicopters.  It documented all the helicopters up to that time, 1980's.  The designs were interesting and varied.  I did notice a brand of helicopter that seemed pretty fancy and yet I hadn't heard of.  It was the Augusta helicopters.  They seem to rival high end VIP helicopters of Bell.  Recently I was saddened to hear that AugustaWestland had some serious allegations against them in their deal with selling some helicopters to India.  Westland was a British aircraft firm.  Augusta and Westland were merged in 2000.  Both companies have a good history in making high quality helicopters.  Let's check out a couple of these beauties.

Westland Lynx

The Lynx was originally developed by Westland for the British military.  Westland shared its production with the french company Aerospatiale, now a part of Eurocopter.  This helicopter has had long history with British, French, and many other countries' military.  Whether with wheels or skids it has had a lot of different configurations for multiple roles.  It's popularity is not surprising, since it set the speed record for helicopters in 1986.  I've seen footage where this very capable craft has even done the unimaginable for rotary wing, barrel roles.  It's a great air platform.  The updated version of the Lynx is called the AugustaWestland AW159 Wildcat.  It made an appearance in the movie Skyfall.  The Wildcat has a max speed of 296 kph (183.9 mph), and a range of 787.3 km (489.2 mi).  It can take 2 crew and 6 passengers.

AW101

The AW101 was originally a joint effort by Westland and Augusta under the name of EH101.  They call it Merlin.  It's a medium lift craft that replaces the S-61's role with many modern features.  Troop carrier, sub hunter, search and rescue, this craft can do it all and in all weather conditions.  Looking at the specs, it can hold 2 crew members and 30 passengers.  It has a range of 1058 km (657.4 mi).  It has a cruising speed of 278 kph (172.7 mph). 

AW 609

The AW609 was developed by Augusta and Bell and it's being produced by AugustaWestland.  The tiltrotor technology was developed by Bell in a project called XV-15.  Out of it came V-22 Osprey.  You can say that the AW609 is the civilian version of the tiltrotor tech.  It has a cruise speed of 465 kph (299 mph).  It has a range of 1390 km (852 mi).  It up to 9 passengers with a crew of 2.  This exceeds the speed and range of the AW101 and the Wildcat.  This is the purpose of the tiltrotor, to have a VTOL aircraft that can fly longer and faster than a helicopter.  Sikorsky's X-2 and Carter Copter's Slowed Rotor techs are competing for similar markets as the tiltrotor tech.

If you haven't heard of AugustaWestland before, now you have.  It happens to be a mainstay company in the rotary wing craft business just like Boeing, Sikorsky, and others.  They have an impressive presence in Europe but do business world-wide.  They are bold enough to try to market the tiltrotor in the commercial markets when no other company will.  I'd keep an eye on these guys see what they will do next.

Let's Go Save The Planet

If there is anything that Aerospace was made for, its go save the planet and life on it. B612 Foundation is doing just that and its non government.  The are counting on your donation.

They want to build and fly an observatory in solar orbit to find the unknown asteroids.  This observatory will be launched by SpaceX.  Check this video out.



Today a rock from space hit Russia in the Ural Mountains.  Many people were injured due to glass breaking because of the shock wave from the rock breaking up and exploding.  Here is an LA times article.

NASA also informed us that Asteroid 2012 DA14 is making a very close flyby the earth.  IT seems these asteroids are getting closer and closer to the Earth.

 These incidents puts it into perceptive.  We need to take action and try to secure the safety of Earth from asteroids.  The B612 Foundation needs your donation.  It will take years, so your donation over time should help.  I'm planning on donating myself.

The following video is PBS NOVA episode on the analysis of the meteor in the Urals:

Watch Meteor Strike on PBS. See more from NOVA.

A Govonor And His Beechcraft

Well, recently the Missouri Governor bought a plane .  Well technically it was Missouri Highway Patrol that bought it.  The Governor is going to use it though.  This caused the legislature to complain because of the cost and the fact they weren't informed of the purchase beforehand.  Could we call this Missouri Force One?  Not likely.  The aircraft is far from an air liner like Air Force One is.  It happens to be a King Air 250 made by Beechcraft.  The plane is also supposed to be used by Highway Patrol for drug interdiction.  Let's check out its specifications and the company that markets it.

