Vidic 2:00
R13
NEW VENTURES INTO ROCKET REUSABILITY
Alex van Stekelenborg (alv44@pitt.edu)
ETHICS OF REUSABLE ROCKETS
Alex van Stekelenborg (alv44@pitt.edu)
build his own rockets. He figured out that the materials for a
rocket were only three percent of the sales price. On that
notion, he founded SpaceX. He had a new idea: the reusable
rocket. First began production of his own rocket, the Falcon
9. The Falcon 9 was a completely expendable rocket very
similar to the Saturn V, but production costs were a fraction
of what they were compared to NASA’s rockets. The cost per
launch of the Falcon 9 is 61.2 million dollars,[3] which pales
in comparison to the Saturn V’s 500 million dollars per
launch. Being able to reuse thrusters from previously used
rockets cuts down enormously on production costs, as it is no
longer necessary to create new parts for every rocket launch.
After being the first company to successfully dock and
resupply the International Space Station in 2012, SpaceX
began work on the reusable versions of its rockets. The Falcon
9-R was born [3]. The 9-R is the final step in creating the
perfect rocket. SpaceX had to create a special rocket that
would not only be able to withstand the destructive power of
the earth’s atmosphere, but also be able to land vertically on
a barge in the ocean. SpaceX is extremely close to finishing
this technology. In development since 2011, the Falcon 9-R
functions on an attitude control system that keeps the rocket
in a vertical position throughout its entire descent with the use
of horizontal thrusters. Many problems can occur while in the
extreme descent of the rocket. In a test in September 2013, the
rocket began spinning at high speeds, which in turn turned the
gas chamber into a centrifuge, slung the gas against the walls
of the chamber, and shut down the engine. [3] A new
heatshield that was able to resist higher temperatures than
NASA’s was developed to withstand the atmosphere’s
extreme frictional heat. SpaceX had to figure out how to how
to reignite the Falcon 9-R’s thrusters at supersonic and
transonic velocities, and successfully did so by creating the
restartable ignition system which slowed the Falcon 9-R
down completely during tests. All these new technologies,
once perfected, will create a Falcon 9-R that can resupply the
international space station, send astronauts to the international
space station, and then come back down to earth safely to do
the same thing again.
WHATS WRONG WITH OLD ROCKETS?
The main problem with today’s rockets is the enormous
waste of material. Most parts of a rocket fall off and either
burn falling through the atmosphere, crash land into the
ocean, or float off into space forever. To put this into
perspective, the Saturn V rocket weighed 6,540,000 pounds,
but only had a payload of 310,000 pounds [1]. That’s 95.52
percent of the rocket going to waste by falling off into space,
never to be used again, turning into space debris. It’s like
having to buy a new car every time you want to drive
somewhere. Saturn V, perhaps the U.S.’s most famous rocket,
had to be rebuilt thirteen times to be launched thirteen times.
A total of 6.417 billion dollars (approximately 41.3 billion
dollars in 2015) were allocated to the production of the Saturn
V rockets. That’s almost 500 million dollars (more than 3
billion dollars in 2015) per launch. [1] After the U.S. managed
to land on the moon before any other country, the space race
had ended and the government had much less of a justification
to fork out the tremendous of money it was spending on
NASA. Since 1966, NASA’s budget has decreased by 89
percent. NASA only has 0.5 percent of the U.S. budget to use
which has staggeringly slowed the motivation for space
exploration. This is where Elon Musk stepped in. Initially,
Musk had wanted to buy rockets from Russian space
companies to take the first steps towards colonizing mars and
to regain public interest in space exploration. The only
setback was the price of the rockets that the Russians were
selling.
UPGRADING THE ROCKET
“The vodka shots started -'To space!' 'To America!' - and,
a little buzzed, Musk asked point-blank how much a missile
would cost. 'Eight million dollars each, they said. Musk
countered, offering $8 million for two. 'They sat there and
looked at him,' Cantrell, Elon’s associate that was with him at
the meeting, said. 'And said something like, 'Young boy. No.'
