Any structured approach to cost reduction should start with an open assessment where cost actually comes from. I’ve always missed that part in Rotary’s story. Rotary’s emphasis on a rotor-blade assisted take-off and landing implies that the high cost of space access is caused by current insufficient landing schemes. This is, of course, nonsense. If you want to fly into space, getting there is the task to be solved, not how to return and land. Who cares? Had Rotary Rocket presented a conclusive scheme of getting into LEO based on a sound, affordable and reliable propulsion concept and credible mass ratios, investors would have gladly accepted an Apollo-style parachute water splashdown. Both problems, however, i.e. propulsion and a mass ratio break-through necessary for any SSTO, were not convincingly addressed by Rotary – quite to the contrary: bit by bit did they have to step down from original claims. No wonder investors felt being led down the wrong path. Investors may behave erratic (see commentary on page 18), but they are not all dumb, and Rotary’s obvious preoccupation with a non-task-oriented minor side problem, while failing to demonstrate reliable propulsion, definitely did not build investor’s confidence. What good do vertical helicopter-style test flights do when you really want to go to space? If we’re honest, the answer must be “nothing”. Blades only complicate things.

Unless someone invents anti-gravitation or similar SiFi break-throughs, we will be stuck with rockets for a while to get us into space (and for most part of the way into space, even Rotary would have been just that: a good old traditional rocket). If, then, in the end we wish to reduce the cost of rockets, then why don’t we focus on proven economic approaches, i.e. assess the true cost factors, stream-line procedures and production, mass-produce and standardize components, reduce part count, gradually improve designs, reduce complexity, make cost over technological perfection the dominant design factor and don’t experiment. And, by the way, forget SSTO! As if cost were in fueling and recovering a second stage! Forget flyback boosters / stages / landing vehicles. As if cost were in sending a boat out and retrieving something from the water! All that may not be innovative, it has nothing to do with space technology in general, and it may not be very rewarding for an engineer dreaming of engineering marvels, but it has certainly made cars, cellular telephones and PC’s cheaper and will work on any commercial good, including rockets.

Sincerely,

Tom Stinnesbeck