by Jeff Pollard
Very smart guy, and he was there as the shuttle changed and morphed, they kept changing the requirements, adjusting the goals, then they brought on the Air Force. And one day he was looking at what they had on the drawing board and it hit him like a ton of bricks that they were in big trouble. So he didn't go home that night. He stayed all night writing a memo and he told them straight up, they were making very big mistakes. Safety was compromised. They had made too many decisions in meetings, by committee. They had forgotten their first principles. Originally the shuttle would sit atop the rocket, if something goes on, you abort, launch-abort just like in Apollo. Well, then it kept getting heavier, and then the Air Force demanded the thing have gigantic wings that were totally unnecessary.
So now the thing was too heavy to be atop the rocket stack, so they came up with the solution of mounting it off-axis on the side. They got talked into that decision because it meant the main engines stayed on the orbiter and would come back to be reused, which is a nice idea, but it also meant it was impossible to abort during launch. If anything goes wrong with the external tank or either SRB, that's it, game over. Also, it meant the heat-shield would be facing the external tank holding millions of pounds of cryogenic propellant, and that would mean tons of ice forming and then falling off at launch. But they said, we'll figure that out, no problem, we'll use insulation, we'll figure out a really strong thermal protection system, it'll be fine. So they rationalized, step-by-step, moving away from those first principles. To make up for no-abort, they said they'd make the crew compartment ejectable from the orbiter. Then that was too heavy so they said they'd put in ejection seats for each astronaut. But that only let you abort for a limited time-frame before you'd be going too fast too high to be able to just eject. Then at another meeting, they need to shed more weight, and they axed the ejection seats because they were only useful for the first 40 seconds of flight. One-by-one they'd rationalized their way to a death trap. So he told them they should wipe the drawing board clean and start over.
He never got a response, nobody listened to him. Of course nobody listened to him. Have you ever heard of any group of people spending years planning something only to step back and re-think the whole thing? We talk ourselves into things until we can't see them objectively anymore. I have a copy of his report framed, it's on the wall of my home office. He sent the memo over the head of his superior, and he got reprimanded for going over his bosses head. Here we are forty years later, and all the things he said in there were right. Debris from the external tank killed seven people on Columbia. A lack of abort capability killed seven on Challenger. And I'm sure you know all about the engineers at Morton Thiokol that were yelling and screaming trying to get someone to listen to them when they said that it was too cold to launch Challenger. Yet they couldn't get their voices heard. This ain't NASA. I make all decisions, and I will listen to any person that works here, or doesn't work here, who has something to say. I don't care about red-tape or years of studies. I want to retire on Mars. I don't want any compromised, rationalized, bureaucratic, faux-democratic synergistic design meetings. I make every design decision. And I want you to be in charge of Thermal Protection Systems.”
And that is how Daniel Rask become the head of an 11-person team in charge of Thermal Protection for all SpacEx vehicles. Rask watched, along with his engineers, from Mission Control in Hawthorne, California as the Griffin re-entered, putting the lives of three people in the hands of the PICA-EX material that they designed, built, tested, and installed on this exact capsule. Rask was confident yet nervous about this re-entry. Confident because the Griffin heat shield was designed to withstand a Mars-return re-entry, even more demanding than a Lunar-return mission, and confident because the Cargo Griffins hadn't experienced any issues with their thermal protection systems. But of course, Rask knew, a history of success didn't mean no problems would arise. Perhaps having astronauts aboard for a week would cause lots of small vibrations that could jar loose some of the PICA-EX. Maybe the release of waste urine reacted with the material. None of these concerns were serious, only the firings of an anxious mind. They of course had tested the material with every possible factor taken into account. They'd mounted a heat-shield, left it in a vacuum chamber, vibrating like a paint mixer for a month, then applied an arc-jet of 4000 degrees Fahrenheit plasma directly to the extremely cold heat-shield and it worked flawlessly. Yet Rask watched nervously as Kingsley, Travis, and Tim counted on their heat shield to protect them from super-heated plasma only feet away from them as they fell through the air at 14,000 mph.
