Instinct to Explore -- Chapter 1

This is the first entry in a planned series of entries relating some of my experiences with Space Transport Corporation, a company that I cofounded with a fellow engineer, Phil Storm, from Aerojet. We founded the company in 2002 with our sights set on the X Prize.

The text should stand alone, but pictures are included at the end.

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Human beings have thrived on this planet because of an insatiable curiosity – an endless drive to learn and explore. This trait has led to a remarkable knowledge of and ability to manipulate our environment – perhaps to our own detriment if we are not careful! Exploration of the various corners of earth’s land took humanity a long time. We finished it off just in the last century by standing atop the highest mountains and planting flags on the north and south poles.

Since Orville and Wilbur Wright’s famous 1903 flight at Kitty Hawk [1], we have mastered air flight. This mastery was given a big boost with the legendary solo crossing of the Atlantic by Charles Lindbergh [2]. Any kid who has read and failed to be inspired by Lindbergh’s book The Spirit of Saint Louis should receive medical evaluation. This crossing won him the $25,000 Orteig Prize – a hefty sum in 1927. The prize had been on the table since 1919. Aviation was in its infancy and realistic competition did not begin until 1924. Aviation saw rapid advance in the 1920s and 1930s and played a crucial role in World War II. Commercial airline service began in the 1950s and is now commonplace – about a billion people fly each year.

Next came the challenge of exploring outer space. Robert Goddard was the preeminent pioneer of rocketry [3]. The idea that space could be explored was generally considered ludicrous. In 1920 The New York Times wrote an editorial related to Goddard’s early work and stated that Goddard, because of his confidence that rocket propulsion would work outside of our atmosphere, "seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." Incidentally, the now famous Lindbergh was intrigued by Goddard’s work and in 1929 became a friend and supporter. Financing was tough to find after the stock market crash of 1929. It was Lindbergh who greased the skids for the Guggenheim family to fund Goddard’s research ($100,000 over 4 years). It turns out that Goddard was right, Newton’s laws do hold true in outer space; we saw Sputnik orbit in 1957 and Apollo 11 put us on the moon in 1969. Unlike the aviation experience, space travel has not become commonplace. In fact, we have not returned to the moon since the last Apollo mission in 1972. NASA has sent probes to the outskirts of the solar system, put rovers on and satellites around Mars, and played a key role in developing satellite networks in orbit. The ISS has been interesting although the overall profitability (i.e. the value of the knowledge gained vs. the cost) is questionable. But why haven’t we cultivated a large human (or robotic) presence beyond earth orbit? Because there has been no clear commercial incentive.

To mention a few of the benefits we enjoy because of our spacefaring capability, we have satellite TV, worldwide cell phone service, and GPS technology which is crucial to our commercial aviation network and to our militaries, and space observation capability that lets us feel the pulse of our planet’s ecosystem. The commercial spacecraft that launch the satellites required for these technologies are effective and cheap enough to represent only a small part of the total expense of the satellite services. However, as Einstein showed, all things are relative, and something may be cheap relative to worldwide satellite TV, but not relative to other transportation costs like air travel. It costs $10,000 per pound to put something in orbit.

Space exploitation is an appropriate and eventually imperative goal for humanity. If we are to continue our intellectual growth we need to explore and understand the broader cosmos, beginning with the solar system. Clearly, significant population increases must take place off of this planet. Furthermore, if we want to survive an asteroid impact we must have one or both of significant capability to deflect the asteroid, or a second independent population center (on Mars for example). In the *very* long run, we should think about bailing out of the solar system when the sun goes red giant.

A space tourism industry would generate the research and development money needed to build a robust and economical space transportation system. Only then can we tap into the tremendous potential benefits to be found beyond earth orbit. In the early days of aviation, barnstormers did performances and took people for joy rides. A similar spacestorming effort may jumpstart the stalled space age. Perhaps after spacestorming financially vitalizes space development, we can make serious progress in developing space. Exactly what kind of early development will be most useful to humanity is unclear, but to name a few possible pursuits, moon mining might be profitable (see e.g. the book Moonrush), space solar power might be feasible, and asteroids might yield valuable resources.

The X Prize was created in 1996 as a modern parallel to the Orteig Prize won by Lindbergh. The goal: launch a person to space twice in a two week period using a reusable vehicle developed with private funds. The prize: $10 million. The X Prize cofounder Peter Diamandis dreamed of being an astronaut. He recognized that the odds of realizing this dream were low and the X Prize idea was born. The prize received a multi-million dollar donation by the Ansari family and became the Ansari X Prize in 2004. Using the Ansari money, the “Ansari X Prize” was insured through Jan. 1, 2005 for the full $10M with a “hole-in-one” insurance policy.

In 2004, the company that I cofounded in 2002, Space Transport Corporation (STC), began testing the 12” diameter solid rocket motors that would power our Rubicon suborbital spacecraft, our entry in the X Prize. The renowned aerospace engineer, Burt Rutan, designed the Voyager airplane that completed a record-setting round-the-world flight in 1986. He and his company, Scaled Composites, began a quest for the X Prize in 1997 and eventually received near $30 million dollars from Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen. By 2004, they were the clear leader in the X Prize competition. In June 2004, they conducted the first private human spaceflight.

