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The Dodo awards Alice her prize after the caucus-race

In space circles, the idea of offering incentive prizes to develop complex technology has some currency.  Most notably, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich recently advocated a prize-based incentive model coupled with a leaner NASA as an alternative to our currently stalled, government bureaucratic model of space operations.  The incentive idea is behind the current Centennial Challenges program of NASA, which offers money for the demonstration of certain specified technologies or procedures.  Presumably, Gingrich is speaking not of this existing program but about a vastly expanded prize structure, funded by the federal government, for significant milestones in humanity’s expansion into space.

This model structure harkens to early days of aviation when prizes for specific aeronautical achievement proliferated.  Notable was the $25,000 Orteig Prize offered by New York hotelier Raymond Orteig for the first non-stop air flight between New York and Paris.  Charles Lindbergh won the Orteig Prize in 1927 in his specially built Spirit of St. Louis.  After this flight, probably due more to celebrity culture and the frenzy of fame rather than actual flight accomplishment, commercial aviation enjoyed a boom of popularity with the public and industry.  In short, the prize offering succeeded in producing a PR stunt; the design features of Spirit of St. Louis were specifically optimized to permit Lindbergh to win the prize, not to advance aeronautical technology or establish commercial transatlantic flight operations.

Currently, the most visible prize structure for spaceflight is Peter Diamandis’ X-Prize Foundation, a private funding group that awards prizes for specific space-related goals.  The first and most famous, the Ansari X-Prize founded in 1996, was offered to the first non-government group that could (within two weeks) twice launch and safely return to Earth a reusable, manned spacecraft.  In 2004, the $10,000,000 X-Prize was won by Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne, funded by Microsoft’s Paul Allen.  This vehicle used an innovative airborne launch system, a hybrid solid-liquid rocket engine and a “wing feathering” method for re-entry and return flight.  Plans were immediately made to construct a commercial version of SpaceShipOne, to be sponsored and operated by Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic organization.

However, since that prize-winning flight almost eight years ago, things have not proceeded smoothly.  An explosion in 2007 destroyed the rocket fabrication facility and killed three workers.  Virgin Galactic established an operations base in New Mexico on October 17, 2011.  There is a passenger manifest backlog of 455 subscribers but as of this writing, not a single commercial passenger spaceflight has occurred.

Another current space prize is the Google Lunar X-Prize, offering a $20 million award for successfully landing a spacecraft carrying a high-definition imaging system and roving on the Moon at least 500 meters.  Since its announcement in 2007, over 30 companies have registered to participate in the competition.  Additional prize increments are awarded for other accomplishment, such as long range (> 5 km) roving, survival over a lunar night, and documentation of the presence of water in lunar soil.  No lunar mission has yet been launched nor has any launch date been announced.  The original expiration date for the lunar X-Prize was 2012 but was extended to the end of 2015.

An alternative incentive approach is milestone-based contracting.  NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program awards government money to companies that meet specific milestones on previously announced timescales.  That money is to be spent developing specific capabilities required for government needs.  The reward at the end of this cycle is a performance-based government contract for launch services.  However, under this government-sponsored incentive program, a commercial human spaceflight industry has yet to develop.

Bigelow Aerospace, a builder of private, “For Lease” space stations, recently laid off over one third of their workforce.  Part of the problem is the lack of assured, commercially available access to their orbital stations.  In 2004, Bigelow himself established and funded a $50 million prize to develop a commercial crew vehicle for orbital transport; the prize expired in 2010 without a single attempt at flight.  Although rumor has it that Boeing is developing a spacecraft to serve private space stations, nothing has yet appeared, even in prototype form.  Due to some unidentified technical issues, SpaceX has delayed the launch of the first flight of their Dragon cargo vehicle to ISS from early next month to an unspecified future date.

The simple glaring fact is the United States has no commercial human spaceflight industry.  NASA’s attempt to encourage the development of such through COTS is floundering against some unpleasant realities:  it is both very difficult and very costly to get into and back from space.  The former drives up the cost, severely limiting potential markets.  The latter stops not only imagined demand (such as space tourism) dead in its tracks but also real demand, such as government contracts for ISS crew access.