The only thing not reusable about the Griffin capsule is the heat-shield of PICA-EX. It's an ablative heat shield, meaning that it doesn't stay intact. The material sublimates away during re-entry, which helps dissipate the heat. This makes the material better at thermal insulation, but more expensive since it has to be replaced every mission. That is unless you can figure out, as SpacEx has, how to make the ablative material much cheaper in the first place. Then replacing it will actually be more cost-effective than maintaining a reusable thermal protection system that would have narrower safety margins.
Actually, the PICA-EX material was theoretically capable of thermal protection upon arrival at Mars and then re-entry to Earth's atmosphere later in the same mission. This is how robust the design is.
The heat shield on Griffin 6 worked flawlessly, and the TPS team nodded, giving each other victorious glances, each pretending like they weren't nervous about the re-entry.
Just down the row, the Parachute and Recovery team was about to reach their moment in the sun, when the parachutes they had been working on for five years would prevent three people from dying in a 200 mph crash into the ocean. Their system at least had a backup. If the parachutes failed, they could activate the Griffin's engines and slow down to a soft splashdown. Eventually they would be landing on a pad less than a mile from the SpacEx headquarters under rocket power, but for now, they relied on parachutes and the hopefully gentle embrace of the Pacific Ocean.
A spacecraft is a complicated system that requires more than just a great pilot and a little luck. Years of hard work and dedication from hundreds of engineers and technicians have to come together all at the same time to accomplish the feat that is human spaceflight. No system is perfect. No design flawless. If you fly enough missions, eventually something will go wrong. But if you design your system in a way that has backups upon backups, you can minimize risk. If they flew Apollo missions long enough, eventually a parachute would have failed and a crew of three would have died on impact as they had no backup at all in the event of a parachute failure. They didn't carry parachutes to bail out, and they had no rockets to slow them down. But Kingsley wasn't planning on having luck on his side, not if his vision of a rapidly reusable space program was to go forward. More launches meant more tickets in the disaster lottery, and that meant minimizing risk as much as possible. Really the only aspect of the Griffin flight that had no backup was re-entry. If the heat shield failed, then it failed. There was nothing you could do at that point. But if the parachutes failed to open, they could still use rockets to slow their descent, and for the first missions, they carried personal parachutes in the capsule just in case both systems failed.
As the Griffin fell through fifteen-thousand feet, slowing to under 300 mph, the twin drogue-chutes deployed, stabilizing and slowing the Griffin for the main chutes deployment at five-thousand feet. The SpacEx, former Coast Guard, cutter spots the Griffin and its open parachutes, broadcasting the image to Mission Control, and to television and computer screens around the world as many people tuned in to witness the return of the first private spaceship in history.
“Good drogues,” Tim says. After a short time under the twin drogues, the main chutes deploy. The drogues pull the cylinder containing the three orange-and-white striped chutes away from the capsule. The chutes open gradually, presenting a small cross-section at first, expanding slowly as the capsule slows down. This is done to lessen the stress on
the vehicle, and to prevent the chutes from tearing.
“And good mains,” Tim says. The Griffin pitches up. The chutes aren't evenly attached, instead favoring one side of the capsule. This causes the Griffin to be angled rather than hanging evenly with the heat shield on the bottom. The three men lie inclined, and the Griffin hits the water on one corner of the heat shield, diving down into the sea a few feet before bobbing back up. This is done to lessen the g-forces on the crew and the structure. A flat-splashdown, where the heat shield hits head-on, would be a much more immediate impact that might damage the structure of the Griffin, which remember, is supposed to be re-used, and subject the crew to more g-forces than necessary.
“Hawthorne, this is Griffin, we're at stable-one,” Tim says.
“Roger Griffin, welcome back.”
“We didn't anticipate that you would move to manned missions so quickly,” Ms. Kelly Johnston from the NASA press office says on the speaker phone in Kingsley's office.