STC’s headquarters was in Forks, Washington, a quaint little town of 2,500 people on the far west end of the Olympic Peninsula. The two-man STC had been warmly welcomed in to set up operations in Forks back in 2003. The Forks City Hall officials were excited to have their own little rocket company. The populace affectionately called us the “rocket dudes.” The Peninsula Daily News (PDN) latched onto us as an interesting story early on. In May 2003, the PDN’s Jeff Chew wrote:

“Near massive stacks of fresh-dried lumber at the Portac mill, two young men quietly labor to reshape what they see as an aerospace industry stuck in neutral.”

After a rollercoaster of rocket development, in August, 2004, we were out of time and basically out of money. We had not completed our engine test program, but the Rubicon was ready in a rough form for a low-altitude test launch. Why not go for it? Among our large group of local supporters and enthusiasts, we found someone with a plot of land sitting atop a bluff above the Pacific Ocean. The Rubicon was to achieve supersonic speed and an altitude of 20,000 feet whereupon the vehicle would deploy a parachute and descend for splashdown and boat recovery.

On August 8, 2004 from the launch site atop a coastal cliff near Queets, Washington, the blue sky stretched endlessly over the calm Pacific Ocean. The Rubicon sat waiting in its launch rail, aimed out over the ocean. One passenger was on board: a mannequin that we’d prepared with a flight helmet and a jumpsuit. She would later become known as Stevie Austin after Steve Austin, the star of the 1974 film The Six Million Dollar Man. Down on the beach, about 2500 feet from the launch site in both directions, crowds of reporters and spectators jockeyed for prime position to view the launch. I would find out later that some of them were uncomfortably close. Fox News was there along with representatives from the Seattle PI, the Seattle Times, the Peninsula Daily News, and three Seattle TV news networks.

I was two miles offshore waiting on a crab boat that we’d chartered to perform the recovery operation. The five hour cruise up with the captain and his first mate was a pleasant break from the frantic launch preparations back on shore. We talked about the challenges of the crab fishing industry and I told them some rocket stories. It gave me some time to contemplate the situation. We’d had some success with smaller rockets using four-inch diameter solid rocket motors. This would be the first launch of our large X Prize space vehicle which used 12-inch diameter motors. We’d had two failures and one success with the 12-inchers. We felt that we understood the failures, but the raw facts were not encouraging. Failure would not mean the end of STC, but it would vaporize our chances to win the X Prize. Success would mean a glimmer of hope that we could win, especially if Scaled Composites encountered difficulty and the prize had to be extended into 2005 or 2006.

The last hour spent waiting for launch with spotty contact with the ground team via VHF marine radio seemed like a day. I could see the 25-foot-high Rubicon clearly with binoculars and I watched and waited. When the moment finally came, it was a disappointing fireworks display. One of the two motors ruptured moments after launch and burned out violently at the launch site. The second motor somersaulted out of control to an altitude of over 2000 feet. I couldn’t see the passenger capsule from my vantage point, but would later learn of Stevie Austin’s fate. She’d been heaved to near 1500 feet and had plummeted without parachute to a 200 mph splashdown about 50 feet from shore. This splashdown demolished her ship and separated her mannequin head from her Styrofoam bead-filled jumpsuit body. The beads floated to shore along with her head. One of our main supporters, Marty Dillon, made a deadpan statement to the media: “the occupant has been decapitated.”

The media had a heyday with this event. ABC Nightline did a 10 minute segment on us. The world saw the challenge that we faced and many wanted to help us meet the challenge. Why should Scaled Composites, the billionaire-backed project that had spent $20 million or more to win a $10 million prize be the only game in town?! The launch had been a nominal failure, but you can’t succeed if you don’t try, and we were certainly doing that! This event took a lot of wind from our sails and, though we pressed on, we were unable to solidify STC’s business foundation, and we had to close our doors in early 2005. “Rocket science” isn’t synonymous with “extremely difficult” for nothing!

The experience leading up to and following the Rubicon launch is a tale worth remembering. I’m going to try to write down the most interesting and dramatic aspects of the project in a series of “chapters” (blog entries?). Maybe I’ll eventually compile these into a single cohesive document that can be produced for the public, but at least I’ll have the record for myself, my family and my friends. We lived an adventure seldom seen outside of Hollywood (something like October Sky). We developed incredible personal relationships, lived in an amazing place, and learned what makes rocket science so tough.

References:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Goddard_(scientist)

Eric Meier
Copyright 2008

The Wright brothers lift off in 1903:

Charles Lindbergh with his Spirit of Saint Louis airplane in 1927:

Robert Goddard with a test rocket in 1926:


Phil Storm and Eric Meier before a 12-inch solid rocket motor test in 2003:
[A friend of ours once compared the picture below to the picture of Goddard with his rocket test stand :)]

The Rubicon prior to launch in August 2004:

(image credit Jim Anderson)

The Rubicon blowing apart:

(image credit Jim Anderson)