My reply to RedMars' thought-provoking comments:

I am also fond of the New Space activities that are under way - Blue Origin, Masten etc and the X prizes and it is a real shame that the UK seems to lack incentives to stimulate private ventures of this type.

I agree, and I'd welcome suggestions as to how such prize funds for space technology development could be brought about in the UK.

(Someone at the RAF was thinking horizontally and found a couple of EJ2000's for a land speed record, hopefully similar people can think vertically and help to organise some airspace to ease the development of sub orbital commercial services.)

Indeed. "Up, Not Along". The slogan would look good on a T-shirt ;-)

Continue reading 'The Buzzword of the Day is 'Synergy'...

But, after some further thought I do hesitate to criticise Bond's approach and I wonder whether the comment 'Old Space done better' is correct. The end goal for commercial/new space is something similar to the commercial airliner industry.

That would be the airliner manufacturers which have dwindled to a tiny handful of bloated, sclerotic transnationals which frequently have to go cap in hand to governments for bailouts. Not necessarily the ideal model I would have chosen.

I've asked people connected with REL more than once whether Skylon could be built using SpaceX-style vertically-integrated manufacturing and lean cost models, and I've been told a flat "no". The vehicle development will use standard "big aerospace" consortium manufacturing and cost models. Skylon may provide revolutionary capability, but it's not NewSpace.

Transnational big-aerospace consortia are bloated, inefficient and riven with petty political infighting, because it's in their fundamental nature to be so. My fear is that SpaceX and XCOR will be on their second- or third-generation passenger orbital RLVs by the time the Skylon Manufacturing Consortium has finished arguing about the order of the national flags outside its Strasbourg headquarters ;p

The engineering is necessarily large, complex and mutli billion dollar, but provides the
return on investment that is required by virtue of reuseability acting on an elastic market.

We *hope* the market is elastic. The only real-world numbers we have at the moment are SpaceX's launch manifest, which looks vaguely encouraging, but a highly elastic launch market is an article of faith at the moment.

If the launch market *is* highly elastic, then that rising tide will lift all boats. Other things being equal, systems which are cheaper and easier to develop will get funded and built first. Skylon is some way down that queue.

Surely Bond is steering in that direction and ignoring the incremental steps some people claim the sub orbital ventures will provide.

I agree that that's what he appears to be doing. However, I think for the UK to ignore the incremental route altogether would be a serious and potentially crippling mistake.

A UK/European thrust to mirror the embryonic stage of NewSpace under way in the US would prove to be a distraction from the real end goal of the New Space age.

Needless to say, I disagree strongly.

In essence, NewSpace is a series of low-cost technology incubators. Don't dismiss these incubators as a distraction and then complain that everyone else is coming up with the cool technology developments ;p

NewSpace propulsion developers are building reliable, robust, reusable rocket engines. These will have many applications beyond suborbital hops, such as reusable OTVs and landers. These applications don't disappear because of Skylon, in fact they GROW. The SABRE engine's secret sauce runs out at 25km when the airbreathing mode shuts down. What do we do about the rest of the universe? ;-)

There also seems to be the implicit assumption that NewSpace only involves flying things with rocket engines and stabilising fins. That's not true. NewSpace is also companies like Orbital Outfitters (spacesuits) and Bigelow (habitats). NewSpace is companies like NASTAR, which does the biomedical screening for commercial spaceflight passengers. All of these will be MORE important in the Skylon era, and not less. If you want to play Buzzword Bingo, the word is "synergy" ;-)

I don't for a moment suggest that this embryonic NewSpace should be ignored; if it is going to profitable then support it, but it should not be a policy focus but a policy by product.

That sounds suspiciously like "If we build it, the policy will come". I don't think we can afford to be that relaxed about it. The field is now moving too quickly.

At the VSS Enterprise rollout at Mojave, it was stated that US NewSpace ALREADY employs over 12,500 people. We could do with some of those high-technology jobs in the UK. Not sometime in the mid-2020's when Skylon is rolled out, but RIGHT NOW, PLEASE.

The real future and money lies in reusable access to orbit and that is where the focus should lie, lest European launchers succumb to Asian development and a funded SpaceX.

Um… assuming that large-scale space exploitation is a value proposition (which we all hope is true), then the real future and money lies in what reusable access to orbit ENABLES YOU TO DO, and not necessarily in the building of the vehicles themselves. I don't have the figures to hand, but I feel sure that the total volume of world trade enabled by civil aviation is VERY much larger than the turnover of civil aircraft manufacturers themselves.