“What do you mean you didn't anticipate it? The whole god damn world was watching it on a live stream,” Kingsley shouts back.
“Look, this is the deal,” Brittney Hammersmith says, waving Kingsley and his aggressive shouting away from the phone. “We fly people, prove the thing works, then we go to the space station. That's our deal, that's in writing.”
“Yes, but the writing outlines that we have to be sure that the vehicle is safe before we pay for the crew resupply proving mission,” Kelly replies.
“I rode the damn thing myself,” K shouts.
“Before we cut you a check for two hundred million dollars, we have to make sure it's going to be a safe ride.”
“Two hundred and twenty million,” K corrects.
“You know what I mean,” Ms. Johnston replies.
“I wanna talk to somebody a little higher up at NASA, why am I even talking to you in the first place?” K asks.
“This is as high as the call goes,” Ms. Johnston says. K whacks the end button, killing the call.
“This is such bullshit,” K says. “This is the god damn United Embezzle Alliance coming after us again. Oh, sure, we'll spend a hundred and twenty million more dollars to prove the thing's safe, that's no problem, it's just my money.”
“What are we gonna do?” Hammersmith asks. “They're our customer, if this company is going to work, it's going to be with the paychecks from being NASA's ferry for astronauts, right? So we launch again.”
“We had a deal, we sue their asses, we have lawyers,” K replies.
“Kingsley, you don't sue your customer.”
“They're backing out of the deal!”
“Yes but if we do something to piss them off, there won't be a deal. We want the contract to be NASA's way of getting to the low-Earth-orbit, not just the money for the proving mission. We have to please them to get the contract, so we're gonna do it, we're gonna eat the cost.”
“You know what we're gonna do?” K asks with a smile, having formulated a plan.
“Oh god, what?”
“In three months, SpacEx will be sending private, paying passengers into Earth orbit,” Kingsley says at the podium in front of the SpacEx factory. “This will mark the first time in human history that a private organization will send paying customers into Earth Orbit.”
“Kingsley! Why a tourist trip? What about the Commercial Crew Development Contract with NASA?” A reporter shouts. Kingsley told the reporter to ask this exact question.
“NASA has decided that our first manned mission wasn't enough to certify our ship as safe. Personally I don't think they're being totally truthful about their true motivations. Oh and I've got an independent study saying the Griffin is easily safer than the Space Shuttle ever was. In any case, our paying customers have no hesitation about taking their epic journey. So I guess our passengers are braver than NASA's astronauts.”
Chapter 10
“And that's the Griffin 6,” K says, pointing to the first manned Griffin Capsule, scorched by a fiery re-entry, hanging from the ceiling in the lobby of the SpacEx headquarters.
“Cool,” Arnold Schwarzenegger says, looking up at the historic capsule. “Is that the one we're taking?”
“Nope, I'll show you Griffin 7,” K says, leading Arnold to the Griffin assembly line.
“I thought it was all reusable,” Arnold says.
“That's the eventual goal, right now we're just trying to figure out how to do it,” K replies.
“Is it safe?” Arnold asks.
“Is it safe!?” Kingsley doesn't answer his own question as they arrive at the start of the half-mile Griffin assembly line. Four Griffins can be seen in the evolution from skeleton to capsule. These are the first Griffin v1.1s as the assembly line has been re-tooled and re-opened.
“The assembly line starts here, with a single piece of a special kind of aluminum, strong and lightweight. This frame is cast in a different section of the factory. Liquid aluminum is poured into the cast, and out comes the skeleton of a Griffin. From there, the frame is sent to a fully automated system that machines away some of the aluminum cast, shedding weight without sacrificing strength. Once the skeleton is complete, it is rolled to this assembly line,” K says as he leads Arnold down the line, walking past technicians and engineers working on capsules that would hopefully fly astronauts to the ISS.
