View 687 Sunday, August 14, 2011

· Libya and Syria

· The Iowa Straw Poll

Libya and Syria

According to Aquinas, it is just to go to war to defend the innocent. There are restrictions, but this is not an unfair statement. Presumably that is why Obama considers it just to continue to break things and kill people in Libya. And recently Qaddaffi used helicopters, which once again put him in violation of the UN resolution, and thus required that the US kill some more Libyans and break some more Libyan property in the name of NATO acting for the UN.

Meanwhile, a Syrian corvette is shelling a Syrian city from the Mediterranean, and the US watches with curiosity, but there is no intervention.

One necessary condition for a war to be just is that there is a reasonable expectation of success. Success is defined in many ways, but you might sum it up by saying that in the end there would be more justice in the world after the war ends than there would be if it never started.

If we continue the intervention in Libya, do we expect that when it is all over there will be more justice in North Africa than there is now? And if we intervene in Syria, is there a reasonable expectation that what comes after the end of the thugocracy in Syria will be better than before we went in? I ask this seriously. Iraq is certainly better off without Saddam and his thuggish sons, but there were probably better ways to accomplish that than a lengthy occupation.

Republics seldom do Imperialism with any great competence. Competent Empire requires long term commitments, and a number of subtleties including the use of silver bullets, puppet regimes, auxiliaries and foreign legions, and other devices that do not win popularity in free elections. Incompetent Empire can leave both patron and client worse off than before. Washington warned us not to become involved in the territorial disputes of Europe. It is not isolationism to understand that we don’t know how to achieve some otherwise desirable results; and it is unjust to go to war without a battle plan under which we can realistically expect the world to be better off after our intervention than it would be if we did not undertake it.

The Iowa Straw Poll

The Iowa straw poll does not traditionally predict the Republican nominee. The participants tend to be party activists and have strong opinions, and tend to be more conservative than the average voters. One clear result of the straw poll is that the conservative wing of the party, and the Tea Party advocates, took a very high percentage of the votes. The Country Club did not come off well.

I had thought that Michelle Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty had damaged each other too much for either to come out number one, but clearly I was mistaken. Pawlenty has dropped out: given what he spent on his campaign, getting a very low third (just over 13%) to Ron Paul and Bachmann (who were very nearly tied for second and first at 28% and 29% respectively), was too ominous an omen.

The race will go on. Newt did a bit worse than I expected; I thought he would come in over 5% and possibly go to 10%, even if did make a point of not catering to the whims of Iowa, but I will cheerfully concede that I am no expert on modern Iowa. I last lived there in 1954, and I haven’t been there since I was keynote speaker to a conference back in the last Millennium. I don’t expect Newt to be the nominee. I do hope that he will become part of a strong team that does win. Newt is a national treasure, but his strong point is not in executive actions. His advice ought always to be taken seriously.

The bottom line is that the Tea Party component of the Republican Party came out of this stronger than it went in. The Country Club can be expected to react strongly to this; it will be interesting to see which one burn their bridges behind them.

The Chinese have launched an aircraft carrier. Carriers are the force projection system par excellance. Viet Nam has reinstated conscription. Japan is considering expansion of its self-defence forces. Few others in the world are made joyful by the news. Taiwan announced a sale on missiles that can kill aircraft carriers.

Meanwhile the entire F-22 stealth fighter force is grounded because we don’t seem to have a way to generate breathing oxygen for the planes. (Opening the hangar doors when running the engines might or might not help.) China has one stealth fighter. Unless we get the F-22 flying again the pilots may lose their proficiency ratings and have to go back to flight school or something. The Iron Law seems to apply to everything, but I may be misreading the situation. There was a time when I was supposed to know something about human factors in aircraft operations, but that was quite a while ago.

A few things to note:

http://biggovernment.com/bmccarty/2011/08/11/anonymous-call-to-new-animal-abuse-hotline-leads-to-raid-on-colorado-womans-rabbit-farm/ 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904140604576495932704234052.html

View 687 Friday, August 12, 2011

· The Debate

· A program for Republicans

Who Won the Debate?