Concentrating solely on the launch vehicle itself without considering the whole of the rest of the ecosystem is a serious mistake.

Whilst a successful NewSpace suborbital service may improve a lay investors confidence, it does not provide the technologies needed for reusable spaceplanes.

David Ashford disagrees with you.

For that the structural concepts and materials proposed for the skylon are needed, as well as advanced propulsion.

If you're willing to stage, TSTO RLVs can be built with engine technology we already have. The overall reliability and duty cycle lifetime could use improvement… and guess what? The NewSpace guys are working on that.

If the UK (well, Europe) is to take the lead in space it should work to take the launch market lead, and that means developing Skylon, or a two stage launcher. This will cost but it will steal the market, probably stun it.

…assuming the rest of the world stands still for the 15 years it takes you to fund, build and license your vehicle.

Is Bond's approach therefore a policy and NewSpace as it should be, with the sub orbital legal wranglings being pushed to the second order where they belong,

The suborbital guys are doing the hard work of developing the legal frameworks FOR YOU, you bunch of ingrates ;-) When a Skylon passenger books a ticket, the insurance small print will be a direct descendant of that signed by a Virgin Galactic customer.

The closer someone is to actually building and flying real hardware, the more seriously they take the "legal wranglings" over regulatory frameworks (e.g. the recent dispute between Wil Whitehorn and Angus Robertson). It is ABSOLUTELY NOT something to be taken lightly.

Regulatory compliance will only begin to approach a "second order issue" after a number of things have happened -- suborbital and orbital commercial passenger transport are routine, and an accident has killed paying passengers, and the industry has demonstrated that it is sufficiently robust to survive that accident intact and continue to operate.

the introduction of the requirement for government investment in space launchers to be repaid and the ability to do that being a trigger for full development of a space launcher? Maybe the concept of Skylon demonstrates policy through its commercial approach.

That's the thing… opinions differ about whether it *is* a commercial approach.

It overrides sub orbital distractions

Once again, with feeling… SUBORBITAL IS NOT A DISTRACTION.

and quite possibly will cement Europe's space industry for the century. It pushes the space industry to where it needs to be, both commercially and technically.

I agree that it's a very cool enabling technology and I'd like to see it built.

The international legal frameworks needed to allow a spaceliner to function may provide the backbone for future space policy i.e. to support development and regulation of the new space industry. New markets post introduction of a spaceliner would be left for the markets to decide and are less of a concern to policy makers who are there to ensure the correct regulation and support is available for wherever the markets choose to go.

A "light-touch" regulatory environment to encourage free markets in space technology would indeed be desirable, but previous experience with European politics suggests that's not what you're likely to get in practice. "If it moves, regulate it to death" seems to be the reflex action.

(Sadly, ITAR/MTCR aren't likely to go away in a hurry either, which complicates a purely "market-based" approach…)

Look, we have a pretty good idea now what technologies are going to be needed in the case of a dramatic expansion of human presence in space: in-space propulsion, habitats, life support, shielding etc. etc. How well could the UK address these markets? Do we get our ideas together, or do we leave it to chance?

Perhaps a project like Skylon is too large or risky to ever be given full support, in which case let's have fun with focusing on growing NewSpace from the bottom up and see what happens because the end result will no doubt be the same, it just may take a little longer, be a little more dangerous, and give a different level of UK involvement in future space activities.

False dichotomy. We can and should do both Skylon and UK NewSpace at the same time. They both have valuable roles to play.

I do think that if Virgin, Masten, Blue Origin et al start to look like they are making cash, the UK government will open up the market this side of the Atlantic pretty sharpish, and UK engineers can catch up with that level of technology.

Why wait? Making the UK more NewSpace-friendly is a cheap and easy thing to do. Let's do it now.

The technology program at Reaction Engines will be over in 2 - 3 years so I guess that will be decision time and we can see what happens. If the European investors go for it, it could floor the American and Asian space launch industries, and bring about some very exciting decades of developments.

I wish REL the very best of luck with their development programme. There's a lot of other work to do at the same time, though, so let's get cracking. We're *already* at least 3-4 years behind the US in NewSpace developments.

Looking forward to your 'cheats guide'.

I'm looking forward to putting it down on paper, though I suspect that you may not agree with some of it ;-)

I really do wish we had groups of engineers dotted around the country competing and drumming up people's interest and business models!

So do I. I admire and respect the REL guys, and wish more British engineers shared their vision and ambition.