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…..

The Great White Fleet of the United States Navy, 1907 -- We need a fleet of spacecraft to open "This New Ocean" of space

We seem to be in one of those periods in which basic reasons for doing what we do as a nation are called into question.  This includes our national civil space program, which for the last few years has engaged in an extended period of back-biting and navel-gazing.  Much of this “debate” has focused on either or both of two points: what rocket to build and where to go, and not on sustainability.

In an era of limited resources, our challenge is to create a worthwhile space program with an expenditure rate that falls at or below a level perceived as affordable.  Given this reality (regardless of prevailing agency direction or assertions about projected deep space destinations) it is highly likely that cislunar space will be the sphere of space operations for the coming decade or two. Thus the questions should be:  What are we doing in space and why are we doing it?  If the answer is a series of space exploration “firsts” (flags-and-footprints forever), that model will require specific activities and missions.  If the answer is that an incrementally developed transportation infrastructure is desired, one that creates an expanding sphere of human operations, then such a model requires a different set of specific activities and missions.

Thus, the real debate is not about launch vehicles or spacecraft or even destinations; it is about the long-term – the paradigm or template of space operations.  One model requires mega-rockets to distant targets for touch-and-go missions; for convenience, I’ll call it the “Apollo” template (no denigration intended).  The other model is an incremental, go-somewhere-to-stay-and-then-expand-onwards mindset – call it the “Shuttle” template (again, same disclaimer).  The one that you adopt and follow depends on what purpose you believe human spaceflight serves.

Because Mars may harbor former or existing life, NASA has presumed that it is our “ultimate destination” in space.  In effect, the entire focus of the human spaceflight effort has devolved into a huge science project – “The Quest for Life” (which means finding pond scum, not ET).  Thus, debate about what to build, where to go and how to do it must be formulated towards attainment of Mars.

This unspoken assumption has been at the root of most space objective studies for the past 20 years.  Mars was the end point of President George H.W. Bush’s Space Exploration Initiative, President George W. Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration, of former Lockheed-Martin President Norm Augustine’s two reports, and a myriad of space groups and societies.  From the 1990′s to the present, a multi-billion dollar robotic campaign has sent mission after mission to Mars, each discovering that the red planet once had liquid water.  This mania for Mars and preoccupation with possible life there, has blinkered our perceptions of the space program and distorted our reality of what is possible or attainable on reasonable time scales with available resources.

Long term, the goal for human spaceflight is to create the capability to go anywhere we choose, for as long as we need, and do whatever we want to in space.  For the sake of argument, if one accepts such a goal, which model is more amenable to implementing it: the Apollo template or the Shuttle template?

If our goal is to “sail on the ocean of space,” we need a navy.  Navies don’t operate with just one class of ship because one class isn’t capable of doing all that is necessary.  Not all ships will look or operate the same because they have different purposes and destinations.  We need transports, way stations, supply depots, and ports.  In space terms, these consist of one to get people to and from space (LEO), one to get them to and from points beyond LEO, way stations and outposts at GEO, L-1, low lunar orbit, and to the lunar surface.  To fuel and provision our space navy, we require supply (propellant) depots in LEO, L-1 and on the lunar surface.  Ports of call are all the places we may go to with this system.  Initially, those ports are satellites in various orbits which require service, maintenance and replacement with larger, distributed systems.  Later, our harbor will be the surface of the Moon, to harvest its resources, thereby creating more capability and provisions from space.  Reliable and frequent access to the entire Solar System, not one or two destinations, should be our ultimate goal.

By designing and building mission-specific vehicles and elements, the “Apollo” template forfeits going everywhere and doing everything.  However, adopting the “Shuttle” model does not preclude going to Mars.  In fact, I contend that to go to Mars in an affordable manner that sustains repeated trips, one needs the infrastructure provided by a space faring navy.  Building a series of one-off spacecraft – huge launch vehicles to dash to Mars for expensive, public relations extravaganzas will eventually put us right back in the box we’re in now.