I watched some of the Republican debate in Ames, Iowa last night. I used to have a girl friend who lived in Ames when I was at the University of Iowa. Actually she wasn’t my girl friend, I just wished she was, and the term ‘girl friend’ didn’t have the same meaning then as it does now, and that’s irrelevant anyway. I suppose Ames, like almost all American university and college towns, has changed enormously since the 1950’s; everything else has. In those days you were expected to have more control over your own life, and no one expected the government to provide much. Considering that all the candidates were trying to appeal to what they think is a majority of the voters, this isn’t the same world it was when I was last in Ames. The old Free Republic is pretty well dead. The notion that rights are not restrictions on the government but entitlements to benefits seems to be accepted by everyone: the debate is over how much stuff you should be able to get from the government.

There were a few hopeful signs. Mitt Romney very properly insisted that the states have powers that the Federal Government does not have, and policies proper for some states won’t necessarily work for others. When hectored by some of the other candidates about what gave Massachusetts the power to insist that residents buy health insurance, he made it clear that the Federal government does not have that power. I’d have liked it better if he pointed out that he is running for President of the United States, not for reelection as Governor, and while questions about just what sovereign powers the states may have inherited from the Crown, or derive from natural law, would be very interesting they aren’t relevant to this debate. Romney went in as leader, and came out the same. He managed to separate himself from the Country Club Republicans without angering them.

Michelle Bachman and Tim Pawlenty worked hard at knocking each other out, and both may have succeeded.

Newt Gingrich sounded and looked Presidential. I don’t think he has much chance, but I would really hope that whoever does win brings Newt into the White House as a senior advisor. Long ago the chief political advisor to the President was given the Cabinet Status of Postmaster General (which had the status of fifth in precedence, just after Attorney General). We don’t have such a Cabinet level post now, which is a pity. Newt looked good and made sense, and his advice is always worth taking seriously. He would be a great asset to any President, and I hope that whoever wins realizes that.

Ron Paul was Ron Paul, a man who makes a great deal of sense and ought always to be taken seriously particularly in economic matters. We need him in Congress.

The others sort of blended together.

The winner of the debate in my judgment was Newt, and the high point was when he said that on his first day in office he would dismantle Obamacare by Executive Order. He also proposed the obvious, repeal of Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank, which ought to be done by the House the day after they come back from vacation. No, the repeals won’t get through the Senate, but the debate should be interesting: neither of those laws does anything useful, both are thousands of pages of regulations and empower thousands of faceless (and sometimes all too recognizable!) bureaucrats. Gingrich was the only one of the candidates who seemed to understand that the regulations from Washington are far more stifling, and thus far greater a cause of economic stagnation, than government spending and for that matter taxes. We have had economic booms in times of higher taxes; taxes impede and even stifle, but not to the extent that regulations do. The German Economic Miracle came about from liberation from stifling regulations, not from Marshal Plan spending (the actual amount of capital injected was quite small compared to the capital destroyed by the war and the early Morgenthau Plan implementations) but from relief from regulation. The United States is unlikely to have economic recovery until we eliminate regulatory impediments to economic growth. Newt knows this. The other candidates don’t seem to.

Another winner of the debate was Texas Governor Rick Perry, who wasn’t in Iowa at all. When he announces tomorrow he will be either number one or number two (Romney being the other), with anyone else a distant third. I don’t know what Governor Perry thinks of Newt Gingrich, but I hope he has a favorable opinion. Anyone seriously interested in governing would do well to pay attention to Newt.

A Program

Getting the economy going again is important; the Democrats aren’t going to do it. The “stimulus” with its “shovel ready” jobs didn’t do it – indeed, the President was amused to tell us that the shovels weren’t as ready as he had thought. A near trillion dollar oops. The problem was that funneling the money to cronies didn’t do anything to rebuild the national infrastructure, which continues to deteriorate. A new stimulus won’t help that. The infrastructure can be rebuilt by state and local governments, and will have to, but to do that will require state and local government reforms: all levels of government are broke, and will stay that way until the economy improves. Getting the feds out of that act will stimulate the states to compete for jobs and capital – as Texas is already doing, extracting a lot of jobs and capital from Silicon Valley to Austin and other high tech regions in Texas. Competition among the states will reduce regulatory strangulation, but only if the feds stop throttling the economy.

There is a way to get started on this. Now.

I do hope that all the candidates will adopt this program:

Double the exemption numbers for small businesses: that is, whatever regulations you are exempt from by dint of having 10 or fewer employees, you will now be exempt if you have 20 or fewer; similarly for larger numbers. The regulations will still apply, but the exemption numbers are doubled.

