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)

Serene in snow

Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/remierice/20081219LakeSereneWPete#

Skied to Lake Serene yesterday with my buddy Pete who is visiting. (He's from Princeton where he's doing plasma physics grad school after graduating from the A&A Dept a few years back. Here in Seattle, he's doing some research with our plasma physics group.) It was an excellent ass kicking trip. We took a fork to see Bridal Veil falls first. It wasn't cold enough for perfect ice climbing conditions, but some guys were up there giving it a whirl.




After that, we got going up to Lake Serene. The two miles from the fork to Lake Serene was killer. Very steep. Deep snow. Pete had snowshoes and wore out his quads plowing up through the deep snow. I had trouble on the very steep parts and had to get off my skis a few times.

We arrived at the Lake around 2 pm. The view at the top was quite possibly worth the effort. In the pic below, the lake is to the left of me and I'm pointing up at Mt. Index (out of pic).


As we started down there was a great photo op and I handed my camera to Pete for a pic. He promptly tipped over backwards. He took this photo from his prone position.


Temps hovered around 20 deg. Peak altitude was 2500 ft -- I really enjoyed the thick air relative to some of my other exploits this year. My new "alpine touring" (AT) skis were champs. (AT skis are like telemark skis with optional heel lockdown for downhill mode.) This was my first trip on them. Going downhill, I didn't use the heel locking feature because the ability to climb here and there was required. I kept skins on most of the time. New boots have nice stiff feel that allows great control when going downhill. With my old setup I would've fallen over backwards and wiped out with much higher frequency.

Great way to earn supper.

CO River waters

My buddy Sarp (Cihan's twin bro) wrote as a comment on a photo from their recent GC trip,

"In every western state, 80% of the water goes to agriculture and ranching. In no state, even California, do those activities generate 5% of the state economy. Agriculture and ranching in California in 2005 generated a gross of about $21 billion. The gross domestic product of the state the same year was $1.55 trillion. 80% of the water goes to produce 1.3% of the fifth-largest economy in the world. It doesn't make sense."

I replied as follows:
the government has put a price on the waters of the CO. and it's cheap.

so the message to people is: "play golf, water your lawn, etc... we got plenty of water. Sure, give away water to grow alfalfa in the frakkin desert so we can eat lots of beef cows." (i believe water for irrigation is the lion's share of water wasted in the intermountain west.)

if we want water in the CO river, we need to price water appropriately.

i recommend reading
http://www.newwest.net/main/article/western_water_a_legend_of_overallocation/

quote:
"In every western state, 80% of the water goes to agriculture and ranching. In no state, even California, do those activities generate 5% of the state economy. Agriculture and ranching in California in 2005 generated a gross of about $21 billion. The gross domestic product of the state the same year was $1.55 trillion. 80% of the water goes to produce 1.3% of the fifth-largest economy in the world. It doesn't make sense."

Also, i think the USA figures "hell, if we don't use it, it'll just go down to Mexico and that'd be a waste." So we burn it however we can. Maybe we should consider letting some of the CO River water flow to Mexico. We could call it foreign aid.

Nature, 1970: don't worry about co2

I’ve been doing some library research recently and saw issues of Nature dating back before 1900. I grabbed a random issue from ~1970 and browsed thru it. Found an article saying we shouldn’t worry about co2. Don’t worry, nuke power will be coming on strong by 2000. We’ll only have an 18% rise in co2 (rise to date has been ~15%, so they were on with this figure). Hell, we think the ocean will soak up all the co2 pretty quick anyway, but if it becomes a problem, we’ll just cut down on the fossil fuels. Cake. Wait.. reality check.. this ain’t so easy! Hard to figure how to slow down fossil fuel intake, either in booming nations like china and india or in addicted nations like US.

Mt. Hood extravaganza

In short, nobody got hurt, but we had a little navigation problem (or was it a decision-making problem) that turned a 2-day / 1 night semi-technical trip into a 2 night / 3 day technical expedition with significant rock/ice fall hazard.

All pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/remierice/20081115Hood

On the day before the trip, I called the ranger station to check road conditions for the North Face route we’d been planning. Turns out road and trail were shut down due to fire. Did rapid replanning to do Sandy Glacier route instead. No problemo. Route heads up from Timberline Lodge to Illumination Saddle. Then down below Yocum Ridge and up the Sandy. Heads up left side of Sandy headwall, up the "obvious line of ascent" to Cathedral Ridge. Then to summit. Then down the usual Pearly Gates route.

