May 21, 2010
It’s the Space Economy, Stupid!
Flatlined -- in every sense of the word (Gallup Polls)
Those of us in favor of human lunar return have been called “dinosaurs” because, as it’s being told, we want to repeat what this nation already did 40 years ago. If that were our mission objective, such a characterization might be valid. But who really is the dinosaur?
At a recent Senate hearing, Norm Augustine told anecdotal stories in regard to lunar return, of how “our committee received many informal inputs, particularly from young people, questioning why we would have a space program whose centerpiece is something that was accomplished over a half-century earlier.” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden states publicly that trips to new (non-lunar) destinations is exciting, while there are already “six American flags on the Moon.” The President himself, referring to our efforts to return to the Moon, remarks with disdain, “we’ve been there,” the implication being that only new destinations in space are sufficiently exciting for the American public.
The administration’s new direction calls on NASA’s manned space program to: 1) stop what they are doing; 2) transition into technology study groups with a window of five years for sketching out the hardware and roadmap that NASA will follow for visiting a variety of new and ever-more-distant destinations; and 3) as soon as a rocket is built, commence with the objective – a series of intermittent (though spectacular) space “firsts” (as they believe this formula is needed to recreate the emotional pull Apollo had on our nation) that will eventually lead to a human setting foot on something beyond LEO. The “new” direction requires that we launch everything we need on these voyages directly from the surface of the Earth. Afterwards, the small vehicle that returns the crew to Earth will be all that remains of the mission hardware. Then comes the next challenge: a more distant destination to keep a paying (but not going) public “engaged and excited.” The “new” template is nothing more than a very old one – keep the Roman public amused with circuses and gladiatorial shows.
In contrast, those of us who support the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) want to return to the Moon to use its abundant resources to incrementally create a sustainable, permanent human presence in cislunar space. We want reusable, extensible, maintainable and affordable systems in space. We want to unlock and harvest the enormous wealth of the Solar System for the benefit of all humanity. We want to do what has never before been done – extend our civilization into the universe. In place of one-off stunt missions, we want to create something of value – lasting and continuous access to space and its resources to expand our economy and create new wealth. Instead of repeating Apollo, the VSE is an engraved invitation that will encourage participation from the paying (and probably going) public. We want to build a real space economy.
The concept that our space program should excite people is a long-held faith in many space policy circles. Several annoying facts remain though, suggesting that regardless of their desire for public excitement, its existence (or lack thereof) does not historically track with our national space program. President Kennedy did not assemble a focus group or enlist a write-in campaign to gauge and prompt support for his call for a lunar landing program. In fact, he himself wanted to find another venue for Soviet-American competition, one that would produce more tangible and practical benefits, such as desalination of seawater.
Ever since it ended, NASA has doggedly tried to re-create the Apollo program. But the facts do not bear out their collective rosy memories of those days. Polls taken before and during the Apollo missions to the Moon, found, at best, a plurality of public opinion in support of the lunar landing effort. Many polls found a majority against the effort. Media interest was intense for the first landing (Would anyone expect otherwise?) but tailed off afterwards. During the totality of NASA’s existence, public support of the space program has hovered around 50-50 favor/oppose, regardless of what the agency was doing at the time. My conclusion from these results is that, in broad terms, people don’t really care that much about space; they do not oppose it, but they are not wildly enthusiastic about it either. Perhaps they can’t picture a time when they will move beyond their current role as mere spectators.
There is a belief in space circles that public excitement is a critical and driving factor in selecting goals and objectives in space. Threads on various space forums repeatedly argue for or against some path forward on the grounds that a certain program or effort will excite people. This belief is closely related to its corollary belief that excitement equals political support and hence, more funding for space efforts. There are two issues with this kind of thinking. First, regardless of the excitement factor, one cannot set goals and objectives that are technically impossible. For example, if the public decided tomorrow that only interstellar voyages were their hearts’ desire, we would not set that as a goal because we don’t know how to do it. More seriously, excitement does not necessarily correlate with value. We all buy and pay for many things that are exciting, such as watching or participating in sporting events, but after they are over, they are over. They may have some long-term value in improving our own health or satisfying a need to be entertained, but eventually, we turn away from them and go back to attending to the necessities of our daily lives. As adults, we need to spend time and money on practical matters as we plan and prepare for our futures.
In other words, it’s not excitement that we need from our space program, it’s value for the money spent. Many in the space community (and even many inside the agency itself) parrot the falsehood that lunar return under the VSE was all about repeating Apollo. In contrast to the trite “been there, done that” formulation of such misdirected thinking, the real purpose of return to the Moon under the VSE was to learn how to create sustainable human presence off the Earth, including learning how to harvest and use its material and energy resources. Such an objective has never been attempted. In fact, we’re not even certain that it can be done – that’s why it was given to an agency reputed to be our premier technical problem-solving agency – NASA.
So, who is the dinosaur here?
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Typical politcal position, basing decisions on popularity for the goal of re-election and not on analysis with the goal of the best possible outcome. As a Gen-Xer, reusability and effeciency is high on the priority list and wasting material to break Earth’s gravity is unpratical. Further more, how much fuel can be saved from launching from the Moon, where gravity is minimal when comepared to the Earth’s, which then can be used toward deaper exploration? The government doesn’t have the slightest clue on what is best for the American people, let alone proactive and sustainable space exploration.
Comment by Toby Barnett — May 21, 2010 @ 4:37 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Stan Zaske, Toby Barnett. Toby Barnett said: Another fail for our government @spacefuture: It?s the Space Economy, Stupid! #space http://bit.ly/9xUH8h [...]
Pingback by Tweets that mention It’s the Space Economy, Stupid! | The Once and Future Moon -- Topsy.com — May 21, 2010 @ 5:06 pm
> In contrast to the trite “been there, done that” formulation of such misdirected thinking, the real purpose of return to the Moon under the VSE was to learn how to create sustainable human presence off the Earth, including learning how to harvest and use its material and energy resources. Such an objective has never been attempted.
I’m curious what your thoughts are on the lunar ISRU testbed planned for 2015 as part of the ETDD missions in FY2011: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=34056
Also, what are your thoughts on how lunar ice harvesting could deal with the problems of extreme cold and lack of sunlight in the permanently dark craters?
Comment by Neil H. — May 21, 2010 @ 5:27 pm
Neil,
I’m curious what your thoughts are on the lunar ISRU testbed planned for 2015 as part of the ETDD missions in FY2011
That proposed mission has not been defined or funded, so as of right now, I have no opinion. However, I have thought in some detail about what kinds of robotic missions are needed, and in what order, to fully understand where and how we might conduct lunar resource prospecting, harvesting, processing and handling. See the appendix in this presentation for details:
http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Papers/The%20Vision%20and%20the%20Mission.pdf
Although this exploration strawman mission set was made almost 6 years ago, it is still valid today, after the LRO mission has completed our initial reconnaissance from lunar orbit.
Also, what are your thoughts on how lunar ice harvesting could deal with the problems of extreme cold and lack of sunlight in the permanently dark craters?
It’s easier and less power costly to keep warm in space than it is to keep cool. Machinery will need thermal control to stay warm and operative in the cold traps, but this is a straight-forward issue to deal with; spacecraft need thermal control systems anyway. Likewise, we will use artificial illumination to conduct whatever surface operations that we need. However, even in the polar cold traps, there is some illumination derived from light diffusely scattered from the adjacent, illuminated areas.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 21, 2010 @ 5:44 pm
When we did the Apollo program, that was truly 1st time exploration. We found that the Moon was not made of cheese, we would not sink into pools of Moon dust, we could hop and drive around the lunar surface, and that we knew how to return to earth safely. We know these things now, and although there are far more things that we still don’t know, the same could be said for the Earth, which we have been exploring for a much longer period of time.
