The K-1 is dead, long live TSTO RLVs
I've never thought the K-1 design that they came up with was anywhere close to an ideal RLV. For example, it doesn't allow for incremental testing to find problems without losing the vehicle as Rutan could do with the SS1. However, it was a proof of principle that even a group of conservative NASA/Apollo/Saturn engineers could sit down and design a two-stage-to-orbit (TSTO) fully reusable vehicle without breaking any laws of physics or requiring even an ounce of unobtainium. Other than the occasional anonymous commenter posting "the K-1 is crap" sort of criticism, I've never seen any credible person point to some particular part of the K-1 design and say this definitely is not going to work.
Kistler got 75% of the hardware built for the first K-1 when their target LEO comsat constellation market disappeared and funding dried up. Kistler had at that point spent about $800M but raised only $600M. The company itself had remained relatively small and had farmed out most of the hardware to various mainstream aerospace companies. (SpaceX decided that building many of its major components in house could save lots of money over this outsourcing approach.) People who were involved with other entrepreneurial launch vehicle companies during that period occasionally express annoyance, to say the least, that Kistler Aerospace soaked up most of the private investment available for such ventures yet still didn't get anything into the air.
Kistler struggled to survive for several years. It got some NASA funding in 2001 with a Space Launch Initiative contract to demonstrate RLV technologies but most of the money wouldn't come until they started flying. In 2004 they won a $227.4M contract for ISS resupply but it was subsequently canceled when SpaceX successfully challenged the single-source manner in which the contract was awarded.
In 2003 the company entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, which kept it in business but protected from creditors while it searched for new money. The company was on the verge of being liquidated when Rocketplane bought it in early 2006 and quickly put together a proposal for the COTS program. A major factor apparently in the Rocketplane Kistler (RpK) combo winning a COTS contract was the fact that they had substantial hardware already built and in storage.
Unlike SpaceX, Rocketplane Kistler on its own did not have sufficient internal funding to get the K-1 vehicles built and flying. Instead, they planned to use the credibility provided by the COTS award and the expectation of a long term ISS resupply contract to convince investors to provide the necessary development funding. However, it turned out that without an ironclad guarantee of a such a contract, investors balked at providing the large amount, $500M, that RpK needed.
Unless their is another amazing last second rescue, the COTS contract termination appears to close the final chapter on the K-1 saga. However, this is hardly the end of the TSTO reusable launch vehicle story. SpaceX, in fact, plans to reuse both stages of the Falcon 9 (however, they won't include this in their flight costs estimates until the water recovery technique is proven). Several other companies have viable TSTO designs of various sorts. Unlike single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) RLV designs such as VentureStar, there are no bleeding edge technologies needed for TSTO RLVs. It's just a question of implementation and systems engineering execution to get them built and operating.
Posted 10/19/07 | 11:36:06 by TopSpacer | Filed under: Transport Companies
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