The Challenge Of Space-Flight – An Interview With ARCA

After the X Prize had been won in 2004, many companies sunk into oblivion. Not so ARCA, at home in Romania. They are pursuing a steady development program for their ultimate goal: “Man in space”.

On September 25, ARCA had a successful Mission 2 flight of their STABILO1B craft. Mission 3 is planned for next year with a total of 6 missions planned. They are currently on the track to be the second ever private company to launch humans into space.

Recently, the Space Fellowship had the opportunity to ask a few questions to Dumitru Popescu of ARCA about their situation and their future.

How are your programs proceeding and when do you expect your first crewed suborbital flight?

Dumitru Popescu: ARCA had three main programs: Demonstrator, Orizont and Stabilo.
The Demonstrator program was developed during the Ansari X Prize Competition. During this program ARCA tested propulsion technologies as well as team ability to operate and to launch liquid fuel rocket hardware. This program ended in 2004 with good results: the creation and launch of world first monopropellant composite materials fully reusable rocket engine. Demonstrator 2B rocket, which was powered by the above-mentioned engine, was the fastest liquid fueled rocket launched from the ground during the Ansari X Prize Competition.

The Orizont program was also initiated in the days of the Ansari X Prize Competition. Orizont is a winged, air launched, manned suborbital vehicle. This project proved to be too expensive and the development is stopped for the moment, at least until we will find the proper funding for it. A winged vehicle is a very expensive method of going suborbital.

We tried to find much cheaper methods of reaching space. This lead to the development of the Stabilo program. Stabilo is also an air launched, manned suborbital vehicle, but is radically different comparing with the Orizont. It has no wings and a balloon is used to lift the rocket-powered vehicle to high altitude. Traditionally, helium balloons are used to lift heavy payloads to high altitude. In Romania helium is much more expensive than in US. For a single STABILO launch only the cost of helium, without the additional infrastructure, is around $50,000. We have 6 flights programmed, and a lot of ground tests. This leads to costs of around $500,000 for the entire program. In this situation we used solar balloons. These balloons are much bigger and difficult to operate than the helium balloons, but they are the cheapest way.

On Stabilo we used a lot of technologies that we used during the Demonstrator and Orizont programs especially the: composite materials oxidizer tanks and rocket engines. Right now Stabilo is going well. We have some delays, but the good results obtained until now make us very confident in this system.

Our major objective is the manned space flight, so a crewed suborbital flight of Stabilo system is expected. Nevertheless, in the last period I learned not to talk about our close term plans because this will put extra pressure on the team.

What are your thoughts on the way the private space industry is progressing since the X Prize and is it as you expected?

Dumitru Popescu: I expected that more colleague teams of the Ansari X Prize go forward with the developments of high performance hardware. From the data that I have until now, only Scaled did major progresses on hardware developments. We all must face the truth that the only way to develop the private industry is to develop flight hardware, to test it on the ground and in flight. It is a much slower and difficult beginning of this industry than I expected, but on the other hand I personally discovered that it is beyond my imagination how hard it is to have good performances on this field.

What do you consider to be the hardest part of trying to get into private space flight?

Dumitru Popescu: To have a good and dedicated team of engineers including, or most important, a good team leader with four major characteristics: to be patient, because such programs are progressing slowly; to be charismatic, for his team, for the media, for the public and most important for the sponsors; to be a good engineer and a good economist.

As Romania is not such a wealthy country like e.g. the Unites States, how difficult is it for you to get enough money for your plans?

Dumitru Popescu: Here are two aspects: First, I think that to gather the necessary amount of private funds in US is almost as well as difficult as to gather funds in Europe, even that let’s be honest, the Americans are more opened to spaceflight than Europeans. The second aspect is that for the same project the necessary amount of money is much smaller in Eastern countries of EU than in US. If you want to build, let’s say SpaceShipOne in Romania, at the same cost than in US, it is highly improbable that you will succeed to raise the necessary private funds.

ARCA succeeded to raise always the necessary funds, nevertheless we had almost always an important issue: to gather the funds on time. Another advantage for us is that the Cold War technology developed in the past in Eastern Europe is now available at low cost.

Where do you see ARCA in let’s say 10 years from today?

Dumitru Popescu: We will keep our present profile of a private research organization: the development of innovative aerospace projects. It is highly improbable that we will enter into commercial activities. In the day when we will do this we will become just simple operators of a technology already developed. I think we worked too much to build a team of good engineers and right now we are not willing to transform a team of researchers into a team of operators. If other companies will be interested to use our achievements for commercial applications, we are open to this. I think we will have higher satisfactions to try to reach new frontiers of spaceflight than to put almost the same rocket on a launch pad and to regularly launch it. I see no satisfaction in this.

If you would have one wish regarding space/spaceflight. What would it be?

Dumitru Popescu: If I wouldn’t be involved in the development of spaceflight, may be I would answer that my wish is to see the humans making real progresses in traveling to other planets of the Solar System. But, I am involved in the spaceflight activities, so my answer will be one that will be probably judged as egocentric: I want to see the humans making major progresses in traveling to other planets of the Solar System, and I want to see, may be in a distant future, some contribution of our team added to these achievements.

Thank you Mr. Popescu and ARCA for the insight into your programs and dreams. You can watch some nice videos of their progress on their homepage www.arcaspace.ro.

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