Newsgroups: sci.space
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Cargo: costs and standards
Message-ID: <1989Dec21.044231.5642@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <37951@ames.arc.nasa.gov> <3332@ibmpa.UUCP> <1989Dec19.001442.18701@utzoo.uucp> <3354@ibmpa.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 21 Dec 89 04:42:31 GMT

In article <3354@ibmpa.UUCP> szabonj@ibmpa.UUCP (Nick Szabo) writes:
>Hopefully, we will soon have a set of standards for space cargo...

Actually, we already have this in small ways.  Commercial Titan payload
fairings are the same as Ariane 4 payload fairings (MM buys them from
the same outfit -- I think it's Contraves in Switzerland -- that builds
them for Ariane).

However, the real problem is that there is no standardization *within*
a single launcher's payloads, never mind across launchers.  Every launch
is a custom job at present.  If you read the user's manual for a launcher
(I've seen the ones for Ariane and Titan), you find not a standard set of
services and facilities, but a list of constraints on exactly what custom
facilities can be provided.

I suspect that this situation is likely to continue as long as launch
volumes are low.  The ALS people have talked about various schemes for
both standardizing interfaces and minimizing them (requiring payloads
to be more independent of the launcher), but ALS is most unlikely to
ever become real, precisely because there isn't enough volume of business
to justify it.

>... Also, implementers of new technologies like
>EML or laser-launch would be well-advised to scale the machines to 
>existing payloads.

I think we can be fairly sure that that *won't* happen.  Many of the
non-rocket schemes really want to work with much smaller payloads; the
costs scale non-linearly with payload size.  For example, existing
CO2 laser technology would probably suffice for a laser launcher... if
the payload is measured in tens of kilograms, not thousands.  Such
systems have enormous capacities, but they get them by launching lots
of small payloads, not a handful of big ones.

What's more, such systems will be justified in terms of launching new
kinds of payloads, not existing ones.
-- 
1972: Saturn V #15 flight-ready|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1989: birds nesting in engines | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu