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ISS and the soon-to-be discarded Shuttle; Last tango in Earth orbit

By moving forward on their mission to convert the U.S. fleet of Space Shuttles into museum pieces, the administration has shifted NASA into neutral.  America’s multi-billion dollar investment in the International Space Station (ISS) and our access to space is in jeopardy.  As a result of the termination of the Shuttle program, we have no means to assure ISS health and safety or the continuation of manned-space for the coming decade.

True, the “retirement” of the Shuttle is an event long-planned — announced in 2004 as part of the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE).  But contrary to common belief, the VSE plan to retire Shuttle was not because it is “too dangerous to fly” or “outdated technology.”  Rather, its retirement was intended to free up that portion of the NASA budget it consumes, with that money going to the development of new space vehicles for human missions beyond low Earth orbit—the limit of Shuttle’s reach.  In 2004, it was understood that the old and new systems would not seamlessly overlap in time, but in the past eight years, the “gap” of time between the last flight of the Shuttle and the first flight of whatever system succeeds it has increased alarmingly from months to years and now finally, to infinity.  The spaceflight “gap,” once seen as risky, now looms before us a black hole of uncertainty.

Our country is set to eliminate the one proven system remaining under our control that can access both space and the ISS.  The only thing clear about the administration’s current plan is the confusion surrounding it.  Initially, the proposal was to replace a government-built and operated space transportation system with a contractor-controlled one.  Coined “New Space,” these contractors were to provide access to orbit for both cargo and people.  The New Space path was already being pursued under VSE – not as an immediate replacement for a government system but as an interim adjunct to it.  The belief and hope of the agency under VSE was that a transition period would allow commercial companies to design, build and perfect their systems into operational status, while working through anticipated difficulties in technology, budget and program set-backs.  As NASA began transitioning away from ISS re-supply, workforce continuity would remain as we began building systems for missions beyond low Earth orbit.

New Space advocates claim that as “commercial” entities, they can provide the needed capabilities to service ISS faster and at a fraction of the cost of either Shuttle or a new government system.  If this promise sounds familiar, it is because thirty years ago, as part of the marketing for Shuttle, we heard similar arguments.  What we learned then was that spaceflight is difficult, unforgiving and expensive.  While one could argue that Shuttle is an inherently flawed transportation system, it still is a working system and it works because we expended the time, experience and money needed to make it work.

Any of the new systems (“commercial” or government) will not have the unique capabilities of Shuttle.  Unlike the current “capsule” configuration of the new planned spacecraft, Shuttle carries crew (7 people) and cargo, the latter in enormous quantity – over 24,000 kg per flight.  The Russian Soyuz crew (3 people) or Progress cargo vehicles (2350 kg) deliver but a fraction of this so-called “up mass” (the amount of material delivered to the ISS) per launch.  The large payload capacity of Shuttle was necessary to build the ISS.   Now that Station is complete, one might argue that smaller amounts of cargo delivery are adequate to maintain it.  This might be true for normal operations but what happens if a catastrophic failure occurs?  The largest part that can be sent to Station will be less than ¼ the mass that Shuttle can deliver.  An example of a possible critical need would be a de-orbit motor.  If the ISS became uninhabitable or suffered a failure, its orbit would begin to decay.  In order to keep over one million pounds of debris from re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, breaking up and falling onto that part of the globe where 98% of humanity resides, a rocket engine must be delivered and attached to send the ISS on a controlled descent into uninhabited areas over the oceans.

Beyond the safety issue surrounding the loss of Shuttle’s capability to deliver to LEO, Shuttle is also an operational service platform when on-orbit.  It has an airlock, permitting crew to conduct EVA to repair and maintain ISS and other spacecraft on a routine basis.  The only way crew can EVA from the Shuttle’s successor will be to depressurize the entire vehicle, a complex and dangerous maneuver that will likely be conducted only in the event of an emergency.  The large stable base of the Shuttle (100 tons on-orbit) permits it to have a robotic operating arm to use both in conjunction with space-walking astronauts and independently.  Balky space satellites and parts are firmly held in its cargo bay while repairs are safely completed.  Astronauts attempting to service small-mass, free flying satellites find that they drift away, rotating at the slightest touch.  The Shuttle serves as a “hangar” in space in which repairs and maintenance can be safely and efficiently accomplished.