The hope of space prize enthusiasts for explosive growth in space similar to that seen in aviation innovation and industry following the winning of the Orteig Prize is unlikely to be realized.  The problem is that spaceflight is a vastly more difficult field in which to participate than aviation.  Many amateurs could and did fabricate aircraft in their garages and barns in the early decades of the last century.  The First World War made surplus aircraft widely available at low cost, furthering the development of a robust early aviation industry.  In contrast, no one has flown a surplus government space vehicle and “barnstorming” rockets do not exist, despite some imaginative depictions in Hollywood films.

Unfortunately, this is the space program we now have.  No American human spaceflight flight systems exist and their development is dependent on the advent of a demand that has not yet materialized.  Meanwhile, we comfort ourselves with fantasies about human missions to Mars.  I appreciate and applaud Gingrich’s enthusiasm for space, a visionary attitude sorely lacking in most politicians.  He needs to think carefully about how to incentivize the development of space and about the critical national needs served by our civil space program.  Prizes seem attractive because of their historical role in stimulating a nascent aviation industry.  But significant differences between aviation and spaceflight and our primitive level of development of the latter suggest that what worked before may not work now.

The lunar crater Daniell, seen from the Chang'E 2 spacecraft

Controversy quickly followed astonishment with the recent release of a white paper outlining China’s intentions in space.  Sparking particular buzz from the Internet was a statement about human lunar missions being an objective for future Chinese space efforts.  That statement drew comment ranging from sophisticated to simplistic, yet in my opinion, most of the discussion to date neglects the essential point of what this means to humanity’s future in space.

The report lays out China’s plan for missions to the Moon of increasing complexity and capability.   The Chinese orbiters Chang’E 1 (2007) and Chang’E 2 (2010) made global maps of the Moon’s morphology and topography.  The Chang’E spacecraft demonstrated China’s ability to navigate trans-LEO space.  After Chang’E 1’s mapping mission was complete, the spacecraft was deliberately de-orbited to impact the Moon.  However, after surveying a potential landing site for future missions, the Chang’E 2 spacecraft left lunar orbit and was sent to the Earth-Sun L2 point, a stable location 1.5 million km from the Earth.  This maneuver is quite complex and its successful completion demonstrated their capability to maneuver spacecraft throughout cislunar space.  It also lays the groundwork for more complex lunar and planetary missions in the near future.

The white paper reiterates the Chinese strategy of orbiter-lander-sample return for lunar exploration with robotic missions, of which the Chang’E series is the first step.  The paper mentions human spaceflight activities occurring only in low Earth orbit, specifically asserting their determination to conduct an “independent” space exploration program.  Closing remarks in that section of the report have been drawing the most attention: China intends to conduct “studies on a preliminary plan for a human lunar landing.”

In NASA terms, such wording would lead no one to conclude that anything remotely flight-ready was within a decade or two of occurring.  But our way is not their way.  The Chinese clearly are systematically pursuing a series of steps to incrementally increase their flight experience, technology base and operational expertise in low Earth orbit, but in a direction unmistakably toward the Moon and throughout cislunar space.

Despite some pronouncements of military doom – visions of Red Army Space Troopers descending upon us – a war in space does not appear imminent.  Over several pages, the report repeatedly proclaims China’s intention to “peaceably explore and use outer space,” especially in conjunction with an endless series of United Nations mandates, innumerable Moon treaties and international kumbayah.  Perhaps, as Queen Gertrude once observed, they doth protest too much.

Military action is not the only possible geopolitical threat on Earth or in space.  Although it is probably too early to tell, the real issue is how serious is China about expanding their sphere of operations beyond low Earth orbit to the Moon.  Currently, their human space program appears to be relatively benign, with simple Earth orbital missions, the construction of a rudimentary space station, crew EVA – all steps and capabilities that a nascent space faring nation must learn and develop.  Their proposed robotic lunar exploration plan likewise makes sense, in that they first orbit and map, then survey in detail to land, rove, explore and return samples.  For each step, a new capability is developed, building on existing ones, with all contributing toward a future strategic position.  Hmmmm – an incremental architecture with cumulative series of small but interlocking steps.  What a concept!