Suspend Sarbanes-Oxley until it can entirely be rewritten. This glob of financial regulations was enacted in reaction to Enron. It doesn’t do what it was intended to do. There are said to be some good effects from it: let those be debated and reenacted. The stifling effects are obvious. The good points are a bit more obscure. It needs work, and until that time, it ought to be put out of the way.

Suspend Dodd-Frank until it can entirely be rewritten. This is another enormous act that was poorly thought out, and has had wide ranging effects that were not intended. The whole notion of financial regulations needs rethinking.

Repeal ObamaCare. If we need a new national health care plan, work on that; but this one isn’t going to work.

The Republicans can pass these measures in the House. They won’t be accepted in the Senate but the debates will be enlightening, and this will have a salutary effect on the Presidential election. ObamaCare was passed by a lame duck session with a reconciliation conference, without any proper debate. We have seen enough of Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank to know they are stifling: let them be defended in public debate.

The message will be that the Republicans stand for freedom, the Democrats for more government control. It is time to have the American people choose. Either we go down the road to Empire or we turn again toward a Free Republic. Rome had centuries of Imperial Glory after Augustus converted the Republic to Empire and Claudius set up the Imperial bureaucracy using freedmen. Competent Empire is a viable system of government; competent empires have lasted longer than most Republics. The United States at 235 years or so is a bit young compared to the Roman Republic which was around 400 years old at its collapse, and much younger than the Venetian Republic when Napoleon ended it. Britain became what amounts to an aristocratic republic in 1688. France in 1789. Britain and France seem destined to be absorbed in the bureaucracy of the European Union. We will see.

But the alternatives are stark here. Either we go back toward renewing the Republic or we slide further and further into rule by bureaucracy; and the remedy to that is generally empire. Turn to someone who can control the rapacious officials. One of our main complaints against King George III (really against the Parliament of Westminster) is that the king had erected needless Offices and sent among us swarms of Officers to harass the people and eat out their substance. Would we had only the customs and Stamp Act officers now!

I sure did like what Newt had to say about the Deficit Dance Supercommittee. “Scrap it now, recognize it was a dumb idea, go back to legislative process.” He sure sounded Presidential. I sure wish we still had a cabinet position for someone like him, though.

And it was good to see candidates take the Tenth Amendment seriously. Now if Newt can make friends with whoever wins…

Towing Icebergs,

Money quote: ". Towing an iceberg from somewhere around Newfoundland to the northwest coast of Africa would only take around five months and could still retain more than 60 percent of the iceberg’s mass. The downside: it would cost about $10 million."

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-08/computer-models-show-shelved-iceberg-towing-scheme-could-actually-work

Rod McFadden

I wrote about this concept in A Step Farther Out. As well as in some of my early short stories. It’s certainly one way to get fresh water. And I like it.

Infomation upon the causes of the "English Spring" – From someone who was there –

Dear Sir: I have just read your thoughts upon the "English Spring" and did have to reply, because if the Egyptian version was at least centred around a noble motive, then the English Spring is mostly motivated by a burning desire for a 40" plasma screen TV.

There is little likelihood of this going any further for several reasons.

One thing to remember about the (Completely unreported) ethnic aspect of the riots in the UK is that here, as everywhere else, it is Ramadan. All of the Muslims are too tired to cause trouble, they are indoors, eating and then sleeping in the six hours of darkness that August at high latitude gives them, presumably furious that they are missing out due to the religious convictions that they have all loudly insisted to their parents that they have recently acquired. The city of Bradford, with it’s huge Asian population, and indeed parts of West London such as Hounslow, have not seen any real trouble. The looting is heavily ethnically centred around blacks and lower class whites. This could have been far worse than it was.

What motivates them? : Although you have already written about Danegeld…Here it is more than looting, it is literally true. An aspect of the events that make them unique to the UK is the "Education Maintenance Allowance." This was an initiative introduced by Gordon Brown in order to induce the lower end of the intellectual demographic into staying in education.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Maintenance_Allowance

(Notice how if you are poor, you get more money.)

However, it strikes me that if you are paying 16-19 year olds to study, you obviously will attract people who are not very interested in study but will happily sit in classrooms talking and playing with their mobile telephones, as it is somewhere to go during the day. The people who do want to study and the effect that that has upon them are matters naturally ignored, and the children of the political classes all send their children to private institutions anyway, and so are unlikely to have their education affected.