Ignoring these considerations is troubling, but might be less so if there were any evidence that serious thought had been given to them.  Under our previous direction, it was fully understood that a Shuttle replacement system would be in the pipeline and by now (a bit late and after the usual developmental problems) would have been cutting metal.  In contrast, we now have nothing but policy chaos.  Summary cancellation of the Constellation rocket system may have been justified on grounds of cost, but the wishful thinking represented by its imaginary replacement is simply unconscionable.  Despite the loud and persistent claims of many in the space media, “commercial” providers are not going to produce anywhere near the same capability that Shuttle gives us, even if, through some miracle, they are successful in both budget and schedule.  Yet, in the coming decade, essentially the same amount of spending is proposed.

New Space, for all its marketing and eager supporters, has entered a realm where their success on the time frame and budget envisioned – that will greatly affect us all—is uncertain.  For a country in troubled times, it is foolhardy, short-sighted and financially ignorant to destroy the one working space access system we have.  For New Space cheerleaders to herald the new path as a wonderful anomaly in a sea of otherwise benighted government meddling is to be blind to the reality of the current climate and of the importance of the job they have been handed.  The “New Space” companies that NASA currently funds will have the same problems of money, time and architecture that space projects traditionally have had.  How long will our rapidly growing government (with its rapidly shrinking discretionary budget) patiently support “commercial” New Space efforts?

In the past, we were assured of government’s ability to project power and protect national interests in space.  After the last Shuttle flies, NASA will idle in neutral for the indefinite future.  Our space program is adrift—a barometer of our national condition.  Sometimes events dictate a course correction.  Now is not the time to stop flying Shuttle.

One hundred years ago: Robert Falcon Scott and the crew of the Terra Nova enjoy a celebratory dinner, Midwinter's Day, Antarctica, 1911

“Now is the winter of our discontent” – Richard III, Act 1, scene 1

There is a good piece in today’s Telegraph UK by David Robson of a fateful one-hundredth anniversary – the Midwinter Dinner — June 22, 1911 held in Robert Falcon Scott’s Ross Island hut.  A year earlier, Scott and the crew of the Terra Nova had set off for the Antarctic and the south pole.  It was a carefully planned and perilously financed expedition, a classic journey of the “golden age” of polar exploration.  At the time, Scott had no idea that Roald Amundsen, the famous Norwegian polar explorer, had turned his north pole-bound Fram due south and unknown to Scott and his men, was at that moment camped on the opposite side of the Ross Sea, carefully planning a summer dash to the south pole.

Of what relevance is this story to space and the Moon?  To me, it encompasses and restates several themes I have developed on this blog about the nature of exploration and sustainable presence in a hostile environment.  The theme of the Telegraph article is that Scott’s expedition was all about science.  His team included geographers, geologists, biologists and meteorologists.  They collected specimens, documented phenomena, made observations, and conducted experiments.  Scott’s expedition was organized like a carefully planned military campaign.  Although conducted under the command structure of the Royal Navy, it was a civilian expedition, funded by subscription.  No tax money was used and financing was always a major headache for Scott.

A theme running through Robson’s article has been a recurring motif in polar literature for many years – that while Scott and his team were honorable scientists, conducting true “exploration,” Amundsen and his men were publicity-seeking interlopers, cads and bounders who treacherously misled the noble and long-suffering Scott about their true intentions, and who then had the cheek to actually race ahead to beat Scott to the south pole.  This theme has long been a part of British polar exploration literature – the sting of Amundsen’s victory in the race to the south pole still hurts.  A book and television series on the polar race published over 20 years ago attempted to deconstruct this myth and was roundly blasted in the British press at the time.

But the Telegraph piece contains a fundamental contradiction.  It takes great pains to show Scott’s expedition as a scientific, scholar’s investigation, as opposed to the “PR stunt” of Amundsen’s polar dash.  If this is true, then of what importance was priority in attainment of the south pole anyway?  The pole is merely one more data point on a string of measurement stations.  Scott’s purpose was science, not stunts.  He led a carefully planned and documented expedition to unravel the secrets of the Antarctic.  By arriving at the pole after Amundsen, what could it matter?  He still had his fossils, rock samples and observations, did he not?

Obviously there was much more at stake than admitted, both then and now.  The great age of polar exploration was not about science, any more than Apollo to the Moon was about our first visit to another world.  Large public spectacles like polar exploration were both theater and geopolitical struggles.  In the decades leading to the Scott and Amundsen efforts, many had tried (and failed) to take the north pole.  An entire subculture of polar explorers had developed, each group knowing of the other groups’ efforts in the desperate competition to be the first to stand on top of the world.  Establishing priority became an obsession with many and proof was difficult to obtain (the Frederick Cook-Robert Peary controversy over who was the first at the north pole continues to this day).

Both Scott and Amundsen lived in this milieu.  But they were also Edwardian gentlemen and sporting conduct was natural and expected behavior.  Amundsen’s “sin” was that he discarded the fig leaf of “science” and exposed to public view the raw power politics involved in exploration.  In the words of the President of the Royal Geographic Society Leonard Darwin (son of Charles), Amundsen had not “played the game.”

The idea that exploration is for scientific purposes stems largely from this golden age of polar exploration.  In part, the conflation developed because of the need for Britain to attribute a noble and uplifting rationale to Scott’s polar trip.  His tragic death on the way back from the south pole was made especially bitter by the loss of priority – when Scott arrived at the pole, he found that Amundsen had beaten him there.  One way to make this unpleasant pill more palatable was to assign noble motives to Scott and base ones to Amundsen.  Hence, a mythos developed, sanctifying Scott as a martyr for science and depicting Amundsen as a crass interloper.  An unnoticed side-effect of this storyline was the simultaneous sanctification of science as the rationale for exploration.  This attitude is typified by a comment from an astronomer in the early days of implementation of the Vision for Space Exploration in 2004 that “exploration without science is tourism.”  Scott’s hagiographer could not have put it better.

But this concept, developed one hundred years ago to salve the outrage and hurt feelings of a disappointed nation, does not serve us well as we contemplate the exploration of our Solar System.  Exploration traditionally has a much broader meaning.  Columbus, Balboa and Magellan did not undertake their expeditions for science.  They sought wealth and power; they envisioned new lands for settlement and the spread of their own culture.  In short, the view of  “exploration” prior to being redefined during the golden age of polar exploration had little to do with science and much to do with wealth creation, power projection and settlement.

Science is great and knowledge always has both practical and intangible value, but it is a small part of the motivation for exploration.  The Antarctic is a continent for science but only by mutual agreement of the international community.  The riches of Antarctica remained locked up as scientists hunt its surface for fallen asteroids and evidence for global warming.  Some think this is a template for space exploration; others find such an idea anathema.  Science stagnates when exploration stalls.  If we were exploring the Moon, scientists would find a bounty of extraterrestrial samples and have an unparalleled opportunity to study the record of Earth’s climate locked in eons of undisturbed solar wind in the lunar regolith.  Once humanity and technology are able to utilize the Moon’s resources to break the tyranny of the rocket equation, the vast riches of our Solar System will open to explorers, entrepreneurs, settlers, and scientists alike.

We explore for many reasons. There are many valid and important national interests of which science is but one.  Scott understood this; hence, his disappointment at his own failure to reach the pole first.  As we prepare to leave the Earth on a more permanent basis, it is well to look back at this curious and (I would say) singular interval in history – a time (so we are told) when science became the rationale for exploration.  It wasn’t true then and isn’t true now.

Related side-note:  Videos of my Space Pioneer Award talk at the recent 2011 International Space Development Conference in Hunstville AL have been posted in two parts, HERE and HERE.  This talk touches on several of the themes I mention above.  The slides from my talk are available for download HERE.

Learning to live off the land on the Moon

At the recent International Space Development Conference in Huntsville, Augustine committee member and CEO of XCOR Aerospace Jeff Greason gave a talk on the goals of human spaceflight.  While he discussed many things that I agree with (in particular, making the use of off-planet resources a high priority), one idea in particular stood out.  Greason said that we need some type of long-range goal or objective for our national civil space program.  Picking up on a statement by his Augustine colleague Chris Chyba, Greason suggested that “settlement” should be the goal of human spaceflight; if not, “what the hell are we doing it for?”