We have been arguing about the wrong things.  It is the mindset of the space program that needs re-thinking – not the next destination, not the next launch vehicle, and not the next spacecraft.  How can we change the discussion?  First, we need to understand and articulate the true choices so that people can see and evaluate the different approaches and requirements.  Second, we need to develop sample architectures that fit the requirements for “affordable incrementalism.”  Finally, we need to get such plans in front of the decision makers.  There is no guarantee that they will accept it or even listen to the arguments for it.  But right now, they are completely ignorant about it.

A cost-effective, sustainable human spaceflight program must be incremental and cumulative.  Our space program must continually expand our reach, creating new capabilities over time.  Moreover, it should contribute to compelling national economic, scientific and security interests.  Building a lasting and reusable space transportation system does that, whereas a series of PR stunt missions will not.  The original vision of the Shuttle system was to incrementally move into the Solar System – first a Shuttle to-and-from LEO, then Station as a jumping off platform and then beyond LEO into cislunar space.  We have the parts from the now retired Shuttle system and an assembled and working International Space Station.  We can use these legacy pieces to build an affordable system to access the near regions and resources of cislunar space.  In this new age of austerity, perhaps we will finally acquire the means to build our pathway to the stars.

Setting up a mining operation on an asteroid may be difficult (from Howstuffworks.com)

Part III:  Resource Utilization Considerations

In Part I and Part II of this series, I examined some of the operational and scientific issues associated with a human mission to a near Earth asteroid (NEO) and contrasted them with the simpler operations and greater scientific return of a mission to the Moon.  To continue the discussion of what we might do at an asteroid, I will now consider using the local resources offered by asteroids, how they differ from those of the Moon, and offer some practical considerations on accessing and using them.

To become a truly space faring species, humanity must learn how to use what we find in space to survive and thrive.  Tied to the logistics chain of the Earth, we are now and always will be limited in space capability.  Our ultimate goal in space is to develop the capability to go anywhere at any time and conduct any mission we can imagine.  Such capability is unthinkable without being able to obtain provisions from resources found off-planet.  That means developing and using the resources of space to create new capabilities.

One of the alleged benefits of asteroid destinations is that they are rich in resource potential.  I would agree, putting the accent on the word “potential.”  Our best guide to the nature of these resources comes from the study of meteorites, which are derived from near Earth asteroids.  They have several compositions, the most common being the ordinary chondrite, which makes up about 85% of observed meteorite falls.  Ordinary chondrites are basically rocks, rich in the elements silicon, iron, magnesium, calcium and aluminum.  They contain abundant metal grains, composed mostly of iron and nickel, widely dispersed throughout the rock.

The resource potential of asteroids lies not in these objects, but in the minority of asteroids that have more exotic compositions.  Metal asteroids make up about 7% of the population and are composed of nearly pure iron-nickel metal, with some inclusions of rock-like material as a minor component.  Other siderophile (iron-loving) elements including platinum and gold make up trace portions of these bodies.  A metal asteroid is an extremely high-grade ore deposit and potentially could be worth billions of dollars if we were able to get these metals back to Earth, although one should be mindful of the possible catastrophic effects on existing precious metal markets – so much gold was produced during the 1849 California Gold Rush that the world market price of gold decreased by a factor of sixteen.

From the spaceflight perspective, water has the most value.  Another type of relatively rare asteroid is also a chondrite, but a special type that contains carbon and organic compounds as well as clays and other hydrated minerals.  These bodies contain significant amounts of water.  Water is one of the most useful substances in space – it supports human life (to drink, to use as radiation shielding, and to breath when cracked into its component hydrogen and oxygen), it can be used as a medium of energy storage (fuel cells) and it is the most powerful chemical rocket propellant known.  Finding and using a water-rich NEO would create a logistics depot of immense value.

A key advantage of asteroids for resources is a drawback as an operational environment – they have extremely low surface gravity.  Getting into and out of the Moon’s gravity well requires a change in velocity of about 2380 m/s (both ways); to do the same for a typical asteroid requires only a few meters per second.  This means that a payload launched from an asteroid rather than the Moon saves almost 5 km/s in delta-v, a substantial amount of energy.  So from the perspective of energy, the asteroids beat the Moon as a source of materials.

There are, however, some difficulties in mining and using asteroidal material as compared to lunar resources.  First is the nature of the feedstock or “ore.”  We have recently found that water at the poles of the Moon is not only present in enormous quantity (tens of billions of tons) but is also in a form that can be easily used – ice.  Ice can be converted into a liquid for further processing at minimal energy cost; if the icy regolith from the poles is heated to above 0° C, the ice will melt and water can be collected and stored.  The water in carbonaceous chondrites is chemically bound within mineral structures.  Significant amounts of energy are required to break these chemical bonds to free the water, at least 2-3 orders of magnitude more energy, depending on the specific mineral phase being processed.  So extracting water from an asteroid, present in quantities of a few percent to maybe a couple of tens of percent, requires significant energy; water-ice at the poles of the Moon is present in greater abundance (up to 100% in certain polar craters) and is already in an easy-to-process and use form.

The processing of natural materials to extract water has many detailed steps, from the acquisition of the feedstock to moving the material through the processing stream to collection and storage of the derived product.  At each stage, we typically separate one component from another; gravity serves this purpose in most industrial processing.  One difficulty in asteroid resource processing will be to either devise techniques that do not require gravity (including related phenomena, such as thermal convection) or to create an artificial gravity field to ensure that things move in the right directions.  Either approach complicates the resource extraction process.

The large distance from the Earth and poor accessibility of asteroids versus the Moon, works against resource extraction and processing.  Human visits to NEOs will be of short duration and because radio time-lags to asteroids are on the order of minutes, direct remote control of processing will not be possible.  Robotic systems for asteroid mining must be designed to have a large degree of autonomy.  This may become possible but presently we do not have enough information on the nature of asteroidal feedstock to either design or even envision the use of such robotic equipment.  Moreover, even if we did fully understand the nature of the deposit, mining and processing are highly interactive activities on Earth and will be so in space.  The slightest anomaly or miscalculation can cause the entire processing stream to break down and in remote operations, it will be difficult to diagnose and correct the problem and re-start it.

The accessibility issue also cuts against asteroidal resources.  We cannot go to a given asteroid at will; launch windows open for very short periods and are closed most of the time.  This affects not only our access to the asteroid but also shortens the time periods when we may depart the object to return our products to near-Earth space.  In contrast, we can go to and from the Moon at any time and its proximity means that nearly instantaneous remote control and response are possible.  The difficulties of remote control for asteroid activities have led some to suggest that we devise a way to “tow” the body into Earth orbit, where it may be disaggregated and processed at our leisure.  I shudder to think about being assigned to write the environmental impact (if you’ll pardon the expression) statement for that activity.

So where does that leave us in relation to space resource access and utilization?  Asteroid resource utilization has potential but given today’s technology levels, uncertain prospects for success.  Asteroids are hard to get to, have short visit times for round-trips, difficult work environments, and uncertain product yields.  Asteroids do have low gravity going for them.  In contrast, the Moon is close and has the materials we want in the form we need it.  The Moon is easily accessible at any time and is amenable to remote operations controlled from Earth in near-real time.  My perspective is that it makes the most sense to go to the Moon first and learn the techniques, difficulties and technology for planetary resource utilization by manufacturing propellant from lunar water.  Nearly every step of this activity – from prospecting, processing and harvesting – will teach us how to mine and process materials from future destinations, both minor and planetary sized-bodies.  Resource utilization has commonality of techniques and equipment, the requirement to move and work with particulate materials, and the ability to purify and store the products.  Learning how to access and process resources on the Moon is a general skill that transfers to any future space destination.