King Air 250

It's max speed is about 356 mph.  Its range is about 1362 miles with four passengers.  It can operate up to 35,000 ft.  It can carry up to 10 passengers with one pilot.  That's not at all bad for a prop plane.  I can see the justification of using it for law enforcement.  It could track ground vehicles quite nicely.  It seems to be more economical than a jet.  It only runs $3.06 a mile.  It can cover the State of Missouri handily.  The state is only 240 miles by 300 miles.  Add some surveillance devices on the craft and you have a good platform for law enforcement.  Missouri is located in the middle of the continental United States so we get a lot of through traffic that's legal and illegal.  It should be a nice plane for the Governor as well to travel to other states and such.  Though the public might think of planes as being a cost just for the big wigs, AVweb put out a good article about state planes which explains cost and usage of these aircraft.  There seems to be a valid argument for these planes.  Coupled with another mission of law enforcement, it seems the administration has done its homework.



Beechcraft is a company that markets these small business planes though they are manufactured by different companies.  Its a company that started in 1932 and was bought up by Raytheon in 1980.  Raytheon merged it with Hawker in 1994.  In 2006, Raytheon sold the company to Goldman Sachs and Onex Corporation to make Hawker Beechcraft.  The recession was not good to the company.  They went dove into bankruptcy and pulled out of it in Oct 2012.  It now stand proudly on its own as Beechcraft Corporation.  Hawker, of course, is the legendary company the made the Hawker Hurricane of Battle of Britain fame.  What a history for such an iconic brand.  I hope the best for them.

There you have it. A legislature up in arms, a Governor with a plane, and a company getting back on its feet.  What amazing times we live in. 

A Short History Of New Commercial Space

While I don't claim to have the whole story behind the new commercial space effort, I did start to follow it in spring 2004.  I think some of the 'old guard' of spaceflight are trying to discredit the new companies.  Some of the attacks leverage peoples' ignorance on how these companies got their start.  So, here's a layout of the history of new commercial space.

Mike Melvill and SpaceShipOne

Now its 'new' commercial space because NASA and the US Military have contracted with commercial companies to launch satellites into orbit since the beginning of the space race.  Those were cost plus contacts.  Boeing, Lockheed, and McDonnell Douglas were among these companies, and they made up the establishment.   In 1996 the X Prize put set up a competition for the first company to send 3 humans to suborbital heights twice in two weeks with the same craft.  I have to say that back then the X-Prize foundation set up shop at the St Louis Science Center.  Such a feat was not done by anyone including NASA and Roscosmos.  That may sound strange, but orbital flight and flights to the moon were more important than suborbital flight in the 1960's space race.  We're talking manned missions here.  This would be a coup for reusable spacecraft.  In 2004 Scaled Composites won.  Its SpaceShipOne did 3 space flights that year.  Mike Melvill was one of the pilots and was the first commercial astronaut pilot.  The first was a test flight while the other two were for the prize.  Instead of sending up 3 people, they had the pilot and the equivalent weight of two other bodies.  SpaceShipOne and its mother ship WhiteKnight became the first totally reusable launch system since the X-15 and its B52 mother ship.  After the win, Richard Branson contracted with Scaled Composites to make SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo thus forming Virgin Galactic.

Armadillo's Pixel

In that competition there were several teams and some have gotten some momentum and contracts.  Armadillo Aerospace went on to win in the Northup Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge level 1 after the X-Prize.  They also have paired up with Space Adventures to provide a suborbital experience to tourists.

Of course, Space Adventures was the company that started the space tourism with Dennis Tito the International Space Station in 2001.