If I were genuinely cynical, the EMA (Labour) and the rise in tuition fees (Coalition) are going to combine to make access to Oxbridge by the socially connected even easier, but in this country more than almost any other, we can frankly attribute it to incompetence. MPs abuse their expenses and don’t feel that it is wrong, and Police officers accepting money from journalists for information do not think that they are being bribed, either.

When the EMA was withdrawn by the coalition, this was a cause of protests, but it is a memorable acronym and so it lingers on as a mark of how society has let "us" down. It has been cited upon UK news programming as a thing that the young people questioned still hold as a grievance/ excuse:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xJlmZitdG1o#at=37

A thing to notice with this piece is how the reporter openly prompts the intervees into being angry with bankers and financiers, rather than mention that the Murdoch press and media, of which Sky News is an arm, had their own part in encouraging to the culture of insolence and opportunistic looting that lower class Britain now clearly possesses. An example of their irresponsibility is the fashion in which coverage of the initial trouble in Tottenham (Prompted by a completely defensible shooting) was covered live on TV all Friday evening and over the weekend, giving an entire country knowledge of the events. Also, the acts of cancelling all police leave, requesting special/volunteer police officers report for duty, and the act of transporting in additional officers to London from outer regions were each loudly announced by the media, meaning people knew that their particular areas were now underpatrolled and so ripe for local action. Hence, the secondary acts in Birmingham and Manchester, where organised criminal gangs co-ordinated the looting, over the weekend itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=KxJkbYpVG4c

(……Gloucester, now twinned with Mos Eisley, as a wretched hive of scum and villany.)

Presumably the media are just incompetent rather than malicious as well. The one thing that is agreed upon by the everyone, is that the government should do more for everyone.

…But it will all quieten down, partly because it has been raining at night. It is a very English form of riot control, and a very English form of insurrection: This was not the L.A. riots, he’s not a N*gger with attitude, he’s a N*gger who has ALREADY sent you a CV! ….That’s why he is entitled to cross London in a van, to get one of your televisions!

Hope that this of interest. Thank you for you website.

Yours faithfully,

Andrew S. Mooney, Huddersfield, United Kingdom.

Thanks. I am not quite as convinced as you are that the Arab Spring continues to be motivated by a burning desire for freedom, but I have conflicting information on the events in Cairo. Tunisia may have been a special case. And what began the events in Cairo may not be what ends them. We all read A Tale of Two Cities in high school, and most of us know something of the Terror and what a relief it was when the Revolution ended. I wish the Arabs well. But in any event I completely agree that the situation is quite different in Britain and in the Middle East, and the endings will be different; but what those endings will be is not so clear. Thank you for the information. The england of today is not the England I know much about.

I have sat on this biit of trivia for a week trying to figure out why anyone wrote or published it. In Los Angeles our subway does not go to the airport, it goes just close enough to it that taxi drivers, who have waited for an hour or more to get airport passengers, do not want to take anyone to the subway station, but far enough away that you would have to be mad to attempt to walk it, especially with family and luggage. The subway system works if your goal is Union Station, but it is as if Los Angeles city planners never realized that people often want to get to and from the airport. I can recall taking a train from Heathrow to Piccadilly Circus, but I do not know how to take a train to LAX. I suppose Taki has his reasons for publishing this, but I don’t know what they are.

http://takimag.com/article/angelenos_ask_dude_wheres_my_subway/print#axzz1U7Cjgpc3 

Mail 687 Wednesday, August 10, 2011

You might find this amusing:

http://www.infowars.com/
cameron-to-step-down-recognize-rioters
-as-legitimate-government-satire/

Meanwhile we continue to break things and kill people in Libya.

Kinetic Strike on Taliban

The military spokesman who announced that they had killed the people that brought the special ops Chinook down said that the F-16 had dropped a "kinetic weapon." Gizmodo has a post speculating what kind of explosive bomb was used. In the comments it was mentioned that this could be a "smart rock," a large piece of concrete or something similar with a smart bomb package attached. This was derided by others, particularly with the claim that there would only be enough energy if it was dropped from orbit.

I figured I’d bring the question to The Man.

The post is here:

http://gizmodo.com/5829575/how-an-f+16-might-have-avenged-the-talibans-helicopter-killing

I’ve read reports that smart rocks had been used to minimize collateral damage in Iraq. I’m assuming the strike was against one of the less than sturdy houses in the remote villages. I don’t think you’d need much to take that out.