There is no question we will eventually return to the Moon. The question for NASA is what are they to do with their limited budget. If we gave them as much money as the Department of Defense, then yes, the Moon would be one of the many places they would go.
But NASA has a limited budget, so the President has decided, in a ripoff of STNG “To boldly go where no one has gone before”. We’ve been to the Moon, and have a good idea where to pick up where we left off. We can start doing that by using robot precursors, and then follow up with human exploration and exploitation. We already have the Google Lunar X Prize, one of many indications of non-government interest in going to the Moon, so the government does not need to lead the way back.
We have not learned how to live outside the confines of the Earth-Moon system, and that is where the President wants to focus NASA’s limited resources. Just like with every step we take into uncharted areas, what we learn is passed down to the commercial space industries, and used to lower the costs to those new places. The Moon is waiting, as it has for millions of years, and a couple more years won’t make a big difference.
Comment by Coastal Ron — May 21, 2010 @ 6:39 pm
Thank you for the response!
Comment by Neil H. — May 21, 2010 @ 7:35 pm
I don`t think anyone thinks your are a dinosaur, Paul and I too, would like to see a return to the Moon. I think though that when the administration says: “Been there done that” what they are more interested in getting across is that Constellation is dead ie. if they said they were still going to the Moon people would say: “why not use Constellation.” I think the plan is to find ways to build cheaper rockets hence inviting commercial space to do Leo and find cheaper ways to do deep space by: 1)Building fuel depots in orbit 2) Treating Leo and the Space Station as the harbor for a True Spaceship that stays in orbit and doesn`t have to be lifted out of Earth`s gravity well everytime you want to go some where.
How would it be if like Apollo, the even more expensive Constellation was just getting to do some interesting things on the Moon when the bean counters started hollering it`s too expensive and funds were cut off? They say that those who don`t learn from history are forced to repeat it and that`s what was happening with Constellation.
Some people say space can`t be made cheaper that it will always be expensive that the Space Shuttle was supposed to be reusable and cheaper but look how much it costs to run. Well the Space Shuttle itself was the only part that was reusable if replacing tiles all the time is reusable. The reuse of the solid boosters was an after thought but their refurbishment is so labor intensive that no money is saved. There was nothing that could be done about the tank. When they were deciding to build the Shuttle Nixon was given given two choices an expensive one with a fly back first stage that was to be flown back to land on a runway for reuse and a cheaper one that he chose ie. the present Shuttle. If at the time Nasa had had the foresight to design an in line shuttle system with an extra second stage that could have been morphed into the more expensive version we would still be using it.
No we have to bring costs down first that is the only way we are going to get back to the Moon or Mars or Europa.
Comment by Gary Warburton — May 21, 2010 @ 8:20 pm
Thanks mostly to poor presidential leadership, NASA has spent the last 38 years trying to be socially relevant instead of pioneering the New Frontier. And even President Bush underfunded the Constellation program and then allowed it to disintegrate from a Moon base program into an Apollo redux program.
I conducted a poll last year on the rather liberal blog site, the Daily Kos:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/8/27/773450/-Colonizing-the-Moon
And I asked the question, “Could lunar colonization be a social and economic benefit to humanity?”
Out of 92 responses, 59% said yes. 23% said no. And 16% said maybe. So in that little poll, 75% of people thought that lunar colonization might be socially and economically beneficial to humanity.
I’m not so sure if the politicians want us to colonize the solar system, but I do think the people are ready. NASA just needs to make the obvious case for a simple, potentially self-sustaining, base at the lunar poles that could help reduce the cost of space travel. If Bolden is for space depots, how can he be against cheaply resupplying those depots with oxygen and hydrogen from the lunar poles?
But there’s no doubt in my mind that if a permanent lunar base is established, the space tourist and the entrepreneurs will follow. And the first nation to establish that base will reap most of the economic rewards.
Comment by Marcel F. Williams — May 21, 2010 @ 10:54 pm
I accept your proposition that space exploration can’t be wholly justified on the basis of “excitement”, and instead should be linked to value. But what, pray tell, is the value of a “return to the Moon to use its abundant resources to incrementally create a sustainable, permanent human presence in cislunar space”? I don’t need a sustainable, permanent human presence on the Moon, nor does anyone else. It offers me no value.
I believe that human space exploration is ultimately justified by developing the ability to leave the Earth. As a matter of insurance for the species. The Moon may or may not play a significant role in that. But if that’s why we need human exploration of the Moon, it isn’t going to influence the Dow Jones average, or whatever one uses to assess the health of the space economy.
That the solar system can provide “riches” that could sustain a real business case are far from established.
Comment by Trevor Ruhl — May 21, 2010 @ 11:53 pm
[...] May 22, 2010 by The Space Geek Leave a Comment I have today, among other things, a very appropriate and well-stated explanation, I think, for my own pro-lunar-return opinions. I feel like I didn’t really know why I felt the way I felt until I read this. I’m not sure yet if it’s the be-all-end-all of my opinions vis-a-vis a lunar return, but I certainly found myself nodding along. Here’s the link. [...]
Pingback by Now THIS is more like it! « The Space Geek — May 22, 2010 @ 2:32 am
Coastal Ron,
But NASA has a limited budget, so the President has decided, in a ripoff of STNG “To boldly go where no one has gone before”.
In contrast to Augustine, the existing budget is adequate to implement the VSE. But such program changes were not seriously examined or considered. As far as “boldly going” is concerned, learning to live off the land on another world is certainly bold and creates capability for the future. One-off stunts to distant destinations that leave no legacy capability or infrastructure are not.
We have not learned how to live outside the confines of the Earth-Moon system, and that is where the President wants to focus NASA’s limited resources.
Wrong. We are doing “missions” to other destinations — there is no “living there” involved.
The Moon is waiting, as it has for millions of years, and a couple more years won’t make a big difference.
Congratulations on coming up with the lamest excuse yet for the “new path.” Of course you realize that this facile formulation applies to all the other destinations (NEOs, martian moons) of Flexible Path, right? But while we’re all waiting, NASA can still find ways to throw away $ 20 billion per year. Indefinitely.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 22, 2010 @ 4:29 am
Gary,
I think the plan is to find ways to build cheaper rockets hence inviting commercial space
Yes, I hear this all the time from supporters of the new direction, but have yet to get a credible explanation from them of how this will come about under the new path.
How would it be if like Apollo, the even more expensive Constellation was just getting to do some interesting things on the Moon when the bean counters started hollering it`s too expensive and funds were cut off?
I’ll repeat yet again that the spending assumption of the Vision was that NASA funding would grow only with inflation. It was up to the agency to craft an architecture that fit under that budget envelope. In contrast to what eveyone seems to think, that IS possible and there are several ways to approach lunar return under such constraints. But it was much easier bureaucratically to simply abandon the VSE without giving any serious thought to how you might do it differently and come up with this Potemkin program in its place.
No we have to bring costs down first that is the only way we are going to get back to the Moon or Mars or Europa.
No sane person is against this — the debate is over how such cost savings are accomplished.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 22, 2010 @ 4:37 am
Trevor,
But what, pray tell, is the value of a “return to the Moon to use its abundant resources to incrementally create a sustainable, permanent human presence in cislunar space”?
I’ve been making this case for the last 2 years on this blog. In brief, by creating a system that can routinely access the lunar surface (including refueling and propellant export), we also get the capability to routinely access all of cislunar space, where 95% of all our space satellite assets reside. This means that we can service, maintain, extend and build new orbital systems of greater capability and power. It also allows us to protect fragile space assets vital to our national security.