There was a reason that the Moon was made our first destination in the original Vision for Space Exploration.  It’s close, it’s interesting, and it’s useful.  Establishing a foothold on the Moon opens up cislunar space to routine access and development.  It will teach us the skills of a space faring people.  It makes sense to go there first and create a permanent space transportation system.  Once we have that, we get everything else.

Destination: Moon or Asteroid?

Part I:  Operational Considerations

Part II: Scientific Considerations

People at an asteroid: What will they do there?

Part II:  Scientific Considerations

In my last post, I examined some of the operational considerations associated with a human mission to a near Earth asteroid and how it contrasted with the simpler, easier operations of lunar return.  Here, I want to consider what we might do at this destination by focusing on the scientific activities and possible return we could expect from such a mission.  Some of the operational constraints mentioned in the previous post will impact the scientific return we expect from a human NEO mission.

Asteroids are the left over debris from the formation of the Solar System.  Solid pieces of refractory (high melting temperature) elements and minerals that make up the rocky planets have their precursors in the asteroids.  We actually have many pieces of these objects now – as meteorites.  The rocks that fall from the sky are overwhelmingly from the small asteroids that orbit the Sun (the exception is that in meteorite collections, some come from larger bodies, including the Moon and Mars).

Moreover, we have flown by almost a dozen small bodies, orbited two, impacted one and “landed” on two others.  Thousands of images and spectra have been obtained for these rocky objects.  The chemical composition of the asteroids Eros and Vesta have been obtained remotely.  We have catalogued the craters, cracks, scarps, grooves and pits that make up the surface features of these objects.  We have seen that some are highly fragmental aggregates of smaller rocks, while others seem to be more solid and denser.  In addition to these spacecraft data, thousands of asteroids have been catalogued, mapped and spectrally characterized from telescopes on the Earth.  We have recognized the compositional variety, the various shapes, spin rates and orbits of these small planetoids.  We now know for certain that the most common type of meteorite (chondrite) is derived from the most spectally common type of asteroid (S-type) as a result from the Hayabusa mission, the world’s first asteroid sample return.

In short, we know quite a bit about the asteroids.  What new knowledge would we gain from a human mission to one?

Although we have (literally) tons of meteorites, extraterrestrial samples without geological context have much less scientific value than those collected from planetary units with regional extent and clear origins.  Many different processes have affected the surfaces of the planets and understanding the precise location and geological setting of a rock is essential to reconstructing the history and processes responsible for its formation and by inference, the history and processes of its host planet.

Most asteroids are made up of primitive, undifferentiated planetary matter.  They have been destroyed and re-assembled by collision and impact over the last 4.5 billion years of Solar System history.  The surface has been ground-up and fragmented by the creation of regolith and some details of this process remain poorly understood.  But in general terms, we pretty much know what asteroids are made of, how they are put together, and what processes operate upon their surfaces.  True enough, the details are not fully understood, but there is no reason to suspect that we are missing a major piece of the asteroid story.  In contrast, planetary bodies such as the Moon have whole epochs and processes that we are just now uncovering – in the case of the Moon, water has been recently found to be present inside, outside and in significant quantity at the poles, relations that have enormous implications for lunar history and about which we were nearly totally ignorant only a couple of years ago.

Most NEOs will be simple ordinary chondrites – we know this because ordinary chondrites make up about 85% of all meteorite falls (an observed fall of a rock from the sky).  This class of meteorite is remarkable, not for its diversity but for its uniformity.  Chondrites are used as a chemical standard in the analysis of planetary rocks and soils to measure the amounts of differentiation or chemical change during geological processing.  In themselves, chondrites do not vary (much) except that they show different degrees of heating subsequent to their formation, but not enough heating to significantly change their chemical composition.