Departed Timberline Lodge and departed by noon on Friday.

Fairly smooth sailing up to the Saddle, then down onto the Reid Glacier where we set up camp at dark. Departed at 2:30 AM and headed down beneath Yocum. Battled to stay high and had some tricky scrambling on total garbage rock with undesirable exposure. In retrospect should’ve sacrificed altitude and gone down to stable rock and easy walking. Headed up Sandy Glacier and reached headwall before 9 AM.

At this point, we saw an obvious line of ascent up a couloir. It looked pretty tough at the bottom, but nothing steeper than 55 degrees. The snow/ice was solid. A gps check suggested that the couloir wasn’t the route I’d entered in the gps. However, we convinced ourselves that it must be the route. I didn’t have the guidebook description with me. Only had a summitpost writeup which said “take obvious line of ascent.” So up we went. It was a 2 hr commitment to ascend the part that we could see. As we continued past the 2 hr point, continuing on 50+ degree ice, we kept assuming that things would open up onto a snowfield. I didn’t do a thorough gps + map check until 4 hrs up. Then I realized that we were in a bad spot.

Ascending Meier Couloir:

In retrospect, we should’ve known that the route was much more technical than the Sandy Glacier route descriptions we’d read. It takes time to really sit down and puzzle out exactly where you are on the map. Plus, the Nat. Geographic Oregon TOPO maps are not particularly crisp and were of limited help when navigating up the headwall where +/- 100 m is crucial. But spending the time to carefully study the map would’ve been worthwhile at the 2 hr point, not to mention prior to beginning the ascent of “Meier Couloir”. In retrospect, we found that the notoriously difficult Yocum Ridge route coincides largely with Meier Couloir.

At the 2 hr point, our hopes of summiting were shot if the route didn’t go through. That’s probably why I was reluctant to look carefully at the navigation. Because of the technically difficulty of the route (very difficult downclimb) and the poor conditions (falling ice) that we would later encounter, that was a bad decision. By 6 hrs, we’d made it to a safe bivy on the only flat spot on Yocum Ridge. I peered over the south side of Yocum and could see an escape route. At the time, I wasn’t aware that the escape route I saw was the standard “escape route” for Yocum Ridge climbers. It was too late to descend that night. It was almost 4 pm and sunset was at 4:30. Damn it was nice to see that little V-shaped snow drift. We carved a spot for our tent and settled in.

The next morn, we made the descent down to the Reid. We essentially used leader/belayer technique to downclimb without leaving pro behind. We left at 8 AM when light was good (could’ve left at 6:30). By 10 AM, things were getting warm. We didn’t get down to safety until 1 PM. Dangerous ice and rock fall had threatened us on the way down. From the Reid to Illum Saddle isn’t too bad. We simulclimbed the upper portion of this climb with sparse protection and reached the saddle at 2 pm.

Illum. Rock and Saddle:

Neither the Reid nor the Sandy had particularly difficult crevasse crossings.

After reaching Illum saddle, it was a cakewalk back down to the car. We made it there by 4 pm.

Here's a map of the route:

Food:

For this trip, I packed nothing but powerbars and clif bars. Ate ~18 bars (4000 calories). Had 1.5 liters of white gas stove fuel with my whisperlite stove. Was sufficient to support us even with the additional time en route. Lost stove skirt at top of Sandy (blew/rolled down the hill).

Clothes:

We both enjoyed our puffy jackets. I used a pair of bib pants this time. Quite nice. Tore some holes in my puffy jacket but patched them upon return.

Lessons:

- When possible, get GPS with high-res integrated topo map

- Check map/gps at least every hr if at all uncertain on steep terrain.

- Make the decision to retreat without undue hesitation.

- Nat Geo TOPO maps are not quite as good as topozone maps online. Would be nice to have paper topo maps but Hood maps aren’t available at Seattle REI.

- Carefully prepare gear before climbing. Need to have pickets set up for easy access with slings prepared and ready for action.

- Always use leash with ice axes. I dropped an expensive ax down the hill.

fusion as replacement for fossil fuels?

My grandfather (aka Uncle Bill) asked me if fusion power could replace fossil fuels. Here's my response....