The reaction of space observers in the West seems bifurcated along the lines of “The sky is falling!” or “Who cares?”  For the former, some note that the Chinese space program is run by their military.  Moreover, the demonstration test of a Chinese anti-satellite weapon in 2007 did not engender the international peaceful good feelings so stridently expressed in the white paper.  Those who read potential danger in Chinese intentions in space are not being unreasonable, even if there appears to be no immediate threat.  For the latter group, nothing that China has done, is doing or ever could do in space would bother them.  ASAT testing?  Any alarm is labeled “hysteria.”  Chinese lunar landings?  So what?  We did that 40 years ago.  These people know not what they don’t know.  Holding such a position is patently naïve.

The real cause for concern is not a Chinese presence in cislunar space or on the Moon, but our absence from it.  Although much has been made of China’s purported movement toward capitalism in recent decades, they still possess an authoritarian political system, one with scant regard for the rule of contract law, copyright, private property and western notions of free market dynamics. Although some may not care whether China conquers the Moon, if they are the only ones on the Moon, they will determine what operational regime and legal template will prevail there.  Advocates of “commercial space” might do well to carefully consider such a scenario – commercial companies are incorporated under national auspices on Earth, pay taxes to terrestrial governments, and are subject to the laws of the country in which they are based.  They will not be free agents either in space or on the Moon.

I argued almost two years ago that there is a new “space race” but that it is quite different in character from the first one.  The outcome of this race will determine what kind of politico-economic paradigm will prevail on the new frontier of space.  One can imagine a situation in which a country establishes a permanent presence on the Moon and maintains control of the resources there.  Yes, the Moon is a big planet, but the valuable concentrations of water lie in small areas near the poles.  Water at the poles of the Moon allow a space faring entity to develop routine access to the entirety of cislunar space, where all of the economic, scientific and security space assets of many countries reside.  Space control in the new century does not refer to “Death Stars” bristling with space weaponry, but to situational awareness, assurance of service, and the defense and maintenance of space-based assets.  Control of cislunar space – meaning in this case the ability to routinely travel throughout its extent and to all the various orbits of cislunar satellites – does not mean to militarize or weaponize space, but rather the permanent presence of a space faring power of a particular ideology or worldview, undeterred by the absence of a competing ideology.

And if some say “So what?” to that, the more fool they.

Cue music, "Also Sprach Zarathustra".....

A long established year-end tradition – for good or ill – is a review and analysis of the preceding twelve months.  Who am I to fight this trend?  Being that I am a “the glass is not only half-empty, but chipped and cracked down the middle” space policy town crier, be fairly warned as I conclude this year’s blogging with a look back at 2011.

The retirement of the Space Shuttle this past year vindicated T.S. Elliot’s pronouncement about the nature of the end of the world.  The U.S. workhorses that ferried Station pieces and crew to low Earth orbit await their museum berths.  The most heated emotions and debate surrounding this event dealt with the agency’s selection of the final resting places for the working U.S. space access machines.  To the outrage of many, space-oriented places like Houston and Huntsville were cold-shouldered in favor of show business-oriented Los Angeles and New York City.  In the heat of this controversy (so dire that members of Congress from space-economy communities rose from their slumber to pen op-eds mirroring constituent alarm),  few noticed or understood that without a replacement, the country’s capability for humans to access space had been discarded.  As  2011 closes out, construction and assembly of the International Space Station is complete – it is a unique Earth-orbiting platform for ongoing scientific research, accessible for the price of a ride on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

This past year was heralded as the opening chapter for a new approach to human spaceflight – the American civil space program was to advance more economically through the use of commercial launch services to LEO.  We’re waiting and watching, with more than a little trepidation, as millions of taxpayer dollars are doled out to “New Space” companies branded “commercial.”  Recent history shows taxpayer-funded, new-technology enterprises have failed spectacularly.  It’s troubling that simultaneously, these space access ventures are making similar claims of soon-to-be superior, cheap alternatives toward solving a pressing national problem.