A detailed exposition of this argument can be found here:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1376
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 22, 2010 @ 4:43 am
No, I’m sorry Paul. Creating that “system” does not give us the capability to routinely access all of cislunar space. In some respects, it may make it a little easier. But it certainly doesn’t give us that capability. In fact, what such routine access largely depends on is driving costs down for access from the surface of the Earth to LEO and GEO, where your 95% live. Your system doesn’t help much with that.
We’re still learning what we want to do with regard to servicing and maintaining orbital systems. We don’t know if what we want to do can be done entirely robotically, for which access to GEO or HEO is, in fact, routine. Of the 95% of our space satellite assets you refer to that are in cis-lunar space, the vast majority are defense and commercial surveillance and communication satellites. Neither the defense department nor commercial enterprises have shown a lot of enthusiasm for the capability you say lunar development would “enable”. That may change, but the market isn’t driving your idea. The “system” you’re proposing is to do things more easily that we don’t really want to do right now. That’s a false economy.
You’ve said yourself that we simply do not know how difficult it is to develop this lunar system, or what practical problems might arise. I’d strongly endorse investments to try to understand those things, but that’s a big step away from plans for creating a “system”.
I know you’ve been making this case for the last two years in this blog. I’m just saying that I don’t believe it.
Comment by Trevor Ruhl — May 22, 2010 @ 10:20 am
I’m just saying that I don’t believe it.
Fine with me.
People can find fault with just about any long term plan or strategic direction. My contention is that attempting to create a cislunar space faring infrastructure using the resources of the Moon is at least worth trying, especially as we are going to be spending an enormous amount of money on space anyway that could be used to create such a system. Your belief that the “new direction” in the proposed budget will create such capabilties is touching, but completely contraindicated by the historical record of NASA — no money “invested” in technology development has ever resulted in a single piece of flight hardware.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 22, 2010 @ 2:43 pm
Go, Paul, go!
Comment by Itokawa — May 22, 2010 @ 3:11 pm
If NASA and USA Govt wants to focus a New Horizon.
I think they are gently telling us…
If we want to go to the moon,
the privates/citizens/corporations would have to do it.
The pioneers have paved the way,
now its time for the settlers to come and look for the gold.
Comment by Chester — May 22, 2010 @ 3:50 pm
“…learning to live off the land on another world is certainly bold and creates capability for the future. One-off stunts to distant destinations that leave no legacy capability or infrastructure are not.”.
Apollo could be classified as a stunt under your definition, since we didn’t learn to live off the land. The goal of Apollo was for “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”. The goal of going to an NEO or the moons of Mars would be the same, and along the way you create the knowledge and technology that let’s others follow behind.
This gets back to what the role of government is in space. For the U.S. government, I see exploration as one of the engines of our commercial sector, inspiring the knowledge and technology needed to sustain the exploration mission. The government itself is not the creator of that knowledge and technology, but the financier. Once created, commercial companies can use that knowledge and technology to create new products and markets, and eventually create industries that sustain themselves without major government support. Commercial companies are the exploiters, and that’s what is really going to drive the demand for returning to the Moon, not the need for a bunch of scientists to walk around chipping rocks (nothing against them doing that, but it’s not my first priority).
For the Moon, we did our initial exploration and pathfinding back with Apollo. Though we have had the ability to go back to the Moon, we have not had the market demand to do so. It’s kind of a chicken and egg situation, and I view having commercial access to LEO as the first of a number of steps that will push our commerce into space. Some people seem like they are ready to open up a McDonalds on the Moon, but how do you supply it, and who will be your customers? I see the next step as a hotel in LEO. After that, when people get bored with shooting up to the fringes of space, they’ll want to orbit the Moon. Finally, with people getting closer and closer to the Moon, enough demand will allow some enterprising company to start a lunar motel. With people on the Moon, the need for indigenous supplies will be driven by the normal supply and demand market forces.
I agree with what Chester said – “The pioneers have paved the way, now its time for the settlers to come and look for the gold.”. History has shown us the way.
Comment by Coastal Ron — May 22, 2010 @ 6:15 pm
Apollo could be classified as a stunt under your definition, since we didn’t learn to live off the land. The goal of Apollo was for “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”. The goal of going to an NEO or the moons of Mars would be the same, and along the way you create the knowledge and technology that let’s others follow behind.
Apollo WAS a stunt. The difference between now and then was that Apollo had a driving political imperative (i.e., beat the Russians to the Moon), one supported by a significant majority in Congress and the Executive.
We are not in such a situation now. The current space program is a low level-of-effort operation (0.5% of the budget or less) that does not command the political momentum or support that Apollo did. So PR stunt missions are not appropriate activities for NASA.
My point is that we will spend a certain amount of money on government space and thus, what we buy should have some long-term value. Repeating Apollo – either on the Moon, on a NEO, or Phobos – doesn’t. Building a lunar outpost to harvest resources and create a permanent space faring infrastructure does have it.
Commercial companies are the exploiters, and that’s what is really going to drive the demand for returning to the Moon, not the need for a bunch of scientists to walk around chipping rocks (nothing against them doing that, but it’s not my first priority).
Nor mine. And I have never written anything in this blog to suggest otherwise.
I view having commercial access to LEO as the first of a number of steps that will push our commerce into space.
We already have this. A thriving commercial launch and satellite business already exists. What you mean is that you want cheap commercial access to space. But cheap is a relative term – how low must orbital costs go before you declare them to be “cheap?” And what government program ever gave us anything cheap?
History has shown us the way
I agree with that. But you have to be able to read the right lesson for history to be a useful guide. The history of NASA shows that they do well with specific goals and destinations. And that they do poorly without them. The “new path” is spending without direction or purpose. We’ll still spend $100 billion over the next decade – we just won’t get anything from it.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 22, 2010 @ 7:29 pm
Manned space flight will never be cheap as long as the demand for manned space flights is extremely low. NASA only had 5 manned spaceflights last year. That’s really not enough demand to lower cost. But there’s no logical reason why rocket engines should cost tens of millions of dollars each. But they do because the demand for such engines is extremely low.
Space tourism, IMO, is the key to dramatically increasing demand. Polls show that 7% of those wealthy enough to do so would fly into space if they had the chance. That’s nearly 7000 people world wide. But there are billions of people around the world who would also like a chance to fly into space if there was some sort of space lotto system that would give them a chance to travel into space too. And most folks that I’ve polled prefer the Moon as their primary tourist destination.
I applaud the President for advocating giving the emerging manned spaceflight companies around $1.2 billion a year to develop their manned vehicles for accessing LEO. But, again, my concern is what the President is not doing with the other $18 to $19 billion a year.
Comment by Marcel F. Williams — May 22, 2010 @ 7:36 pm
Both you Paul, and Marcel, have some interesting topics that I add some comments to:
Paul said “Apollo WAS a stunt. The difference between now and then was that Apollo had a driving political imperative…”. I’ll agree that it was political reasons that lead us to the Moon, but the knowledge and technology that was created to do that persists, and now going back to the Moon is less of a challenge.
Living off the land is a goal, but it’s not something that we can do today, nor in ten years. We can start the effort, but I think we have lots of research, technology and hardware that we will have to evolve before we can say we’re living off the land. I see the Constellation program as an example of a “goal too far”, in that everything took place either on Earth, or the surface of the Moon. Because of that, there was no infrastructure that was needed or used in between, and so the next “program” would have little to build upon. ISRU would not be needed at that point.
“We already have … A thriving commercial launch and satellite business already exists. What you mean is that you want cheap commercial access to space. But cheap is a relative term – how low must orbital costs go before you declare them to be “cheap?” And what government program ever gave us anything cheap?”. I should have been more explicit. I meant that we need commercial HUMAN access to space, which we don’t have. The only way someone can buy access to space on the commercial market is through a former communist country (Russian w/Soyuz), which has to be the ultimate irony.