Musk stormed out of that meeting, and on the plane home
began devising a plan to create his own rockets.”[2]
Eight million dollars was seen by Musk as much too
expensive for an old rocket, so he had the ambitious idea to
University of Pittsburgh
Swanson School of Engineering
2015-11-03
THE CODE OF ETHICS
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Alex van Stekelenborg
As an engineer working on the Falcon 9, there are two pros
and cons to the use of a reusable rocket. The pros obviously
are reusability and massively decreased productions costs due
to not having to reproduce every part of the rocket. However,
it’s the cons that always have to be taken into account when
engineering a new idea and actually bringing it to life.
I am a mechanical engineer working on the creation of the
fully reusable Falcon 9 for SpaceX. I’m working with a seven
person team of some of the best chemical, electrical, and
mechanical engineers in the United States who are
collaborating with me to come up with a perfect system. The
two chemical engineers are developing a lightweight metal
body for the rocket so less energy is used in moving the
rocket, the two electrical engineers are installing the circuits
that control the rocket’s programming, and the three
mechanical engineers, including me, are modelling the rocket
in a 3D computer modelling program to create the most
efficient and aerodynamic rocket body. We are putting such
an effort into creating a reusable rocket because there is no
other ethical way to continue space travel.
There is a common English saying that goes “just because
you can, doesn’t mean you should.” In other words, not every
idea that someone has should actually come to fruition. That
common English saying is the premise upon which all
engineering ethics and codes of conducts are built upon. It is
that code of ethics that is giving me and my team of
mechanical engineers at SpaceX a very hard time at
completing the development of the Falcon 9.
The codes of ethics that keep me from completing the
rocket are the NSPE and ASME codes. Although they are
obstructing me from easily finishing my project, it is these
codes of ethics that are necessary to uphold the safety and
usability of everyday products. “Engineers shall hold
paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public in the
performance of their professional duties.” [4][5] This the first
and most and important of six fundamental canons of the both
of the engineering societies that I belong to: the National
Society of Professional Engineers and the American Society
of Mechanical Engineers. As of now, it is only the first canon
that currently applies to my situation. The rest of the code of
ethics do not apply to my work: I’m working in my field, have
no reason to commit any deceptive acts, I’m not required to
make any public statements, I would never betray SpaceX and
I trust my employer, and I work honorably, responsibly, and
ethically.
The difference between me and an engineer that doesn’t
follow any code of ethics is that the engineer without a code
of ethics is not even an engineer in the first place. Taking
shortcuts, bypassing safety precautions, and creating new
things simply for self-gain does not make you an engineer; it
makes you someone who’s willing to put others at risk for
their own advantage.
I noticed how grave ethical problems can be in the
engineering world through discovering and reading about
several case studies. The one took that I took the most from
was the Engineering Ethics in Spain: The Risky Tank. The
situation is quite similar to mine, where an engineer is faced
with a problem that would put the livelihood of others at risk.
Continuing with his project could put the workers in danger.
It is easily avoidable but his employer needs the project done
as soon as possible. I would never put any one in danger, and
that’s what I took away from the case study. More than 20
percent would have told the authorities about the business
malpractice and another 20 percent would have put in
additional safety measures. The majority of engineers that
participated in the case study would not have continued with
the work. This showed me how well almost all engineers
follow the codes of ethics and the case study only cemented
my belief that any ethical problems with the Falcon 9 must be
fixed.
ETHICAL PROBLEMS WITH THE FALCON
9
The idea for the Falcon 9 was first proposed in 2006. [5]
The project has already been in development for nine years
now and we only have come up with a partially reusable
rocket. Even though the rocket is only partially reusable so
far, it has already cut costs of rockets immensely, as stated
previously. But that is the problem that we are running into as
engineers that live by a code of ethics. The definition of a
partially reusable rocket as of now is that our rockets come
back down to earth, but not in one piece. Actually, they come
down in half a piece. The rocket launches into space, drops
off one of its booster-thrusters in orbit, and the rest of the
rocket comes down. This might not seem too bad, however,
the consequences of dropping of space junk could be
disastrous, especially with the introduction of the Falcon 9
rocket. In the current day and age, the frequency of rocket
launches per year is small, with an average of 75 for the past
ten years. [6] With the introduction of the reusable falcon 9,
the amount of flights per year could quadruple [5]. Some see
this as a breakthrough in spaceflight, but as engineers we have
to see the situation from every possible angle.