In other exciting developments, the agency announced their new “mission statement” –  “To reach for new heights and reveal the unknown so that what we do and learn will benefit all humankind.”  Some noted the new statement says nothing about conducting missions and doesn’t mention space.  But it is stirring – a mission statement for an agency without a mission.

After being kicked long and hard by the Congress, NASA finally decided that they should probably go ahead and build a new launch vehicle.  Despite some initial foot-dragging (and the conspicuously ignored presence of an obvious and inexpensive alternative), the agency buckled down and produced a design for a new heavy lift launch vehicle, one that looks remarkably similar to the now-discarded Ares system.  With continued work on the new Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, looking remarkably similar to the now-discarded Orion spacecraft, we soon will be ready for new and exciting missions to untrod landscapes in space – perhaps a large rock –in a decade.  Maybe.  Perhaps even for less than its estimated $100 billion cost.

Robotic science missions, the so-called “crown jewels” of the space program, had their own share of difficulties this year.  The Goddard-run James Webb Space Telescope, the second-generation successor to the highly successful Hubble Space Telescope, is coming in late with a price tag of more than $8.7 billion and counting.  Its continued cost growth threatens all NASA space science programs.  JPL’s own giga-project, the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory, was successfully launched and will encounter the planet in about six months, hopefully at very low velocity.  Less costly robotic missions to a variety of destinations continue to return copious amounts of data; whether there will be money to reduce and analyze it all remains uncertain.

The past year was the 50^th anniversary of both Yuri Gagarin’s first flight into space and John F. Kennedy’s announcement of the Moon landing goal – two events separated by type and location but connected in motivation.  It also was the centennial year of the race to, and attainment of, the South Pole – an event with reverberations throughout the ensuing years as a template for national efforts in exploration.  The space program, steeped in the history of global geopolitics and national competition, has sputtered slowly to a stop under that motivational and operational model.  A new paradigm for the space program is needed, one that ensures its long-term viability and stability.

To their own and the nation’s detriment, NASA is trapped by one model when thinking about space.  Missing is the notion of permanence and expansion into space.  A variety of “anyplace-but-the-Moon” destinations for human spaceflight have been mooted and studied in the past year, including near-Earth asteroids, L-points, the tiny, asteroid-like moons of Mars, lunar orbit, and even a human Venus flyby.  All of these imagined missions require knowledge, hardware and technologies that we do not now possess.  All expose human crews to substantial risk through long-term exposure to radiation and microgravity.  None create permanence of human presence or extension of capability in space.  And all travel to destinations offering little scientific and exploratory benefit or variety; their main attraction seems to be the yet-to-be-explained agency imperative to cross them off some “been there” check-list.

Several plans to develop cislunar space through an incremental, step-wise approach have been advanced.  The goal in each is not a flags-and-footprints type of space extravaganza, but the steady expansion of capabilities and reach beyond low Earth orbit.  Such a modus operandi is possible through the development and use of lunar resources —specifically the water ice found in quantity at both poles of the Moon.  In stark contrast to the Apollo template (and regardless of budgetary ups and downs), constant, steady and measurable progress can be realized through the creation of this “transcontinental railroad” in cislunar space.

I note with sadness, the passing of some great space visionaries this year.  John Marburger, former Presidential Science Advisor, was one of the few who truly understood the meaning and purpose of the Vision for Space Exploration.  Lunar and planetary scientists Baruch Blumberg, Bill Muehlberger, Mike Drake, Paul Lowman, Nick Short, Chuck Sonett, and my academic advisor and friend Ron Greeley passed away this year.  Theirs were voices of knowledge and experience and they will be missed.

The year 2011 was an annus horribilis for the national space program.  Here’s to the forthcoming year and hopes for a return of sanity to space policy.

Amundsen at the South Pole, one hundred years ago today.

One of the last major milestones in the history of terrestrial exploration was achieved one hundred years ago today – the attainment of the South Pole by Roald Amundsen and his team on December 14, 1911.  His rival, Robert Falcon Scott and crew, were still more than a month away from the pole and (although denying they were in a race) destined for heartbreaking disappointment when they arrived to find the Norwegian flag flapping in the howling Antarctic wind.

