6 Firms Vie to Build 21st-Century Rocket Launch System

By DAVID OLMOS

June 26, 1988 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

In the three-story main complex at McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Co.’s sprawling facility in Huntington Beach, a team of several dozen scientists has been working for two years on an ambitious new rocket program for the 21st Century.

McDonnell Douglas is one of six U.S. aerospace companies vying for two Air Force contracts to design a low-cost, heavy-duty rocket launching system that would serve as a kind of big-rig truck in space.

The program is intended to replace the nation’s existing generation of launch vehicles with a new family of unmanned rockets capable of carrying payloads ranging from 40,000 pounds up to 200,000 pounds--or more than four times what the space shuttle can handle.

The new rockets are crucial to the deployment of President Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile-defense system. Pentagon officials have said that a dramatic reduction in the cost of space launches is critical to making the program--already under intense budget pressure in Congress--economically viable.

The rocket system would be used to transport components for the missile defense system into space. The Strategic Defense Initiative office has estimated that the rocket program, the Advanced Launch System, will cost $17 billion for design and production.

Jeopardy to Program

Although the new rockets are one of the least publicized aspects of Star Wars research, the lack of a low-cost, heavy-lift rocket could jeopardize the entire program, according to a congressional study released earlier this month.

“(ALS) is not getting the attention it deserves,” said Bruce MacDonald, an aide to Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.) and an author of a Senate report on the SDI program. “It’s not real glamorous--it’s a big dumb booster rocket--but it’s damned important.”

The Senate report said that even optimistic planners do not expect the ALS program to be ready before the late 1990s.

“Even if the maiden launch occurs in 1998, it will be 1 1/2 to two years later before the ALS system would reach its full annual launch capacity,” said the report, drafted by aides to Democratic Sens. Bumpers, J. Bennett Johnston of Louisiana and William Proxmire of Wisconsin. “Thus, with the current ALS program SDI cannot begin meaningful deployment until probably the Year 2000. There simply will be no means of lifting the SDI weapons and sensors into orbit at affordable cost.”

Other potential uses for the rocket system would be to launch larger intelligence and communications satellites than now is possible and for construction of the U.S. space station. Further into the future, large booster rockets would be needed to carry out a manned mission to Mars or establish colonies on the moon. Some supporters of ALS worry that the Soviet Union is jumping ahead in the development of giant booster rockets.

The program’s objectives are ambitious. The goal is to develop new propulsion, manufacturing and testing technologies that will reduce per-pound launch expenses to a 10th of today’s cost. Specifically, the new rockets would be capable of carrying payloads of up to 200,000 pounds into orbit near the earth at a cost of $300 per pound. By comparison, Martin Marietta’s newest Titan IV rocket--scheduled for its initial flight late this year--will haul military payloads of up to 40,000 pounds at a cost of roughly $3,600 per pound. The space shuttle can carry about 45,000 pounds at a cost of about $5,000 per pound.

Launching the hardware for the Star Wars system would require lifting as much as 5 million pounds of equipment into orbit per year, SDI officials have estimated. That is about 14 times what was launched in 1985, the year before the space shuttle Challenger explosion.

Proponents said some type of ALS effort is needed regardless of the fate of the controversial Star Wars program. But others said the program could be in jeopardy if Star Wars is killed by the next administration.

Questions the Program

“I’m unable to identify anybody other than SDI who needs ALS,” said John E. Pike, associate director of space policy for the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington-based arms-control research group that has been critical of Star Wars. “There just isn’t anybody else who needs to launch that much payload at one time.”

In order for ALS to make economic sense, Pike said, the rockets will have to be flown much more frequently than any existing system. “The entire system is based on very frequent launch rates,” he said. “You need to amortize the cost of building the system over lots of flights. . . . If you’re only flying a couple times a year, you’re not going to get those frequent-flier discounts.”

Pike further argued that it is doubtful the Star Wars system will ever be deployed because of technical budgetary and political considerations. Without a Star Wars system, there is no need for the frequent launches envisioned by ALS planners, he said.