Comments from Marcel:
“Manned space flight will never be cheap as long as the demand for manned space flights is extremely low. “. I think it’s both supply and demand. If you look at the cost/lb of cargo from the Shuttle till Falcon 9 Heavy, you will see a halving of the price from generation to generation. Shuttle was about $17k/lb, Atlas/Delta Heavies are about $6k/lb, and Falcon 9 Heavy should be below $3k/lb. I don’t know how much lower it can go, but actual $$/seat will decline too.
“Space tourism, IMO, is the key to dramatically increasing demand.” I think space tourism will have it’s place, but I think government sponsored/funded exploration will be the initial big money that will support the space industry, and cause it to develop the infrastructure that let’s us move onto the Moon & beyond.
Back to Paul:
The decision to do ISRU on the Moon should come from economic forces, i.e. the cost of delivering our food, water and fuel is more expensive that creating and running ISRU. At this time, there is no need, even if Constellation were to continue. Once we create the ability for any company to routinely access LEO, then entrepreneurs will step forward to satisfy market needs, either through ISRU or cheaper transportation. This is how capitalism works.
I want to take a vacation on the Moon as much as the next person, but I won’t have a chance to afford it until a robust and competitive infrastructure is established. When I said “History has shown us the way”, I was not talking about NASA, but about the expansion of human civilization. The fastest expansions happened when there were strong economic incentives, like the gold rushes in Alaska and California. These were dependent on supply lines that could support the expansions, and entrepreneurs stepped forward to create the new products and technologies that the markets wanted. Expansion into space will be no different.
Comment by Coastal Ron — May 22, 2010 @ 11:21 pm
Low Earth Orbit: WE’VE BEEN THERE ALREADY!!! Why is going there, OVER & OVER & OVER AGAIN, the only thing that we can keep right on doing, with no complaints from anybody?? BILLIONS of federal budget dollars go to the ISS yearly!! Astronauts have done NOTHING ELSE but LEO station stays for the past 40 years!! Only a mere 4 years were EVER devoted to trekking cislunar space—1968-1972. How the Anti-Moon space lobby can keep right on shooting down renewed Lunar exploration in favor of one-time-only circus stunts to asteroids and such, is gigantically stupid!! THE WEST WAS NOT WON, BY GOING TO A CERTAIN SPOT ONCE, AND NEVER EVER GOING BACK THERE AGAIN!! Pioneering a frontier ALWAYS has required a major return trip! When Captain James Cook’s ocean-traversing crew eventually got back to England, the future solution was NOT to never send men back to Hawaii & Australia ever again;—NO—in order to DEVELOP previously surveyed lands, one’s nation has to plan out return missions. The Moon needs to be further explored, and rediscovered by a new generation, whose overall plan will take the endeavor to FAR beyond merely reaching the destination again. (Hell, Project Apollo even went far beyond merely getting to the surface of the Moon! Remember the J-expeditions?! People really forget just how expanded & extended the Apollo expeditions were becoming, when the Nixon administration decided to pull the plug.) THIS TIME, WE GO TO THE MOON TO STAY!! Project Constellation, becomes the Operation Highjump of OUR time! Admiral Dufek, sir: we are ready to fly to the South Pole!
Comment by Chris Castro — May 23, 2010 @ 1:29 am
Living off the land is a goal, but it’s not something that we can do today, nor in ten years. We can start the effort, but I think we have lots of research, technology and hardware that we will have to evolve before we can say we’re living off the land
If you had ever read a single thing I have ever written about this, you would know that this is exactly my position (except that we can start doing it now, not in 10 years.) Learning how to live off the land in space is the goal of the VSE. And that goal was to “start that effort” — not by using viewgraph development as the new path proposes, but by actually doing ISRU on the Moon.
But you have to be on the Moon to use its resources.
When I said “History has shown us the way”, I was not talking about NASA
I was. And my point is that the new direction takes us away from, not towards, what you claim to want.
And with that, I believe that our discussion is concluded.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 23, 2010 @ 4:39 am
Right on, Mr. Spudis!! Project Constellation gets us STARTED with utilizing the Moon, via further scientific surveying, much like oil prospecting. Flexible Path totally AVOIDS any such needed resource assessment; even avoiding having to ever develop landing craft for strong gravity field planets. FP has us doing nothing but circus spectacle jaunts to asteroids, which will teach is nothing about dealing with Mars & Moon-sized bodies for manned & large-cargo landings, since you can’t actually “land” on a negligible gravity field. Furthermore, FP has zero, zilch, nada goals for otherworld bases. FP delivers nothing but the cheap, cheap euphoric thrill of:”Look at us, we’re the first to ever get here!” The sooner Flexible Path is defeated in Congress, and Project Constellation is re-instated: With adequate yearly funding; the sooner U.S. astronauts will accomplish majestic things again.
Comment by Chris Castro — May 23, 2010 @ 4:50 pm
@ Coastal Ron
Human beings have been melting rocks and ice on Earth for thousands of years. So I don’t think we’ll have too much difficulty melting rocks and ice on the Moon for air, water, and rocket fuel.
A single government just don’t have enough manned space flights to drive cost down. Originally, in order to reduce cost per flight, the space shuttle was supposed to fly up to 60 times per year. But the most flights ever flown by the shuttle was 8.
Still, in theory, the shuttle could carry people into orbit a lot cheaper than any theoretical vehicle by Space X vehicle that could carry people for $20 million each.
The Shuttle cost $450 million per flight and can carry up to 11 people into orbit. That would be about $41 million per passenger. However, there were many proposals to use the cargo cabin to also carry passengers. Since you could land 20 tonnes of payload in the cargo bay, at least 40 passengers could have been carried in the cargo bay. So the shuttle could carry 51 passengers into orbit for less than $9 million per passenger. And if the shuttle was flying 60 flights per year, those passenger cost would have been a lot cheaper than that.
Comment by Marcel F. Williams — May 23, 2010 @ 11:21 pm
Hi Marcel,
Advocates of the new direction claim that lower launch costs are the sine qua non of true space commerce. Yet we already know why launch costs are high (the marching army of highly trained and paid people). We also know in principle how to lower them (either automate launch vehicle assembly and preparation or use the economies of scale provided by large payloads in one vehicle [heavy-lift]). This chicken-or-egg issue has been with us for the last 50 years and is really not a technical issue at all — it is a fiscal and managerial issue.
By abandoning lunar return, we lose the one chance we have to lay the groundwork for a totally different approach — using off-planet resources. Many in the space industry simply cannot envision this or are deathly afraid of it. Hence, we have an agency and aerospace industry fixated on access to LEO when the real frontier in knowledge and technology is beyond it.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 24, 2010 @ 4:59 am
Dr. Spudis,
I just think its sad that NASA has suddenly become part of the rather silly commercial vs. government philosophical war in America. And the irony in this, of course, is the fact that the anti-manned spaceflight wing of the Democratic Party (you know, the folks who argue that we should be spending more money on the poor than in space) has suddenly seized this issue as their own.
Thanks to your research and the research of your colleagues, the lunar poles are starting to look like some extremely valuable real estate. And right now, we’re probably the only nation in the world in a good position to really take advantage of the lunar resources there in order to lower the cost of space travel and for pure economic gain.
But if we once again pass up the opportunity of establishing a permanent presence on the Moon, I think future historians may well look at this missed opportunity as one of the significant reasons for the great decline of America and the American economy.
Comment by Marcel F. Williams — May 24, 2010 @ 1:48 pm
Marcel,
I just think its sad that NASA has suddenly become part of the rather silly commercial vs. government philosophical war in America.
I think this is all quite deliberate. Divide the human spaceflight community against itself and let them destroy each other. Combine this with NASA’s known propensity to do nothing, at great expense, high bureaucratic overhead and maximum time, and you have the perfect formula to destroy human spaceflight for a generation.