The Amundsen-Scott polar drama time stamps a major shift in our thinking about the meaning of exploration.  This shift in our perception of what it means to explore holds ramifications to today’s debates on space policy.  Traditionally, exploration is a very personal activity.  It involves someone’s decision to see what lies over the next hill.  This act is exploration in its purest sense; it dates from the Stone Age and is principally responsible for humanity’s reach into all corners of the Earth.  This exploration is undirected and random –motivated by the human desire to scratch that unrelenting itch of curiosity.  You finance and outfit yourself and go, while adhering to the maxim, “It is easier to ask for forgiveness than to get permission.”

As society grew and evolved, a different type of exploration emerged.  For difficult or expensive journeys to far corners of the globe, people pooled their knowledge and resources to collectively explore the unknown by creating government-sponsored projects.  Until modern times, such exploration was considered to include not only discovery and initial characterization, but also utilization, exploitation and eventually colonization – all with an eye toward wealth-creation.  By the end of the 19^th Century, the regions of the world unclaimed by western powers were all but gone, gobbled up in a frenzy of imperial land-grabs by industrially developed nations.  All that was left were the seas (whose freedom of access for all nations was guaranteed by the British Royal Navy) and the North and South Poles.

The shift of attention to the poles coincided with the rise of science and with it, a significant change in the “exploration” ethic.  It was actually thought at one point in the late 19^th Century that all nature had been finally and thoroughly explained.  After numerous failed attempts to find a Northwest Passage to the Pacific north of Canada (economic motivation), expeditions to the polar regions began to focus on scientific observations and measurements (knowledge gathering).  This shift in emphasis also coincided with a global rise of nationalist conscience, the idea that some nations were destined to discover and conquer remote parts of the Earth.  Given the global extent of the British Empire at that time, the English were particularly susceptible to this idea.

These various motivations were threaded together in the early 20^th Century as science joined with nationalistic chest-thumping to create government-sponsored scientific expeditions to remote locales.  Important and difficult expeditions requiring teamwork and pooled resources became national exploration efforts.  Science became a fig leaf rationale for realpolitik global power projection.  There was still the occasional “because it’s there” type of expedition to some remote mountain or plateau but most often it was privately financed.

And so we come to the Space Age, which in basic terms has followed the knowledge-gathering template of polar exploration.  A new movement for national power projection in space has yet to fully emerge.  National security may be the only motivator of sufficient political power to launch an earnest, national drive into space.  Traditionally the military conducts exploration in peacetime.  In the late 18^th Century, Royal Navy Captain James Cook conducted three expeditions to the Pacific – not for pure science but rather for applied science – to improve navigation for commerce and other purposes.

Perhaps this link to applied science may guide us toward a new understanding of the term “exploration,” or rather, to recover an old meaning that has been lost.  The idea of exploration leading to exploitation (currently tossed aside in the modern equation of exploration and science) could serve as the “new” guiding principle for modern spaceflight.  By making space the singular preserve of science and politics, both are ill served, much to the determent of humanity.  For now, we remain wedded to the template of launch, use, and discard – a modus suitable to an occasional, expensive and limited presence in space but one wholly inappropriate for undertaking the creation of a modern, permanent space faring infrastructure.  Instead, beginning with the creation of a reusable, extensible cislunar space faring system, we should learn how to use space for national interests by using the Moon and its resources.  This will require a long-term research and development project geared to acquiring the understanding and ability to gather and use the resources available to us in space in order to routinely access, explore and exploit cislunar space and the frontier beyond.

This model of a national space program fits the classic understanding of exploration – we go into space as a society and what we do there must have societal value.  Because cislunar space has critical economic and national security value, we need to create a system that can routinely accesses that region of space with robots and people.  Hence, I advocate resource production bases on the Moon, reusable systems, and the build-up of a cislunar spaceflight infrastructure.  Some may not consider this to be “exploration” but the great explorers of history exploited and settled after they found and described.