When in orbit around the earth, any object will object will
have an average velocity of around 10 kilometers per second,
or 6.2 miles per second. [7] This means that any object
orbiting our planet has an enormous amount energy, so even
with small objects, like a fleck of paint that could have peeled
of a rocket, can behave like kinetic missiles. In fact, that is
exactly what happened in 1994, when a fleck of paint struck
the front the Challenger Space Shuttle’s windshield, creating
a crater halfway through the entire windshield. [8] That was
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Alex van Stekelenborg
just a fleck of paint. There are currently more than 19,000
pieces of space junk greater than five centimeters and more
than 300,000 pieces of space junk greater than 1 cm. It is
impossible to track the amount the amount of debris the size
of paint flecks as there are so many and they move at such a
high velocity.
Sometime satellites themselves are threats to each other.
In 2009, the Russian satellite Kosmos-2251 collided with the
commercial satellite Iridium at 26,170 miles per hour. The
collision resulted in more than 2,000 pieces of debris more
than 4 inches across, which increased the amount of large
space debris by ten percent. [9] As you can see, just one
collision can return catastrophic effects.
In fact, this was exactly what NASA scientist Donald
J. Keppler had predicted in 1978. His theory, now
appropriately know as Kessler syndrome, was that the in
space debris would eventually accumulate enough to start
colliding with itself, resulting in even more space debris.
More and more debris is created, creating a runaway chain
reaction that could clutter low earth orbit entirely. This would
make it almost impossible to send out any more satellites as
they’d immediately get destroyed by space debris of any size.
[10]
All of the space debris we have now is from the past 50
years of space exploration through the use of expendable
rockets. The way this ties into the Falcon 9 rocket is that the
Falcon 9 rocket is partially reusable. This means that the
Falcon 9 will drop off its primary thruster every time it
reaches space. The thrusters are extremely large parts of the
rocket that are very heavy, so with the massive increase in
possible rocket launches, the space around the earth will
become massively cluttered with all the thrusters that will
separate from.
Not only will this result in a cluttered space but the risk of
injury and even death of every astronaut will increase to the
point where it will simply be too dangerous to send any
rockets at all into space. With empty thrusters orbiting at
extremely high velocities, the chance of getting struck by an
entire thruster or even just a piece of a thruster increases and
that is not something that the engineers here at SpaceX can be
responsible for. These are the types of problems that on runs
into often when following the code of ethics. One could
simply ignore the problem that detaching the thrusters creates
and continue with the rocket launches for profit. Of course I
have thought of doing that, but I would never actually be able
to do it as being a true engineer takes all of the six canons of
the code of ethics into account with any new possible ideas.
To satisfy the ASME and NSPE code of ethics, the Falcon
9 would have to be fitted with a completely reusable body that
does not leave behind any debris in space whatsoever.
Luckily, since the production of the Falcon 9 has been
slowed down due to the problem of space debris being
ejected, we’ve had many years to think of new ideas for a
completely reusable rocket. Initially, we thought a simple
parachute would be able to slow down the rocket’s descent
through the earth’s atmosphere. Unfortunately, we were
wrong and on several different trials we our idea was
disproven as the rocket burnt up due to the massive amount of
friction from the air.[11] Our CEO Elon Musk proposed a new
idea for the realm of rockets: the VTVL system. The VTVL
system, which stands for vertical takeoff vertical landing,
would enable the Falcon 9 rocket to not only take off like a
normal rocket, but also land in the same position that it started
at. Currently, we have a prototype called the Grasshopper that
is much smaller than the Falcon 9 but successfully has taken
off and landed several times. We have tested the same system
on the Falcon 9 rocket and have come very close to a
successful controlled landing, but haven’t yet completed a
true full landing. [12] Nonetheless, every day we are getting
closer and through the more tests we are taking.
