u s space foundation speech speech by pete worden delivered before the u s space foundation conference colorado springs colorado april what a delightful opportunity to cause some trouble for providing me this forum i would sincerely like to thank the u s space foundation my topic today is the single stage rocket technology rocket or ssrt by i intend to speak of more how to lower the cost and make rapid progress ssrt is to my mind and i hope to convince you the erupting a new rallying cry for our generation in space faster cheaper and better faster cheaper better and ssrt represent the passing of a torch from one technical generation to another it is a new thing to be sure but it is also a relearning of old things from past masters when we rolled out the ssrt baby two weeks ago so called experts told us it violates the laws of physics it made no sense for example dr eberhart rachtin former president of the aerospace corp said of ssrt in the l a times that it defies the best principles of launching payloads into space well dr rachtin you ve made us mad what are these principles that ssrt defies well i ll tell you it violates the principle that you need a giant program office to build space hardware it violates the fact that it takes years to build something new and it violates the truism that you cant do anything significant for less than many billions of dollars it took some of the last generation s experts to teach us some new old lessons werhner von braun s first rocket was not a saturn v general schriever s icbm s didn t take ten years to demonstrate and the x airplane didn t cost billion it took one of the great engineers of the s to remind us of these truths max hunter max to remind you was a senior engineer in the thor irbm program and old faster better cheaper success story max has been persistent in a vision of a single stage reusable space launch system since the s because he knew it had to be done in affordable steps build a little test a little next he persuaded us to do a technology demonstration we didn t solicit a bunch of requirements they d just change every few years anyway not included in the speech the als nls has such ephemeral requirements that it would better known as shape shifter than space lifter we didn t spend a lot money this x rocket only cost million when s the last time we even built a new airplane for that and it didn t take a lot of time to build mcdonnell douglas completed it in months finally the government program office consisted of one very over worked air force major motivated in part by the threat that he d get to ride on it in a strapped on lawn chair if it ran over cost or schedule as i described what ssrt is and isn t keep in mind its only a first step there are several more steps and steps that can easily fail before the u s can field an ssto but each step should follow the same principles a small management team a few years technology demonstration and a modest budget let me show a few details on ssrt and how it might evolve see charts i m embarrassed when my generation is compared with the last generation the giants of the last great space era the s and s they went to the moon we built a telescope that can t see straight they soft landed on mars the least we could do is soft land on earth but we do have an answer we can follow their build a little test a little philosophy to produce a truly affordable and routine access to space i know there are nay sayers among you those who say ssrt is a stunt it needs more thermal protection the engines are wrong it would be better to land horizontally etc etc i say to you we ll see you at white sands in june you bring your view graphs and i ll bring my rocketship if we do what we say we can do then you let us do the next step not included in the speech if we fail you still have your program offices staff summary sheets requirement analyses and decade long programs i bet on my generation and max hunter s idea any takers