The attainment of the South Pole one hundred years ago today shifted the meaning of the word exploration and boxed us into an artificial separation of the concepts of discovery and use.  That modern connotation is both arbitrary and historically incorrect.  Exploration includes exploitation and we can exploit the Moon – our nearest planetary neighbor – to create a permanent space faring capability. The development of cislunar space is exploration in the classic sense – a plunge into the unknown:  Can we do this?  How hard is it?  What benefits – beyond those we can recognize now – might we realize from it?   History shows that such undertakings promote new discoveries by opening windows of innovation and generating new streams wealth creation.

Note: My friend Don Pettit has similar thoughts in his blog post today.

Next stop?

Of all the idiocies that make up our current lack of a genuine policy for civil space, the imperative to find some destination that is not the Moon is the most telling sign of an absence of thoughtful leadership.  For an example of the pointlessness to which this reasoning can go, take a look at a recent post at Scientific American, arguing for a human flyby mission to Venus.

That’s right – Venus.  The planet that makes Jupiter’s moon Io look like an island in the Bahamas — a locale of sea-bottom pressures, lead-melting temperatures and sulfuric acid rain.  Specially built robotic devices last for (at best) an hour or two before breaking down into an inert lump of metal.  This place is now being advocated (seriously) as a destination for human spaceflight.  How did we arrive at such a state?

Simple – by a deliberate act of programmatic destruction.  The Moon was to be our first destination on the long road into the Solar System.  But that goal was discarded, allegedly on the grounds that “we’ve been there,” but in reality because it was a destination that could be reached on reasonable timescales for affordable amounts of spending.  Thus, a failure to return to the Moon could not be blamed on factors other than program mismanagement or agency incompetence.  In other words, it was a realistic goal against which progress could be assessed.

What replaced lunar return?  That’s a bit more muddled, but vague notions were advanced that human missions “beyond low Earth orbit” could be undertaken only if NASA was freed from the onerous requirement to build new spacecraft and launch vehicles.  Thus, we would purchase commercial launch services for delivery of people and payload to LEO and use the agency budget to develop “new and exciting technologies” to make more distant goals reachable.

As this proposed pseudo-policy played itself out over the ensuing months, its essential hollowness became ever more apparent.  Despite the quasi-religious beliefs of some space buffs, there is no “magic beans” technology to make spaceflight infinitely cheap and infinitely capable.  There is no commercial human spaceflight industry.  And other than the now-discarded lunar surface, there is no worthwhile human destination reachable within the next 15 years.

Yet many in the space business pretend otherwise.  Hence, we get articles like the “Humans to Venus” piece.  What’s wrong with this concept?  Simply put, there is nothing humans can do on a Venus flyby that a robotic spacecraft could not accomplish, while there are things a robotic spacecraft could do there that humans cannot.  The real need for Venus is to get high-resolution radar images and gravity data of the planet to extend and supplement the reconnaissance mapping of the Venera and Magellan missions of the past century.

To get such high-quality image data, one must put a spacecraft into orbit around Venus.  This is a fairly straightforward task for a robotic mission; you can use the atmosphere of Venus to aerobrake, which will gradually slow the spacecraft down and allow it to slip into orbit.  The problem is not getting into orbit around Venus – it’s getting out of it.  Venus is a large planet (almost as big as the Earth) and it takes significant energy to achieve escape velocity.  With a robotic spacecraft, we don’t worry about that because there is no need to return it to Earth.  I suspect that a human crew might feel differently about such a proposition.

In plain fact, there is nothing of any real scientific value that a human crew can do during a few-minutes-long flyby encounter with Venus.  So we are talking about undertaking a months-long trip through interplanetary space, fully exposed to cosmic radiation and solar particle events, for a momentary view of an extremely hot planet of bright, featureless cloud tops.

Space advocates are desperately looking for something people can do and somewhere they can go in space on timescales of less than multiple decades at costs of less than hundreds of billions of dollars.  If only there where some place we could get to within a decade or so, for a cost that doesn’t bust the latest budget.  If only there was a destination in space where human judgment, knowledge and expertise would play a real time critical role in mission success and where new capability would be realized.

If only…..