But if we once again pass up the opportunity of establishing a permanent presence on the Moon, I think future historians may well look at this missed opportunity as one of the significant reasons for the great decline of America and the American economy.
When Rome fell, the existing generation could not accomplish the engineering feats that their fathers and grandfathers did. Public facilities first fell into disrepair, then ruin. The stones and columns making up aqueducts, buildings and roads became sources for building materials for hovels and shacks.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 24, 2010 @ 4:00 pm
It seems that there are a number of readers to this blog that (i think) don’t fully connect the message Paul is saying to their own concept of the Space picture. The message to me is that use of local resources (at the Moon or wherever off-planet) is the best way to lower cost for human activity in space (or on a planetary body). That is to say, NASA may tinker with technology, and may make some inroads in incrementally improving technology, and commercial ventures like SpaceX may moderately lower (my opinion is at best it may lower very moderately) launch costs, but the rocket equation is still the rocket equation. (Falcon 9 has not yet addressed the hidden cost of recycling hardware in the space economy. See launch prices for them rise after they do realize this.) Unless one looks at nuclear launchers, or sub-orbital tethered pickoffs, or space elevators, or mass drivers, the cost of launching a kg into orbit is still too high to stimulate more demand. Much as we space enthusiasts would have it otherwise, commercial ventures in space with humans cannot yet clear the initial cost hurtles that are HUGE and have a very long term ROI. Historical evidence: Study the rationale for Delta 4 and Atlas 5 as commercial cargo efforts. Were they both successful? (I would offer: NOT) Study the commercial human space efforts in the last 50 years since Apollo (not too many, correct?). Separating the emotion from the logic (which should be influenced by historical fact), commercial crew into space will not fare well, given current launch technology or even near-term extrapolation of technology. The high human launch cost may have a component due to NASA culture and bureaucracy, but it is not the dominant term in the cost equation. What Paul and others advocate is a shift in thinking that says, “instead of reducing the cost/kg launched, reduce the number of kgs launched in the infrastructure needed to support human endeavors in space by using ISRU.” Will this approach work? Don’t know that, but it certainly won’t work if we don’t try and at least investigate what it would take, and how to do it (ISRU).
Comment by Tony L — May 24, 2010 @ 6:42 pm
Marcel F. Williams said :
“Human beings have been melting rocks and ice on Earth for thousands of years. So I don’t think we’ll have too much difficulty melting rocks and ice on the Moon for air, water, and rocket fuel.” Except we’ve been doing it in 1G gravity with an atmosphere that already has copious amounts of oxygen. Let’s stick you on the Moon and see how quickly you can start a fire and refine metals…
I don’t know if you keep up with operations on the ISS, but we have problems just operating a water purification unit – if we can’t make good water from urine, I don’t see how you think it will be easy to make it from extremely cold slush on an airless body with 1/6 gravity.
Right off hand I can think of thermal conductivity, gravity separation and surface tension issues that we’ll have to tinker with, and it may take a couple of iterations of equipment before we start generating small quantities of anything. Not to mention a whole lot of energy that this will take, either with solar panels or sunlight reflectors. All of this takes lots of supply runs, and the only way we can do that (as is my theme) is by having a robust commercial space industry operating in LEO. We can’t have ISRU without a logistics system in place, and, paradoxically, ISRU is not as important if we do have one.
Don’t get me wrong, I think ISRU will happen at some point, but there is no economic need for it to be a #1 or #2 priority when we do return. With the robotic precursor missions that NASA is planning, we’ll start finding out what there is that we will want to mine, and that will help tell us what will be needed to exploit it.
Comment by Coastal Ron — May 24, 2010 @ 10:24 pm
@Coastal Ron
We’ve developed all kinds of ways to melt regolith that do not require oxygen. Microwaves have been used to melt rocks, plasma arc furnaces have been used to melt rocks, and concentrated sunlight can used to melt rocks. There are already NASA competitions amongst private institutions to see which machines can melt rocks and extract oxygen most efficiently.
Extracting water from the poles might be as easy as simply microwaving the surface with a magnetron and collecting the water vapor. Solar or nuclear energy could be used to supply power for such machines.
It would probably cost between $50,000 to $100,000 per kilogram to import water or oxygen from Earth to the lunar surface. So there’s no doubt in my mind the a polar lunar base could manufacture oxygen and water substantially cheaper than that.
All machines malfunction– even your automobile. That’s why you always build more than one machine so that you can continue to operate your facility while you fix the other one.
Comment by Marcel F. Williams — May 25, 2010 @ 12:08 pm
[...] (who, by the way, was on the aforementioned Commission, along with Neil deGrasse Tyson) said in his article for the National Air and Space Museum’s [...]
Pingback by Similiarities Abound « The Space Geek — May 25, 2010 @ 9:09 pm
Thanks for a great article. It kind of helps me to understand why it was that, back in the days when I was active on Usenet, I would find myself and Mars advocates talking past each other when comparing things like lunar resource use or SPS vs. manned expeditions to Mars. All that High Frontier stuff I was talking about was boring, so it was never going to happen. The logic they were using was: exciting goal > excited public > greater public support > more funding. But I think this article very convincingly deflates that argument by demonstrating that not only is there no reason to expect it to be that way in the future, it’s not even the way it was during Apollo.
Comment by Mike Combs — May 26, 2010 @ 8:50 am
Mike,
Thanks for your comments. This notion that public excitement drives the space program is very deeply ingrained; nearly all space advocates and most of the agency buys into it. The sooner we all recognize how things really are, the better off we’ll all be.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 26, 2010 @ 10:19 am
It would be lovely to go back to the beginning of the VSE and do it right. Unfortunately it was not embraced by NASA or Griffin. I hope that after a round of new technology development we can get back on that path.
I will believe NASA is serious about building a space economy when they hold the Interagency Space Solar Power Conference which was the most popular on the NASA Open Government Ideascale and the most popular idea for the Department of Energy and Office of Science and Technology Policy as well as the Government as a whole.
See the Top Ideas for the Government on OpenGov Tracker http://opengovtracker.com/
Open Government is another idea NASA doesn’t care about since it took them 6 weeks to open comments on their open government plan.
Comment by Karen Cramer Shea — May 26, 2010 @ 11:23 am
It was nice to see Neil Armstrong today, once again, speaking in favor of returning to the Moon. His presence seemed to have a powerful and even emotional effect on the Federal legislators that were at the hearing.
Marcel F. Williams
Comment by Marcel F. Williams — May 26, 2010 @ 5:06 pm
The problem with the VSE is that putting some people on the Moon won’t get us much closer to getting value out of space. It will cost a bundle, though. The estimate just out is over $200 billion up to the first flight.
There are things to do in space with a lot of potential value:
1. Tourism. The first sub-orbital flights may start in a bout a year. One vehicle is in flight test and another couple are in development. A lot of people would like to go to space (for example, me) and some are willing to pay a lot to go. The private orbital vehicles to be developed under the new space policy are the perfect next step.
2. Energy. Recent developments in solar power satellites may make them economically competitive with nuclear even with current launch vehicles. If SSP (space solar power) can get the price down this could be huge benefit economically, geopolitically and environmentally.
3. Zero-g manufacturing. We have a space station to do the research to develop 0g products. Now might be a good time to use it. Under the VSE out $100 billion space station was going to be dumped in the ocean in 2005.
Note that none of these need the moon, or even want it for a long time (SSP eventually might use lunar materials). Furthermore, if what you want is materials, the near earth asteroids have much more valuable materials (lots of water, carbon and metals) in more easily accessible form and many NEOs are closer than the moon when distance is measured in energy to get there.