I’d love it if you’d weigh in then post a link to what you come up with on Gizmodo.

Joshua Beall

I’d be very pleased if the US had Thor or some other extremely high velocity weapon, but I suspect that all this means is that a very large gravity delivered bomb was used. I doubt this is the last misery Taliban in that general area will experience. I would not care to have those units as displeased with me as Taliban around there are at the moment. Beware the fury of the Legions, indeed.

Education

The problem with education in America is simple and impossible to solve in the short term.

My wife is from Ukraine. After earning her mathematics teacher certification (2 years after she came to America) she went to work in a very good school system here in Texas (Mansfield ISD). As a sub and then a regular teacher, she was told many times, by both students and administrators, that she was the first teacher the students had who made math understandable.

She was asked many times (by other teachers and principals) how her successful techniques could be taught to other teachers. She hesitated to let her feelings be known, but finally told them it couldn’t, because she simply knew math far better and more deeply than the other teachers. Their training was sorely lacking. They could do what they had been taught, but didn’t know the theory behind it all and therefore couldn’t teach it to their students. Before most American teachers could teach math her way, they would have to take a couple of years to learn math to the point where they were truly qualified to teach others. And that is only if they had competent teachers (and she didn’t see any when she was in college here).

The Soviet system my wife grew up in was terrible in too many ways to count, but their educational system taught fundamentals in ways we no longer do. Our daughter came here at the end of the 7th grade and spent the 8th grade learning English (no content classes at all). In the summer before the 9th grade, she passed, using credit by exam, Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2 and Chemistry. She was effectively 3 years ahead of American students in math and science. As the song says, "Sad, but true."

(Personal rant … ignore at will)

We will never have truly competent teachers as long as our educational schools concentrate on teaching teachers how to inculcate "social justice" and "diversity" into the curriculum instead of actual content, knowledge and how to transfer this knowledge to students.

Mike Schmidt

==

NCLB Waivers

Jerry,

I’ve been following the discussion of "half of all children are below average" and the failure of nationalized one-size-fits-all education to deal with that. Did you notice that the White House the other day implicitly acknowledged this failure?

The "No Child Left Behind" law mandates that individual schools produce ever-improving standardized reading and math scores, or face sanctions. (Don’t ask why the feds can sanction individual non-federal schools at all; it’s the usual method of dodging the Tenth Amendment by handing out federal funding like heroin then selectively threatening withdrawal.)

The goal is that by 2014, all schools nationwide shall have achieved 100% passing scores. (Lake Wobegon is going to be crowded!) I’m not clear on how high NCLB "passing" math and reading is, but I suspect it’s nothing that an average kid with decent teachers has much trouble with.

Warning, Political Incorrectness follows… The problem, of course, is that there exist both below-average children, and below-average teachers. (That’s wrist-slap PI.) Further, some schools inevitably end up with above-average concentrations of both below-average children and below-average teachers, because some schools are in neighborhoods where smarter people have been self-selecting out for a long time. (That’s hunt-him-down-and-burn-his-house level PI. All our little angels have equal and infinite potential, and God save anyone who publicly acknowledges all the evidence otherwise.)

NCLB seems to have had some success in improving really disastrously badly staffed and run schools, within the limits of local bureaucratic inertia and teacher’s union resistance to culling their worst. Not surprising, in that if you hit something with a big enough blunt instrument, it will change shape. But there are limits to how far you can force a bureaucracy to improve before they learn to evade instead, as witness the Atlanta teacher-organized cheating scandal.

And alas, this side of the Singularity, a below-average kid remains below average, and this side of Heaven, a bad neighborhood bad. Some schools are always going to lag on those aggregate reading and math scores. Under NCLB strictly applied, they’ll eventually be shut down – whereupon whatever replaces them will be faced with the same concentration of below-average kids. It’s quietly becoming obvious that even the Feds can’t mandate that Wobegon spring up anywhere.

The local education bureaucracies that have been complaining about NCLB actually have something resembling a case. (Their being an important constituency in the 2012 election entirely aside…) The White House just quietly announced that they plan to freely grant local waivers to NCLB reading and math score requirements, as long as the school systems involved demonstrate in some manner that they’re really, really trying.