Air Force Col. Jack Wormington, ALS program director, conceded that the economic justification for ALS is “there for high launch rates, not for low launch rates.”

But he argued that the availability of low-cost rocket transportation will create new possibilities for space launches, much like advances in aviation created unimagined demand for commercial air travel.

“Who could have predicted, even in the 1950s, what air traffic would turn into” today? Wormington asked. The United States needs a highly reliable, low-cost, heavy-lift rocket system “at any launch rate,” he said.

Last July, the Air Force issued $5-million study contracts to seven companies. They include Rockwell International in Downey, General Dynamics in San Diego, Boeing Aerospace Co. in Seattle and United Technologies in Huntsville, Ala. McDonnell Douglas Astronautics and Martin Marietta in Denver, which originally submitted separate bids, announced last week that they would team up to make a joint proposal. The seventh company, Hughes Aircraft, has dropped out of the competition.

Earlier this month, the contractors submitted their design concepts to the Air Force, which expects to award two 25-month contracts of about $100 million each in August. The contracts for the program’s second phase will be for the design and building of prototypes of the rocket system.

Funding for the third phase of the program, which would involve multibillion-dollar production contracts for the system, would have to be approved by Congress. The Air Force wants to begin the third phase in 1990 or 1991. The first flight of the new rocket would be in 1996, with full deployment in 1998.

Mulling Options

To meet the $300-per-pound goal of the program, the Air Force is mulling various options such as a “fly-back” booster rocket that would separate from the other section of the launch system and carry the vehicle’s engines and other valuable components back to earth, where they could be recovered and reused. Air Force officials say they are encouraging contractors to develop simplified designs that use as few parts as necessary. The theory being that fewer parts mean fewer things that can go wrong.

Although the $300-per-pound goal has been criticized by some as unrealistic, even by some Air Force officials, at least one company claims that it can beat that mark. “We have a plan that will better the $300-per-pound goal by some margin,” said Roger Burg, ALS program director for Rockwell’s Space Systems Division in Downey. Like the other contractors, Rockwell declined to provide specific details of their proposals because the competitive bidding process is ongoing.

The Air Force also wants the system to be able to perform successfully 98% to 99% of the time. “Our current launch vehicles are not that reliable,” Wormington said. He noted that the space shuttle Challenger accident in January, 1986, and the explosion of a Titan 34-D rocket at Vandenburg Air Force Base in April, 1986, resulted in long delays for the nation’s satellite launch business.

The companies that agreed to discuss the ALS program for this article said the project is being given high priority.

‘We view this ALS initiative as the forerunner of the next generation of launch vehicles,” said Warren Beery, a Martin Marietta vice president and ALS program director. “We consider it our bread and butter. It would be hard for me to think of anything that would carry a higher priority.”

“ALS is extremely important if we want to stay in the launch system business,” said Tom Williams, a McDonnell Douglas spokesman. “This program means staying in a ballgame that we want and need to be in.”

Don Mirth, vice president of space flight systems for United Technologies in Huntsville, Ala., said his company “made some pretty substantial investments. . . . We worked our butt off on that program and had a lot of sleepless nights. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.”

Rocket companies say one benefit of their ALS research will be to improve the performance of existing launch systems, which generally use technology dating from the 1960s. “The technology will spin off to existing systems and eventually find its way into the commercial launch business,” said Martin Marietta’s Beery.

That technology spinoff is important to companies like McDonnell Douglas, which began marketing its Delta rocket as a vehicle for commercial satellite launches after the Challenger accident. McDonnell Douglas and other U.S. rocket companies are facing tough competition from Western Europe and China in the commercial launch business.

ROCKET LAUNCH VEHICLES: THE PRESENT AND THE FUTUREDELTA II

Main contractor: McDonnell Douglas

Maximum payload: 11,000 pounds

Launch weight: not available

Cost per pound to orbit: not available

Principal uses: launch military and commercial satellites

Intial flight: late 1988

TITAN IV

Main contractor: Martin Marietta

Maximum payload: 39,000 pounds

Launch weight: 1.9 million pounds

Cost per pound to orbit: $3,600