Comment by AL Globus — May 26, 2010 @ 8:07 pm
Paul, you need to sit down with the team of exobiologists working on the data returned from the Phoenix lander and listen to them speak of what they’re working on. They firmly believe that Mars has life, have hard science to back it up — the specifics of which are beyond fantastic and could easily go down as the most significant discovery of the 2st century. This, and the failure of the Constellation program, drive Obama’s rationale.
If you’re truly interested in lunar science, it’s time to get behind a robust, robotic effort. Bolden wants a test bed for telepresence robots, as they will need them on Mars. Well, the Moon is the perfect place, and you’ll get much more science from a well designed robotic exploration effort than you ever would have from Constellation’s two trips a year.
Comment by Jim Gagnon — May 27, 2010 @ 12:25 am
“People can find fault with just about any long term plan or strategic direction”… “The history of NASA shows that they do well with specific goals and destinations”
So, make short term goals. Something that can be done in the very short term is to turn all the NASA centers into federally-funded research and development centers like JPL.
Next, extend the TRL scale past 9, with TRL-10 being the publication of specifications and enactment of procedures and standards and regulations regarding the new technology’s use, and TRL-11 being NASA’s administration of the use of the new technologies by commerce and industry (concentrating on the second A in NASA).
As for the short term goals, here are about two dozen enabling technologies, some of which could be finished in two or three Congressional terms and some of which will have to wait a bit, which would apply logistical and economic leverage. Any one of them makes space operations easier and cheaper. Even having just a working propellant depot alone will apply enormous leverage – think of it as taking the next logical step in the idea of staging.
NASA can apply leverage to its R&D dollars to these technology development programs, by expanding the Centennial Challenges program and possibly offering further contracts to Challenge winners. Some of this is already happening with the astronaut glove challenge (and apparently the lunar lander challenge although no official word is out yet).
In other words, the idea is to turn NASA into a catalyst for future space endeavors, rather than having to shoulder the lion’s share of the work indefinitely.
Comment by Ed Minchau — May 27, 2010 @ 1:52 am
AL,
The problem with the VSE is that putting some people on the Moon won’t get us much closer to getting value out of space. It will cost a bundle, though. The estimate just out is over $200 billion up to the first flight.
First, that’s not all we would get from doing the VSE correctly — the purpose of lunar return is not “to put a few people on the Moon” but to open up the space frontier through the use of off-planet resources. Creating sustainable human presence requires that we learn these skills eventually, so why not now?
Second, we’re going to spend this $200 billion anyway over the next 10 years! With the VSE, we’ll make progress on sustainable presence. With the administration’s plan, we’ll get nothing.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 27, 2010 @ 4:42 am
Jim Gagnon,
The space program serves multiple national objectives, including economic and security interests, not just scientific ones. What we find on Mars with robotic missions is interesting, but it is not relevant to what we do in cislunar space for the next 20 years.
I am all in favor of robotic missions, having worked with these spacecraft and their data for over 20 years, so I have some familiarity with what they are capable of and equally important, what they cannot do. There are a series of tasks for robotic missions on the Moon that lay the groundwork for the eventual arrival by people. The current (single) mission in the new “plan” might be useful, but I’ll reserve final judgment on that until I see what it is they propose to do and why.
You again make the mistake that the choice is between the existing program of record (Constellation) and the new direction. My contention is that neither is acceptable but that while Constellation is potentially fixable, the “new path” is configured by its very nature to achieve nothing.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 27, 2010 @ 4:51 am
Ed Minchau,
In other words, the idea is to turn NASA into a catalyst for future space endeavors, rather than having to shoulder the lion’s share of the work indefinitely.
I fully understand that this is the belief of New Space advocates who support the administraiton’s new path. I simply do not agree with them that such will result from it.
In my opinion, technology development without goals or destinations results in the creation of nothing, not new missions or space faring capabilities. We will still spend ~ $ 20 billion per year on NASA for the next decade or so, but have nothing to show for it except piles of paper studies and some really pretty artwork, showing human missions beyond LEO “sometime” in the future.
I base this opinion on the last 30 years of agency history.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 27, 2010 @ 4:57 am
Paul,
The Shuttle led us into a quagmire which resulted in the failure of constellation. We have been stuck for decades with no real technological development. The new path of technological development first, is easily fixable, the goal of Mars is obviously not important to Obama, but the technologies his plan develops will work equally well with the Moon.
Sure this will delay a return to the Moon by a few years (maybe since the constellation program was making little progress), but when we do get there we will have a much broader of technologies which will help us develop the Moon. None of these technologies would be available if we stayed on the Constellation path.
The key is to make sure we get hardware experiments not just paper. That the technologies are not Mars specific at the expense of the Moon. That we keep the development of heavy lift, long term life support, and insitu resource utilization in the mix.
Once we have a new generation of launch vehicles which are cheaper and more reliable and a portfolio of new technologies going back to the Moon will be easier and cheaper.
The Moon is the key to developing space. Orbital fuel depots make little sense to do with terrestrial fuel. They make a lot of sense with lunar fuel. There are currently Helium-3 shortages on Earth and Helium-3 fusion could be an important long term power source. Space solar power is our best hope for long term clean energy and the Moon is the ideal place to manufacture solar power satellite parts in the long term.
Mars on the other hand will never be more than a subsistence colony. It is somewhat scientifically interesting but the will never lead to development. Its main appeal is in boyhood fantasies. We need a mission to Mars to get it out of their systems.
The Moon is will be the heart of space commercial activity in a hundred years. To do that we need new technology and to be more business like about space, Obama is taking us down that path. He is not perfect. He picked the wrong destination and his administration is ignoring space solar power. The destination is not important to Obama’s plan. A few years of heading for Mars and it will start being obvious why we need to go back to the Moon and stay.
Karen
Comment by Karen Cramer Shea — May 27, 2010 @ 10:37 am
Karen,
To do that we need new technology and to be more business like about space, Obama is taking us down that path.
I do not agree. I think that we are headed down a very different path. The new plan is all about keeping the agency engaged in bureaucratic “busy work,” industry happy with new government contracts, the scientists bought off with a few robotic missions, and the public misled by the idea that we’re going to some (distant) somewhere in the (all-too-distant) future. In short, it is only the facade and simulacra of a space program, all smoke and mirrors and no substance.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 27, 2010 @ 11:12 am
Paul,
This path will shed us of a lot of bureaucracy.
This path will lay down a foundation for real space development.
Comment by Karen Cramer Shea — May 27, 2010 @ 11:26 am
Karen,
This path will shed us of a lot of bureaucracy. This path will lay down a foundation for real space development.
What is your basis for these beliefs?
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 27, 2010 @ 11:28 am
Paul,
How many NASA contractors are about to be laid off?
Obama is getting rid of layers and layers of bureaucracy associated with launch by contracting launch out to the private sector. The private sector is trying many new launch technologies.
Obama is also investing in new heavy lift launch technology, Long term life support, in situ resource development, all these things are needed for lunar development.
There is a set amount of money the public is willing to spend on space. Technology development costs money. The shuttle architecture is expensive to use and has blocked us from investing in new technology development for decades.
Taking a break from pushing outward for a few years will allow us to develop the technology to go outward for less cost. It is hard to be patient especially as all of who remember Apollo are getting old. But Obama is leading us down the quickest path to actual lunar development.
Why don’t you believe that the Obama plan will lead to new technologies? Do you not trust NASA to do what Obama is calling for? Do you not trust the private sector?
Comment by Karen Cramer Shea — May 27, 2010 @ 12:02 pm
Taking a break from pushing outward for a few years will allow us to develop the technology to go outward for less cost.
That’s a statement of faith, not fact. By “developing technology” in the absence of an identified specific need or envisioned mission, we end up developing many things that will never find application in actual spaceflight. Moreover, by eliminating real flight programs that exist now for the promise of flight programs that may never happen, we are dispersing personnel and destroying industrial capability that cannot be re-assembled later except at great cost and expense, if at all.