Unk Bill,

You asked me if fusion can replace fossil fuel in our energy economy in the relatively near term (30 years). Below I’ll describe two candidate fusion machines. The first is a tokamak. It is unlikely to solve the problem because it’s too expensive. The other is the compact torus (CT). It is unlikely to solve the problem because a technological breakthrough is required. However, anything is possible, especially if enough research money is devoted to the challenge.

Tokamaks have received the vast majority of research effort in the past 50 years. With the tokamak, we have achieved “breakeven”, which that the ratio of fusion power out to electrical power in is one. For a commercial powerplant, this ratio should be about 10. If things go as planned, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) will achieve this desired factor of 10. However, tokamaks are incredibly complex and expensive engineering marvels. Superconducting magnets are required to produce the strong magnetic fields in tokamaks. Perhaps in 30-50 years, tokamaks can be made commercially competitive with coal plants, but not in the near term.

A sudden breakthrough in an innovative device called a compact torus (CT) is a long-shot possibility. The CT is similar to the tokamak, but is generally smaller and doesn’t require the superconducting magnets. One of the keys to the CT is that it allows the magnetic fields to relax naturally instead of using the high magnetic fields of a tokamak to force the plasma to behave. Consider bridge building: if an engineer wasn’t very crafty, he/she might just make the bridge deck very thick. However, a crafty engineer would use cables to suspend the bridge, thereby greatly reducing the cost of the bridge. The CT is the crafty engineer’s approach. CT development is far behind the tokamak in funding levels and in technological development. However, a breakthrough might yield a useful fusion powerplant in the next 20 years.

Now… if fusion can’t solve the problem alone, can it help somehow? Nuclear fission technology works, but has a radioactive waste problem. Nuclear fusion can help solve that problem. Fission produces radioactive isotopes. By bombarding the radioactive isotopes with neutrons, they can be transmuted into radioactively stabilized. Fusion produces lots of neutrons even if it doesn’t produce energy. With fission-fusion hybrid technology, we can employ those neutrons to deal with radioactive waste.

Many people don’t realize how much progress has been made in fusion! We routinely control plasmas and make fusion energy. Hydrogen (which can be obtained by splitting water) is the fuel for fusion. This is a technology that humanity will surely benefit from in the long run if not the short run.

Hope this sheds some light on the issue!

Eric

P.S. I’ve only talked here about magnetic confinement fusion which uses electromagnetic fields to trap plasma (hot charged particles). Another approach is to use lasers to compress a chunk of fuel. This idea also has some merit, but I think magnetic confinement is preferable, so I ignore laser compression here.

Blanca Lake

Ci, Orli, Brianne and I, along with Bri's two golden retrievers, Winston and Simon, braved a snowy, slippery, treacherous (well it wasn't that bad) trail to Blanca Lake. Probably 2500 ft elevation total. We took our time and it was a 5 hr round trip. This hike is in a newly annointed wilderness area called Wild Sky Wilderness.

[Wikipedia: The Wild Sky Wilderness is significant because it is the first new federally-designated wilderness in Washington since 1984. Also, unlike many other wilderness areas in the Cascades, Wild Sky protects significant amounts of high biological productivity low-elevation forest.]

There were some big trees up there.


We came across a guy with a chainsaw who'd been doing some serious work clearing the trail of LARGE trees which had fallen across the trail. He recruited Ci and I to help him roll some big chunks of log off of the trail. He was a volunteer from Seattle. Burly dude. He gave us his # so we could let him know how many more big logs there are up the trail. Ci kept careful count.

The dogs had a ball.



The lake was a beautiful emerald green. Wikipedia says: Glacial lakes can be green as a result of pulverized minerals (rock flour) that support a large population of algae. I didn't know (or, more likely, had forgotten) that algae is responsible for the color.


For all pics, see http://picasaweb.google.com/remierice/20081025BlancaLake#.

On the drive back we stopped for pastries at the Sultan Bakery. That place is legendary. Then , back in Seattle, we stopped for burgers. Judging by how my stomach felt this morning, the guacomole bacon burger was a little much.

Ci did his Bryan Adams impression for us (which damaged his vocal cords years ago because of the gravelly voice required -- this was interesting to Orli and Brianna because they are in speech and hearing science). We started singing lots of songs. Dirty Dancing also came up. So many good songs on that soundtrack :) [I've had the time of my life (and i owe it all to you), she's like the wind, hungry eyes, etc.]

Good trip!