“Here the pressure vessel, what keeps the atmosphere in the capsule, is installed, followed by the tanks for the propellants and tanks for water and oxygen for the crew. Then the plumbing and piping for those systems is fitted, followed by the thrusters.” Eighteen Draco engines are mounted in four pods. These engines are used to control the Griffin as it moves through six axes in the freedom of zero-g. The Griffin has double redundancy for attitude control. It takes the failure of three thrusters for the Griffin to lose control of one axis, and that's only if all three failures occur on the same axis. If three thrusters fail in a given mission, the odds of it being the right three to cause a serious emergency and the loss of control along one axis are about 136-to-1. If any four thrusters fail, the odds of it being the three of the right four are about 112-to-1. That's what double-redundancy does for your odds of success.
“Here they're putting in the computers, screens, wiring, controls, batteries, crew couches, etc.,” K says, as they continue down the line, “followed by atmosphere systems, air filters. Then you can see antenna, radio receiver, the docking camera, docking hatch, windows, exterior skin.” They reach the most complete Griffin on the line, still looking rather naked. “This is Griffin 8. She'll fly next after we go up in eight months or so. Right now they're installing the parachute systems on the roof there. Once that's done, we'll roll her down to TPS where they'll apply the heat shield in a a special vacuum clean room.”
“So if I go in there, will my eyes get all bulgy and sucked out of my sockets?” Arnold asks, referring to the scenes in the film Total Recall in which Arnold's character is sucked out of a Mars colony and exposed to the low atmosphere on Mars.
“Actually no, that's all Hollywood,” K replies.
“Really?!”
“Really.”
“Your eyes don't get bulgy in space?” Arnold asks.
“Nope.”
“Well that's not cool,” Arnold says. “So where is ours?”
“Griffin 7 is right there,” K says as they round a corner. Griffin 7 is mounted to something that looks like an amusement park ride, a set of mechanical arms hold the capsule upside-down, high in the air, rocking it back and forth. “That's our spaceship.”
“It looks like some robots are stealing our ship,” Arnold jokes.
“This is the last thing we do before we ship the Griffin off to the Cape, we turn her upside down and shake her around to make sure there's no loose bits in there,” K says.
“Do you have a super-technical name for this? Zero-G Space Vibrator. G-stimulator?”
“I call it the shaker,” K replies. “But all kidding aside, this is a serious step. On Earth a str
ay bolt or washer or metal shaving will just sit on the ground, but in space, everything floats, and you do not want to inhale aluminum shavings.”
“I swallowed a nine-millimeter shell casing once. Not fun.”
“Right,” K says.
“Don't you want to know how?” Arnold asks.
“A spent shell was ejected right in your mouth?” K says simply.
“Well, when you say it like that it sounds lame.”
“Kingsley,” a familiar stern voice says from behind K.
“So...I'm gonna have some shit to deal with,” Kingsley says without turning around to face Brittney Hammersmith. “Would you show the Terminator the rocket line,” K says to a technician.
“The what-who?” The tech asks as he turns around to surprisingly find himself face-to-face with Mr. Universe.
“Kingsley, middle name, Pretorius, can you explain this to me,” Brittney says, not waiting for K to face her.
“Have fun,” K says with a smile to Arnold, then spins around. “You don't know my middle name?” K asks Hammersmith.
“Kingsley Goddammit Pretorius really rolls off my tongue,” Hammersmith says. She thinks for a moment. “Not like that. You know what I mean. Will you explain to me what the hell is going on.”
“I'm usually pretty good at explaining new concepts to people.”
“Funny,” Hammersmith says coldly. “Why did I get a notice that we don't have enough to make next month's payroll? Where did that money go? Got a slick explanation for that?”
“I can explain this one pretty easily,” K says walking briskly toward the offices at the front of the building.
“Where are we going?”
“You'll see, then you'll know,” Kingsley says as he heads towards his office. He goes to the large rounded windows and points to the Griffin landing-pad about a mile away. The pad is meant to be the destination of Griffins returning from orbit once powered landings are proven safe. This close landing location will enable rapid re-use of the capsules. But at the moment, that's not what Kingsley is pointing at.