From: <mlindroo@my-deja.com>
Subject: "Kistler's vehicle now 80% complete" (IAF congress)
Date: den 12 oktober 1999 13:19

Jens Lerch and I really had a wonderful time at the IAF congress in
Amsterdam, with lots of "celebrities" around, interesting presentation
and student parties every night -- all paid for by ESA.

---

I mostly focussed my attention on launch vehicles and commercial space.
Kistler had a minor display in the exhibition hall and their manager of
payload systems (Debra Factor Lepore) gave a number of interesting
presentations. She said the first K-1 vehicle is now 75-80% complete.
The impact of the one-and-a-half year delay appears to be somewhat
mitigated by the fact Kistler has so few employees. The total workforce
is only 40-50 senior managers while the subcontractor workforce of ~2000
employees have mostly been switched to other projects by Lockheed,
Aerojet, Northrop etc.. The company hopes to be able to resume work
again as soon as additional capital has been obtained from the Saudi
investors. Factor Lepore said negotiations are still underway with Saudi
Arabia, and that she was optimistic that full funding would be made
available for a first flight in late 2000.

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As an interesting side note, Teledesic appears destined to shrink
further. One IAF paper examined the launch market in 2000-2010,
concluding there will be significant excess capability due to a glut of
LV projects and cancelled LEO satellite constellations. Teledesic (which
used to account for two-thirds of the entire LEO communications market)
has again reduced its total number of satellites from 288 to ~120.
What's more: if the rumors are true that Teledesic may end up inheriting
bits and pieces from ICO & Celestri, it could go as low as 70 satellites
including a dozen in GEO!! Factor Lepore downplayed the importance of
this, however. She said Kistler will be able to launch Globalstar
satellites for about $4.5 million per spacecraft, versus ~$7 million/
satellite for Starsem/Soyuz and $12 million per satellite for Boeing's
Delta II. Another claimed advantage is the K-1's response time, which
could be as low as 3 days compared with 10-20 months for ELVs which must
be booked well in advance. The K-1 could be launched as many as 100
times a year from the Woomera and Nevada spaceports although the
business plan requires 'considerably fewer' flights than that to earn
enough revenue. The turnaround time would be 9 days, each K-1 airframe
is built to last 100 flights while the NK-33 engines are good for 20
flights. I discussed the NK-33 with an Aerojet engineer who said
existing high pressure rocket engines never will be as cheap and durable
as turbojets, because the "energy density" for the turbopumps in
particular is so much higher.

---

Kistler has also participated in the Space Transportation Architecture
Study at no cost to NASA although the company is not seeking direct
government funding since it increases overhead costs too much. The most
promising government market seemed to be commercial microgravity
flights, although Kistler also looked at planetary flights using an
expendable upper stage and International Space Station resupply
missions. In the latter capability, the K-1 could carry four
International Standard Payload Racks (30 cubic meters of volume) or
boost the Space Station's orbit using up to 1.6t of propellant. In other
words, it would offer similar capabilities as the Russian Progress
resupply craft.
 

MARCU$
 

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