One can hope that this will allow some worse-off schools to adopt plans more suited to the students they have. One suspects it’ll far more often let the local bureaucrats return to not caring whether they’re compounding the problem with bad teaching, as long as they perform the proper rituals for Washington. And one can be sure the White House won’t try to actually reduce NCLB budgets despite this quiet acknowledgement that it’s an increasingly pointless program.

At which point, remind me why we’re paying for so much Federal education funding again?

I don’t dispute the principle of local control, mind. I’m just more immediately appalled by the huge practical waste of money involved in NCLB – a massively centralized approach that wasn’t efficient in the first place and that’s now obviously falling down the curve of diminishing returns.

sign me

Porkypine

We borrow a lot of money from China to fund the Department of Education. Does it accomplish enough to make all those Deficit Dollars worthwhile? Does anyone care?

taxation and representation

Our country was initiated with the cry, "No taxation without representation!" I wonder if the current financial difficulties could be improved by a policy of "No representation without taxation." Everyone should have a financial stake in the country. With slightly less than 50% of the population now exempt from income taxes, our country is approaching the ability to vote for "beer and circuses". Maybe we could limit the franchise to those who pay income taxes–not very likely. Or, maybe, we could base the representation in the House of Representatives by the percentage of each state which pays income taxes.

Larry

No taxation without representation

…has gotten us here. Time to turn it around:

"No representation without taxation!"

You don’t pay taxes, you don’t vote. Simple.

Happy belated birthday!

Stephen

No representation without taxation: only those who pay something in taxes may vote. It has been proposed before. Indeed, for all of the early days of the republic, a forty schilling freehold was a pretty standard requirement for being a voter.

When the people can vote themselves largess from the treasury, and impose taxed they do not pay, those people are rulers: at one time a small aristocracy, but is it different if it’s just numbers?

Freedom is not free, free men are not equal, and equal men are not free.

Hello Dr. Pournelle,

I just posted a review of Birth of Fire on goodreads.com. (And, a similar one on Amazon.)

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/196226163

It IS a good read. Thanks for re-releasing it.

Cheers,

Clyde Wisham

***"You do not have a right not to be offended in this country. So get over it." — Variously ascribed***

why low cost SSTO’s are possible now.

Bob Clark

Robert Clark

Dept. of Mathematics

Widener University

One University Place

Chester, PA 19013 USA

Quite key for why reusable SSTO’s will make manned space travel routine is the small size and low cost they can be produced. A manned SSTO can be produced using [i]currently existing[/i] engines and stages the size of the smallest of the very light, or personal, jets [1], except it would use rocket engines instead of jets, and the entire volume aft of the cockpit would be filled with propellant, i.e., no passenger cabin. So it would have the appearance of a fighter jet.

We’ll base it on the SpaceX Falcon 1 first stage. According to the Falcon 1 Users Guide on p.8 [2], the first stage has a dry mass of 3,000 lbs, 1,360 kg, and a usable propellant mass of 47,380 lbs, 21,540 kg. We need to swap out the low efficiency Merlin engine for a high efficiency engine. However, SpaceX has not released the mass for the Merlin engine. We’ll estimate it from the information here, [3]. From the given T/W ratio and thrust, I’ll take the mass as 650 kg.

We’ll replace it with the RD-0242-HC, [4]. This is a proposed modification to kerosene fuel of an existing hypergolic engine. This type of modification where an engine has been modified to run on a different fuel has been done before so it should be doable [5], [6]. The engine mass is listed as 120 kg. We’ll need two of them to loft the vehicle. So the engine mass is reduced from that of the Merlin engine mass by 410 kg, and the dry mass of the stage is reduced down to 950 kg. Note that the mass ratio now becomes 23.7 to 1.

We need to get the Isp for this case. For a SSTO you want to use altitude compensation. The vacuum Isp of the RD-0242-HC is listed as 312 s. However, this is for first stage use so it’s not optimized for vacuum use. Since the RD-0242-HC is a high performance, i.e., high chamber pressure engine, with altitude compensation it should get similar vacuum Isp as other high performance Russian engines such as the RD-0124 [7] in the range of 360 s. As a point of comparison the Merlin Vacuum is a version of the Merlin 1C optimized for vacuum use with a longer nozzle. This increases its vacuum Isp from 304 s to 342 s [8]. I’ve also been informed by email that engine performance programs such as Propep [9] give the RD-0242-HC an ideal vacuum Isp of 370 s. So a practical vacuum Isp of 360 s should be reachable using altitude compensation.