Why don’t you believe that the Obama plan will lead to new technologies?
Because I’ve been to this movie before — Dan Goldin went down this path in the 1990′s with numerous programs designed to develop “routine access to orbit” vehicles. Billions were spent, and a thousand viewgraphs bloomed, but no flight hardware ever resulted from it.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 27, 2010 @ 12:10 pm
Paul,
There is a set of technologies which need to be developed to industrialize space regardless of destination. Obama’s plan is to develop just that set of technologies.
The standing army is the problem not the solution. Launch costs are high because we have a standing army to pay for. The only way to reduce launch costs is to figure out how to launch stuff into space without a standing army.
Under Goldin the shuttle was still flying. Cheap access to space was not in the best interest of the standing army so they sabotaged the effort at every turn. Obama is getting rid of the standing army, putting all the incentives for NASA and the US aerospace industry to make COTS work.
Yes, it is an act of faith to trust that by letting go of the shuttle technology we will be able to develop a new generation of launch vehicles. But the cost and safety issues of the shuttle architecture will surely delay real space development as long as we use them.
We are definitely taking a leap of faith but it is a leap we have to take if we are going to grab the brass ring of lunar development. We will never reach the ring if we are weighed down by the requirements of the outdated standing army.
I trust that Elon Musk can deliver lower cost access to space. I have faith in his abilities because of his track record. I have faith that Boeing and Lockheed Martin will figure out how to make money delivering what ever the President wants.
Comment by Karen Cramer Shea — May 27, 2010 @ 12:37 pm
If that’s what you choose to believe, fine with me.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 27, 2010 @ 12:41 pm
Moon Conn-young, Arirang News.
MAY 27, 2010
Japan Draws Plans to Build Research Center on the Moon
Japan, also known as the ‘Land of the Rising Sun’ is looking to have its hands on the moon.
According to local media reports, the Japanese government unveiled its plan to send a robot to the moon in five years time and build an unmanned base there in the next ten years.
The island nation is expected to invest 2-hundred billion yen, or 2.2 billion US dollars in the space mission.
The plan, to be carried out in two phases would send a mobile robot to the moon by 2015, which would send video images of the surface and analyze the moon’s inner structure with a seismometer.
The following five years will be devoted to setting up a self-powering base, from which the robot would explore the surface within a 1-hundred-kilometer radius.
Samples of moon rocks will be sent back to Earth for further study.
Japan’s recent move towards the new space mission is seen as an attempt to secure its position on the moon before China and India, who are also rapidly moving forward with their own lunar research over future usage of Earth’s only natural satellite for peaceful purposes.
Comment by Marcel F. Williams — May 27, 2010 @ 4:17 pm
“technology development without goals”
Paul, what I’m saying is that technology development itself should be the goal, just as it is in the first A in NASA.
Comment by Ed Minchau — May 27, 2010 @ 4:17 pm
@AL Globus
1. The Moon could be one of the primary destinations for the emerging space tourism industry. In fact, in the polls that I’ve taken, the Moon is the preferred destination for space tourist.
2. Supplying reusable tugs with oxygen and hydrogen from the Moon would reduce the cost of transporting satellites– including solar power satellites– to geosynchronous orbit.
3.Capturing small asteroids and transporting them to the Lagrange points with light sails only requires the free energy of the sun. Still, the average asteroid probably only contains about 2% hydrogen. So you might have to import 1000 tonnes of asteroid material per year to manufacture 20 tonnes of hydrogen. But you could probably export 20 tonnes of hydrogen to a Lagrange point from a polar lunar base every month using a reusable Altair vehicle.
Oxygen derived from asteroids, however, would probably have a clear advantage over oxygen from lunar resources unless mass drivers would utilized on the lunar surface.
Comment by Marcel F. Williams — May 27, 2010 @ 5:16 pm
@Karen
Trying to develop a commercial manned spaceflight industry based on government contracts is a road to nowhere. There’s simply not enough manned space missions commissioned by the Federal government to sustain more than one company.
Elon Musk needs to stop begging for tax payer dollars and start focusing on space tourism.
The Federal government should help develop a market for space tourism by starting a Space Lotto system so that average folks in the US and around the world can finally get a chance to travel into space aboard an American commercial launch vehicle. There’s no doubt in my mind that there are billions of people around the world who would be willing to spend a few meager dollars every year for a chance to travel into space and especially to the Moon.
Comment by Marcel F. Williams — May 27, 2010 @ 5:53 pm
Ed,
what I’m saying is that technology development itself should be the goal, just as it is in the first A in NASA.
I understand you. My response is that we get relevant technology development when the agency has clear goals and a destination, but we get irrelevant development in the absence of such goals. I am also saying that declaring that you are “going to Mars” sometime in the distant future is not a goal; it’s a motherhood statement.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 27, 2010 @ 5:57 pm
Paul, I’d like to ask a favour.
Would you consider writing a piece on “The Commercial Advantages of Utilizing Lunar Regolith for the Commercial Planetary and Near-Earth Market”? Obviously, when I mean “Commercial Planetary” I mean the Earth’s consumer market and obviously not an unpopulated planet anywhere else.
I realize that the cancellation of the VSE appears to be a rebuttal of common sense, but I believe that that’s an easily potential misconception.
As always, education is the key, so my genuine question that I’d like you (kindly) to address for everyone’s comprehensive benefit is, based on existing assets (Moon and ISS), within the framework of the above questioning article’s title, how does one:
a) Fully understand the Lunar resource’s commercial potential?
b) How does one exploit the presence of the ISS to develop this endeavor?
c) And combining both a) and b), what is the best way to process Lunar regolith on board the ISS for evaluation purposes?
I personally am a great believer in the ‘Pragmatic Approach’ and it’s on this basis that I pose these issues to you Paul.
With respect,
Marc.
Comment by Marcus — May 27, 2010 @ 6:37 pm
Marc,
The Commercial Advantages of Utilizing Lunar Regolith for the Commercial Planetary and Near-Earth Market
I have written on several occasions about the commercial potential of the Moon. My personal belief is that for the near term, it lies almost completely with harvesting and processing water, specifically for export and use as propellant in cislunar space. Regolith per se does not have much economic value, unless you can find a cheap way to hurl it off the Moon for use as building and shielding material in cislunar space.
Water mining on the Moon creates a logistics train that can supply a cislunar transportation system. Once we have that, we can not only routinely access all of cislunar space (where all of our satellite assets reside) but we will also have a system that can take us to the planets.
Dennis Wingo, Gordon Woodcock and I elaborate on these ideas here:
http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Opinion_Editorial/status_quo.pdf
In addition, I outline the strategic economic value of the Moon here:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1376
Finally, I refer you to my general web site, where I have many pieces relevant to your topic of interest:
http://www.spudislunarresources.com/index.htm
Many thanks for your comment and reading the blog!
Best,
Paul
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 28, 2010 @ 4:16 am
Somehow I missed reading your article ‘The New Space Race’ in SpaceRef.com. What a great piece of writing and insight!
Comment by Marcel F. Williams — May 28, 2010 @ 1:27 pm
Marcel,
Thank you sir! You’re very kind.
Comment by Paul D. Spudis — May 28, 2010 @ 1:49 pm
[...] don’t count, to me), and not–at least for now–for the sake of science. We need a space economy, something we can use to make lots of money. That’s the only way sustainable space [...]
Pingback by A Few Deficient Acts « The Space Geek — June 13, 2010 @ 7:13 pm
[...] agreed. I–and others–have expounded upon the benefits of a return to (and the exploitation of) the lunar surface, [...]