There have been many other ideas proposed as alternatives
to reusable rockets, like space elevators, [13] but these are
simply not feasible with the technology we have today.
CONCLUSION
With the Falcon 9’s current system of dropping off its
thrusters into orbit, it would not be ethical to send any more
of the rockets into space. The debris in space can pose a
deadly threat to any future astronauts and to the missions that
they are set to carry out. The development of a completely
reusable Falcon 9 rocket is essential to any future rocket
launches as it will not only lower the cost of launches, but halt
the increase of debris in the space around our planet, making
space travel much safer and reliable for any astronauts of the
future. This should be an example to learn from for any future
engineers. I learned that the easiest way to accomplishing a
great feat is not always the correct way to go about doing
something. One must consider every aspect of what one is
engineering and how those aspects will affect the world
around, not only in the present, but also in the future.
REFERENCES
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
[1] Rogers, Simon. "Nasa Budgets: US Spending on Space
Travel since 1958 UPDATED." The Guardian. 1 Feb. 2010.
Web. 6 Oct. 2015. (Newspaper)
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Alex van Stekelenborg
[2] Zolfagharifard, Ellie. "Russian Space Bosses SPAT on
Elon Musk When He Tried to Buy a Rocket." Dailymail.
Associated Newspapers, 14 May 2015. Web. 6 Oct. 2015.
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article3082067/Russian-space-bosses-SPAT-Elon-Musk-tried-buyrocket-persuading-build-new-book-reveals.html>. (Blog)
[3] "Capabilities & Services." SpaceX. Web. 6 Oct. 2015.
<http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities>. (Website)
[4] Code of Ethics. (n.d.). Retrieved November 2, 2015, from
http://www.nspe.org/resources/ethics/code-ethics
[4] Ethics in Engineering. (n.d.). Retrieved November 2,
2015, from https://www.asme.org/getmedia/9EB36017FA98-477E-8A73-77B04B36D410/P157_Ethics.asp
[5] Frankel, D. (2010). Meeting Minutes.
[6] Space Calendar. (n.d.). Retrieved November 2, 2015, from
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/calendar/
[7] NASA Orbital Debris FAQs. (2012, March 1). Retrieved
November
2,
2015,
from
http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/faqs.html
[8] Christiansen, E. L., J. L. Hydeb and R. P. Bernhard.
"Space Shuttle debris and meteoroid impacts." Advances in
Space Research, Volume 34 Issue 5 (May 2004), pp. 1097–
1103
[9] Iannotta, Becky (February 22, 2009). "U.S. Satellite
Destroyed in Space Collision". Space.com. Archived from the
original on 13 February 2009. Retrieved 12 February 2009.
[10] Donald J. Kessler and Burton G. Cour-Palais (1978).
"Collision Frequency of Artificial Satellites: The Creation of
a Debris Belt". Journal of Geophysical Research 83: 2637–
2646.
[11]
Bergin, C. (2009, January 12). Musk ambition:
SpaceX aim for fully reusable Falcon 9. Retrieved November
3,
2015,
from
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2009/01/musk-ambitionspacex-aim-for-fully-reusable-falcon-9/
[12] Norris, G. (2014, April 28). SpaceX Plans For Multiple
Reusable Booster Tests. Retrieved November 3, 2015, from
http://aviationweek.com/space/spacex-plans-multiplereusable-booster-tests
[13] ISEC. (2012, April 11). Retrieved November 3, 2015.
[14]Case
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Engineering
Ethics
in
Spain
http://www.depts.ttu.edu/murdoughcenter/products/cases.ph
p
ADDITIONAL SOURCES
Stanford Biodesign - Resources. (n.d.). Retrieved November
3, 2015.
K.S. Mangan. (2006). Chronicle of Higher Education.
January 27. "Professor Sued for Revealing Data."
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i21/21a02901.htm
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Alex Johnson for answering any questions I had.
Pitt Excel for helping me push through the difficult times I’ve
had.
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