For the sea level Isp of the RD-0242-HC, again the version of the high performance, high chamber pressure, RD-0124 with a shortened nozzle optimized for sea level operation gets a 331 s Isp. So I’ll take the sea level Isp as this value using altitude compensation that allows optimized performance at all altitudes.

To calculate the delta-V achievable I’ll follow the suggestion of Mitchell Burnside Clapp who spent many years designing and working on SSTO projects including stints with the DC-X and X-33 programs. He argues that you should use the vacuum Isp and just use 30,000 feet per second, about 9,150 m/s, as the required delta-V to orbit for dense propellants [10]. The reason for this is that you can just regard the reduction in Isp at sea level and low altitude as a loss and add onto the required delta-V for orbit this particular loss just like you add on the loss for air drag and gravity loss. Then with a 360 s vacuum Isp we get a delta-V of 360*9.8ln(1 + 21,540/950) = 11,160 m/s. So we can add on payload mass: 360*9.8ln(1+21,540/(950 + 790)) = 9,150 m/s, allowing a payload of 790 kg.

To increase the payload we can use different propellant combinations and use lightweight composites. Dr. Bruce Dunn wrote a report showing the payload that could be delivered using high energy density hydrocarbon fuels other than kerosene [11]. For methylacetylene he gives an ideal vacuum Isp of 391.1 s. High performance engines can get get ca. 97% and above of the ideal Isp so I’ll take the vacuum Isp value as 384 s. Dunn notes that Methyacetylene/LOX when densified by subcooling gets a density slightly above that of kerolox, so I’ll keep the same propellant mass. Then the payload will be 1,120 kg: 384*9.8ln(1 + 21,540/(950 + 1,120)) = 9,160 m/s.

We can get better payload by reducing the stage weight by using lightweight composites. The stage weight aside from the engines is 710 kg. Using composites can reduce the weight of a stage by about 40%. Then adding back on the engine mass this brings the dry mass to 670 kg. So our payload can be 1,400 kg: 384*9.8ln(1 + 21,540/(670 + 1,400)) = 9,160 m/s.

Note this has a very high value for what is now regarded as a key figure of merit for the efficiency of a launch vehicle: the ratio of the payload to the [i]dry mass[/i]. The ratio of the payload to the gross mass is now recognized as not being a good figure of merit for launch vehicles. The reason is that payload mass is being compared then to mostly what makes up only a minor proportion of the cost of a launch vehicle, the cost of propellant. By comparing instead to the dry mass you are comparing to the expensive components of the vehicle, the parts that have to be constructed and tested [12].

This vehicle in fact has the payload to dry mass ratio over 2. Every other launch vehicle I looked at, and possibly every other one that has ever existed, has the ratio going in the other direction, i.e., the dry mass is greater than the payload mass. Often it is much greater. For example for the space shuttle system the dry mass is over 12 times that of the payload mass, undoubtedly contributing to the high cost for the payload delivered.

Because of this high value for this key figure of merit, this vehicle would be useful even as a expendable launcher. However, a SSTO is most useful as a reusable vehicle. This will be envisioned as a vertical take-off vehicle. However, it could use either a winged horizontal landing or a powered vertical landing. This page gives the mass either for wings or propellant for landing as about 10% of the dry, landed mass [13]. It also gives the reentry thermal protection mass as 15% of the landed mass. The landing gear mass is given as 3% of the landed mass here [14]. This gives a total of 28% of the landed mass for reentry/landing systems. With lightweight modern materials quite likely this could be reduced to half that.

If you use the vehicle just for a cargo launcher with cargo left in orbit, then the reentry/landing system mass only has to cover the dry vehicle mass so with lightweight materials perhaps less than 100 kg out of the payload mass has to be taken up by the reentry/landing systems. For a manned launcher with the crew cabin being returned, the reentry/landing systems might amount to 300 kg, leaving 1,100 kg for crew cabin and crew. As a mass estimate for the crew cabin, the single man Mercury capsule only weighed 1,100 kg [15 ]. With modern materials this probably can be reduced to half that.