Pingback by The Debate Rages On… « The Space Geek — June 19, 2010 @ 10:00 pm
Another excellent dissection and analysis of the facts, Paul and ‘more power to your elbow’ as we say here in Britain. The rationale of maintained funding, drive and commitment in manned space travel would appear to be lost on the current administration. Unless, that is, they are playing a longer, more pragmatic game and working with the political ‘material at hand’, keeping Congress sweet, until the financial climate improves, before unleashing a bolder, faster, more-sure-footed plan for NASA, to the Moon and Mars after all – perhaps the Moon firmly targeted once more and timeline re-traced, all aided and fast-tracked by private involvement in manned space vehicles. If that’s their game plan then perhaps it will all work itself out.
But NASA cannot be switched on and off like a light switch, should a more familiar, traditional role in the driving seat of ‘manned space’ be desired to be restored. NASA is a diverse and complex organization, and careers cannot be placed on hold, until the powers that be, decide to place it back where it belongs at the forefront; proactive and driving ‘manned space’ forward. Their expertise may be on file, but as a cohesive whole, their true brilliance is a synergetic product of their accumulated wisdom and combined know-how, where ‘the whole is greater than the sum of the parts’. It took years to build. Once eroded through disuse and attrition, no amount of peering at the archives and ‘PDF’s is going to bring it back. When it’s gone, it’s gone.
With so much successful scientific and technological effort and accomplishment arising from previous funding and vision in the US space program, the buzzwords which I feel apply here, are ‘CONTINUITY’ and ‘MOMENTUM’ with respect to decades of diligence and national intent, where manned spaceflight is concerned. America is at risk of losing its place at the head of the ‘Space’ table, if it cannot renew, or revive and revitalize, it’s enthusiasm and vigour for manned space. The Outer Space Treaty leaves it open to all nations to explore Space peacefully, from the near firmament to beyond, and several countries sense their opportunity to depose America as natural leader among space-faring nations. I think this would be sad and unfortunate, historically-speaking, with such fantastic endeavour thus far (as was involved in Apollo and first steps on the Moon , the Shuttle, and the bulk of the work on the ISS) , and such far-sighted vision as was demonstrated ahead of these pinnacles of man’s accomplishments (“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…”). Maybe it is precisely such competition as existed way back then, in September ’62, which will generate the public mood and will to spur on the politicians on Capitol Hill, to reverse the current disinterest and blinkered vision seemingly to be found in high office and amidst the tired public. How about a bit of ‘Yes we can’ for the space effort.
But it takes more than mere mood and will power to galvanize a nation once more, upwards and outwards; it takes a public fascination, with who we are, what we’re about and what’s out there; and that sadly has been on the wane. In a world beset with Earthbound problems, Space may, for the time being, need to be re-sold to the wider public in a more commercially-minded, ‘bang for your buck’ kind of way. Well indeed, and the possible financial rewards of Man’s venturing into Space are potentially astronomical (pun intended). Think of the resources to be tapped into – effectively unending. A monetary renaissance.
Yet it was not commercial-mindedness which carried things forward in the sixties, but sheer national pride to beat the competition – that and an existing accumulated wonder at all things Space, in the mind of Joe Public. Well then, Joe Public needs to be reacquainted with that fascination, his or her sense of awe and wonder and release from the mundane trappings of everyday life – a fascination which has become suppressed or repressed, but I suspect has not been lost. It can be recaptured.
There are some things in Mankind’s repertoire, such as exploration of nature and one’s universe and expanding of one’s horizons, which cannot be reduced to the lowest denominator of cost, in worshipping at the altar of that other thing we created, money. We have always moved forward, onwards, outwards, from wherever we are to the next place. This has always been accompanied by reaching out to other civilizations, yet unmet, yet unknown. The latter may initially be achieved through unmanned space technology (who knows, even yet-to-develop quantum technologies probing into more than even regular, ‘routine’ space). But the former, by definition, is ourselves in bodily form, travelling beyond the here and now, exploring ‘geographically’ and scientifically, as we always have. Sooner or later, we will go to the stars. It is Man’s destiny.
Current enslavement to near-sighted budgetary restraint, albeit arising out of electoral prudence and political expedience, is misguided at best. In simpler terms, I had the new administration down for being ‘pro-science’ – perhaps, they found they simply couldn’t sell the idea of maintaining the Moon timetable as planned. However, “..been there…done that”?. If Apollo, which was itself cut short, is called having ‘been to’ and ‘done’ the Moon, I must be missing something profound. Surely, we haven’t even scratched the surface, figuratively and literally. In any case one cannot help but compare recent bail-out funds, made readily available at the drop of a hat, with the much smaller funding which would have been needed to keep America’s entire space program on track (with or without Constellation) and the brilliantly-performing STS shuttle system in limited flight operations, until a replacement was developed to replace it and a lunar and Mars programme solidified (all the while using the Station as planned and envisaged). So show me a scientific or technological barrier and we’ll strive to resolve it, and gain from that science in the process. But please spare me the ‘money’ argument. We do not talk dollars where national security is concerned, quite rightly, and nor should we, where national endeavour is at stake. National security is to safeguard ourselves as populations of countries, of course, but also to foster and safeguard who we are and what we stand for – progress and moving forward.
And as for the Moon, surely it would make a logical stepping stone to Mars. With its one-sixth Earth gravity and proximity to us (2/4 days flight time away based on Apollo speeds and it’s position between perigee and apogee), it would make a useful depot and staging post, or should one say stepping stone.
At an emotional level, leaving aside any attempt at cogent argument, I have ‘lived in space’, in my mind’s eye, since being a ‘wee nipper’. I fully believed that, on projection of what had been happening after Apollo, with the development of a re-usable space plane, the shuttle, and the intended Skylab follow-on, ISS, we would by now be on the Moon, quite comfortably. As a child, I particularly bought into the concept of permanent scientific bases (as depicted in the sci-fi series ‘Space 1999′, Moonbase Alpha) and it seemed unthinkable that by now, well into the 21st century, we as a species, would not even have re-visited our Moon, let alone not have established permanent bases – at least scientific ones. We are behind schedule, people.
Time for a bit of hero-worship. I confess that I bunked off school to come home and watch Columbia STS-1 on the Shuttle’s inaugural flight last century in April ’81. According to folklore (well, records of telemetry actually), the surgeon reported that Bob Crippen’s heart rate at lift-off was 130 and John Young’s heart rate ranged between 85 and 90 – now how cool is that? He probably got more flustered by his tax return than the maiden flight of the world’s first space plane.
Then there is the prospect of Mars – first the exciting Viking Landers, with controversy as to the micro-biological science findings in the top layers of soil. And then, of course Spirit and Opportunity. All wonderful, unmanned projects, but not diminishing our natural human quest to travel to other worlds in person – to set foot on them. As a space-minded Brit born and bred, I am nonetheless a fervent supporter of all of America’s space activities, kindly bestowed for the benefit of all mankind. I applaud all that the US has done to date in Space, showing Mankind at its best and most noble, with industrious commitment, dedication, perseverance, scientific ingenuity, technological prowess, and sheer breathtaking ‘cool’. How uplifting to the spirit it has been, to follow the Shuttle STS missions. The flights to the ISS (with those uber-cool approaches, back flips and dockings, awesome camera shots and the emotional comings and goings of Expedition crews and Shuttle crews) will be looked back on as another fine hour for the United States. Space is in America’s DNA.
Comment by Vinay (@vinluce) — July 10, 2010 @ 2:05 am
[...] going somewhere and planting a flag or collecting some rocks. Each time NASA launches a Shuttle, it puts 100 tons in space. By replacing the orbiter body with a cargo faring, we are creating a heavy lift launch [...]
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[...] a good program and an “unexecutable” one. He also took the time to take a couple of shots at one of his long-standing targets, the Moon as a destination, commenting that spending billions and 25 years to “go back to the [...]
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