Masten Space Systems competed with Armadillo Aerospace in the Lunar Lander Challenge.  They managed to win the level 2 prize.  Now they are pursuing reusable suborbital launch rockets demonstrating VTVL technology.  NASA has long used sounding rockets for research since the V-2 rocket.  Those were single use rockets.  NASA has been experimenting with these reusable rockets from both Armadillo and Masten in the last couple of years to present.  The benefits of such vehicles are obvious.  They supply multiple missions.  I think of Masten and Armadillo as a type of rocket company that is contracted by other rocket and/or space companies rather than catering to the public.  These guys seem small, but they are not to be underestimated.  Once they mature the technology, space will never be the same.

SpaceX Dragon

Other companies sprung up with the X-Prize momentum.  Space Exploration Technologies started in 2004 and had a preliminary design of their Dragon capsule and a family of rockets known as Falcon.  They were going after the cost plus launch companies and a cheaper way to launch to orbit.  At this time they received no government moneys.  It wasn't until the X-Prize was won that NASA seriously looked at the new companies. XCOR came up with a space plane called Xerus around 2002.  Now, they are touting a smaller suborbital space plane called Lynx.  If and when the Lynx flies, it will be the first fully reusable commercial suborbital space plane in a single stage.  Now XCOR has plans to use the old Space Shuttle landing strip in Cape Canaveral for the Lynx.

Of all these space companies, one really is in a league of their own.  Bigelow Aerospace makes inflatable space stations.  They started in 1999.  Their design was based on some inflatable space modules ideas from NASA.  In 2006 and 2007, they launched two test modules that were successful, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2.  Now NASA has bought a small inflatable module to attach to the ISS and taken up there by SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft.



What's next for space competition?  There a current competition, the Google Lunar X-Prize.  This started in 2007.  Watch these competitors.  The idea is to put a rover or probe on the surface of the moon.  Yes, commercial space is looking at the moon even if NASA is not.  If all goes according to pattern, one or two teams will spearhead through and land taking the prize.  Then contracts will emerge from NASA and other space companies.

NASA Administrator Bolden congratulating Musk after COTS demo

When NASA got interested in this New Commercial Space, they started with a program that was designed to check out then new companies capabilities.  This program was called Commercial Orbiting Transportation Services (COTS).  It started in 2006 with SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler.  SpaceX proved their worthiness but Rocketplane Kistler was another story.  It failed and put a black mark on commercial space.  In its place, NASA elected Orbital Sciences.  This company started in 1982 with the advent of the Pegasus air launched rocket.  It seemed to be a bold attempt at making access to space cheaper at the time.  Orbital still operates and sells launches with Pegasus and with other more traditional rockets.  Orbital has had some setbacks.  Now its fixing to launch its new Cygnus spacecraft and Antares rocket to satisfy COTS.  Now NASA has Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contracts with SpaceX and Orbital.  They also are hosting a competition for development of hardware for commercial companies to transport Astronauts to orbit in their Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program.  COTS, CRS, and CCDev are the programs that give money to the competing companies so far.

Now for two humble space companies.  In 1998, UP Aerospace was founded.  Their launch vehicle is a small suborbital rocket.  They have scored some NASA and DOD contracts.  They have been launching from Spaceport America in New Mexico since 2006.  In 1977 the concept of an all volunteer lighter than air company was imagined.  Out of that meeting came JP Aerospace.  It may be the oldest commercial space company that was not part of the establishment.  They have launched many balloon missions to the edge of space.  They have even launched some rockets from their balloons.  Their ultimate goal is to create a ground to orbit system using airships and a lither than air station.  It sounds wacky, but to me it seems more plausible than the space elevator concept.  To their credit, JP Aerospace made and flew the highest dirigible ever to fly called the Tandem in 2011.

Well, that's the start of the New Commercial Space.  It started with just dreams and private money and now NASA is helping out here and there.  New companies are still being made and the market is likely to grow.  Deep Space Industries wants to mine asteroids;  Golden Spike wants to sell you a ticket to the moon; and Stratolaunch wants to air launch medium sized rockets.  These were formed in 2011 and 2012.  This is history in the making.  This is rocket science and rocket business.  I don't know which is more daunting.