For the cost, the full two stage Falcon 1 launcher is about $10 million. The engines make up the lion share of the cost for launchers. So probably much less than $5 million just for the 1st stage sans engine. Composites will make this more expensive but probably not much more than twice as expensive. For the engine cost, Russian engines are less expensive than American ones. The RD-180 at 1,000,000 lbs vacuum thrust costs about $10 million [16], and the NK-43 at a 400,000 lbs vacuum thrust costs about $4 million [17]. This is in the range of $10 per pound of vacuum thrust. On that basis we might estimate the cost of the RD-0242-HC of about 30,000 lbs vacuum thrust as $300,000. We need two of them for $600,000.

So we can estimate the cost of the reusable version as significantly less than $10,600,000 without the reentry/landing system costs. These systems added on for reusability at a fraction of the dry mass of the vehicle will likely also add on a fraction on to this cost. Keep in mind also that the majority of the development cost for the two stage Falcon 1 went to development of the engines so in actuality the cost of just the first stage without the engine will be significantly less than half the full $10 million cost of the Falcon 1 launcher. The cost of a single man crew cabin is harder to estimate. It is possible it could cost more than the entire launcher. But it’s likely to be less than a few 10’s of millions of dollars.

REFERENCES.

1.)List of very light jets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_very_light_jets

2.)Falcon 1 Users Guide.

http://www.spacex.com/Falcon1UsersGuide.pdf

3.)Merlin (rocket engine)

4 Merlin 1C Engine specifications

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(rocket_engine)#Merlin_1C_Engine_specifications

4.)RD-0242-HC.

http://www.astronautix.com/engines/rd0242hc.htm

5.)LR-87.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LR-87

6.)Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne’s RS-18 Engine Tested With Liquid Methane.

by Staff Writers

Canoga Park CA (SPX) Sep 03, 2008

http://www.space-travel.com/reports/Pratt_and_Whitney_Rocketdyne_RS_18_Engine_Tested_With_Liquid_Methane_999.html

7.)RD-0124.

http://www.astronautix.com/engines/rd0124.htm

8.)Merlin (rocket engine).

2.5 Merlin Vacuum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(rocket_engine)#Merlin_Vacuum

9.)Propep

http://www.spl.ch/software/index.html

10.)Newsgroups: sci.space.policy

From: Mitchell Burnside Clapp <cla…@plk.af.mil>

Date: 1995/07/19

Subject: Propellant desity, scale, and lightweight structure.

http://groups.google.com/group/sci.space.policy/browse_frm/thread/3d981607d59684dc/945baea33c95a22?hl=en

11.)Alternate Propellants for SSTO Launchers Dr. Bruce Dunn Adapted from a Presentation at:

Space Access 96

Phoenix Arizona

April 25 – 27, 1996

http://www.dunnspace.com/alternate_ssto_propellants.htm

12.)A Comparative Analysis of Single-Stage-To-Orbit Rocket and Air-Breathing Vehicles.

p. 5, 52, and 67.

http://govwin.com/knowledge/comparative-analysis-singlestagetoorbit-rocket-and/15354

13.)Reusable Launch System.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reusable_launch_system#Horizontal_landing

14.)Landing gear weight (Gary Hudson; George Herbert; Henry Spencer).

http://yarchive.net/space/launchers/landing_gear_weight.html

15.)Mercury Capsule.

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/merpsule.htm

16.)Wired 9.12: From Russia, With 1 Million Pounds of Thrust.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/rd-180.html

17.)A Study of Air Launch Methods for RLVs.

Marti Sarigul-Klijn, Ph.D. and Nesrin Sarigul-Klijn, Ph.D.

AIAA 2001-4619

p.13

http://mae.ucdavis.edu/faculty/sarigul/aiaa2001-4619.pdf

The rocket equation states that about 90% of the Gross Liftoff Weight (GLOW) of anything going to orbit must be reaction mass that will be lost on the way up. (For a discourse on the rocket equation and its implications, see my SSX Concept essay.) Clearly the lighter you can make the structure of the craft, the better, so long as it’s strong enough; there have been many startling advances in material science in the last few years, and extremely strong spacecraft can be made from very light weight materials. This makes reusable spacecraft much more likely.

I haven’t followed the latest advances in structural materials as closely as I used to, but there have been some very favorable advances.

The DCX demonstrated that we can control rocket craft at low altitudes and speeds, and land them on a tail of fire. With the new structural material it ought to be possible to build a 600,000 GLOW reusable rocket that can either make orbit or scare it to death. This would be a highly desirable X Project, but so far nothing like it has been funded.