This observation naturally went over well with the crowd at the ISDC and the subsequent posting of a video of Jeff’s talk sent many space cadets of the internet into spasms of joy that someone would finally state in public the True Belief – humanity’s destiny is among the stars.  Finally, out of all the confusion and bickering about heavy lift launch vehicles, depots, destinations, and crew vehicles, we have at last a clear articulation of the direction and purpose for the human space program.

There’s only one problem:  it’s not the right goal for NASA.

First, let there be no misunderstanding.  I agree that settlement and the expansion of humanity into space is indeed a noble and desirable thing — I call it the “ultimate rationale” for human spaceflight. By that, I mean that the idea of people going into space to live there, wherever our desires and aspirations may lead, is an objective of our species, a desire to spread human culture beyond its planetary cradle into the cosmos.  That’s a different concept than making space settlement the objective of NASA’s human spaceflight program.  I do not think such is an appropriate goal for a federal program that competes with all the other projects in the discretionary budget.

To most outside space circles (as well as to a surprisingly sizable number within the space community), space is a hostile, barren wilderness, with no harbor for man and his works.  Their solution is to build machines that can be sent to return information from which we will decipher the secrets of the universe.  Moreover, these people can think of at least two dozen different things they would rather spend that money on; you can bet that dreams of space settlement would fare poorly in comparison.

Another problem with “settlement” as an objective is that the metrics for success are difficult to define.  When is space “settled” – when a single human lives permanently off planet?  When a community is thriving on another world?  How large a community and where?  Buying into settlement as our goal means making a permanently moving target your objective; no matter what milestone is reached, you’ve never actually achieved your “goal” of settlement (for a current implementation of this mentality, see “Search for Extraterrestrial Life”).

Finally, settlement is a poor goal for a federal space program because it is so distant.  No one seriously believes that humans will live in space or on another world permanently within the next several decades.  Government programs can barely tolerate time horizons beyond one presidential term, let alone a multi-decadal trek through near-space.  True enough, we can devise a program that delivers significant milestones toward the goal of space settlement within such time frames, but with such a nebulous end point receding into the distant future, it will lose its luster and consequent political support very quickly.

In contrast to Greason’s proposed “settlement strategy,” I have tried to frame a slightly different path for our national space program.  Our “goal” is to expand human reach beyond LEO, first into cislunar space and then into interplanetary space (by “reach,” I mean the routine access of people and machines to any point in space where we need or want these capabilities to do whatever job we need to.)  The “strategy” to accomplish this extension is to establish a resource-processing base on the Moon to make fuel for a cislunar space transportation system.  A “tactical” implementation of this strategy is a robotic ISRU architecture, which will create our first foothold on another world.

What is the advantage of this path over Greason’s settlement sequence?  For one thing, we can accomplish it much sooner than human settlement of space will ever occur; an operational lunar resource processing base can be up and running within 10-20 years of program initiation.  Second, a space faring transportation system is relevant to critical national needs, specifically, our ability to maintain and extend the constellation of economic, scientific, and national strategic satellite assets that reside in cislunar space.  By adopting this goal, we start from a position of political strength: we don’t have to convince Congress about our destiny among the stars, we just have to point out the critical dependence of modern technological civilization on our satellite assets in the volume of space between LEO and the Moon.  Right now, those satellites are all designed as one-offs: build, launch, use, and discard.  We want to change that template to build, extend, maintain and expand.  Developing lunar resources to fuel a space transportation system allows us to do this and more.

By doing these things we lay the groundwork for space settlement. All agree that settlement requires the ability to access and use local planetary resources.  Going to the Moon to harvest its polar water begins that process.  If you want to look upon this as the first step in the settlement of the Solar System, be my guest.  But I suggest that making lunar return relevant to important national economic and security objectives is more likely to help consolidate political support than setting the goal of “settlement” as NASA’s objective.  NASA’s founding charter, the Space Act of 1958, lays out many different objectives and goals for the agency; space settlement is not one of them.  But routine access to cislunar space is; cislunar space is specifically mentioned in the new NASA Authorization Act of 2010.

Settlement is a valid long-term goal for humanity in space – but we must have something with a practical and political payoff in the near-term.