Some NEO asteroids are pieces of bigger objects that experienced chemical and mineral change or differentiation.  Vesta (not a NEO, but a main belt asteroid) has reflection spectra similar to known, evolved meteorites, the eucrite group.  These rocks suggest that some asteroids are small, differentiated planetoids, having volcanic activity that dates from the very beginning of Solar System history.  Moreover, since we have pieces of the Moon and Mars as meteorite fragments, some NEOs may consist of material blasted off these planets.  However, given that most NEOs are inaccessible to human missions, the likelihood that we could visit one of planetary derivation is small (curious that the most interesting of the NEOs appear to be those derived from some bigger (planet-sized) object.)  In broad terms of meteorite science, multiple small samples from a variety of asteroid types are preferable to many bigger samples of a single specimen, exactly the opposite of what a human mission will provide.

What specifically would a crew do during a NEO visit?  An astronaut on a planet typically would explore the surface, map geological relations where possible, collect representative samples of the units and rock types that can be discerned, and collect as much mapping and compositional data as possible to aid in the interpretation of the returned samples.  In the case of a NEO, many of these activities would not be particularly fruitful.  The asteroid is either a pile of rubble or a single huge boulder.  Chondritic meteorites are uniform in composition, so geological setting is not particularly instructive.  We do have questions about the processes of space weathering, the changes that occur in rocks as a result of their exposure to space for varying lengths of time.   Such questions could be addressed by a simple robotic sample collector, as the recently approved OSIRIS mission plans to do.

One question that could be addressed by human visitors to asteroids is their internal make-up and structure.  Some appear to be rubble piles while others are nearly solid – why such different fates in different asteroids?  By using active seismometry (acoustic sounding), a human crew could lay out instruments and sensors to decipher the density profile of an asteroid.  Understanding the internal structure of an asteroid is important for learning how strong such objects are; this could be an important factor in devising mitigation strategies in case we ever have to divert a NEO away from a collision trajectory with the Earth.  As mentioned in my preceding post, the crew had better work quickly – loiter times at the asteroid will probably be short, on the order of a few days at most.

Although we can explore asteroids with human missions, it seems likely that few significant insights into the origins and processes of the early Solar System will result from such exploration.  Such study is already a very active field, using the samples that nature has provided us – the meteorites.  Sample collection from an asteroid will yield more samples of meteorites, only without the melted fusion crusts that passage through the Earth’s atmosphere creates.  In other words, from this mission, scientific progress will be incremental, not revolutionary.

In contrast, because they yield information on geological histories and processes at planet-wide scales, sample collection and return from a large planetary body such as the Moon or Mars could revolutionize our knowledge of these objects in particular and the Solar System in general.  Many years prior to the Moon missions, we had meteorites that showed impact metamorphic effects but the idea of impact-caused mass extinctions of life on Earth only came after we had fully comprehended the impact process recorded in the Apollo samples from the Moon.  The significance of impact-related mineral and chemical features were not appreciated until we had collected samples with geological context to understand what the lunar samples were telling us.

Of course, science being unpredictable, some major surprise that could revolutionize our knowledge may await us on some distant asteroid.  But such surprises doubtless await us in many places throughout the Solar System and the best way to assure ourselves that we will eventually find them is to develop the capability to go anywhere in space at any time.  That means developing and using the resources of space to create new capabilities.  I will consider that in my next post.

Destination: Moon or Asteroid?

Part I:  Operational Considerations

Part III: Resource Utilization Considerations

Lockheed-Martin's Plymouth Rock mission concept

Part I:  Operational Considerations

The current controversy over the direction of our national space program has many dimensions but most of the discourse has focused on the means (government vs. commercial launch vehicles) not the ends (destinations and activities).  Near-Earth objects (NEO, i.e., asteroids) became the next destination for human exploration as an alternative to the Moon when the Augustine committee advocated a “flexible path” in their 2009 report.  The reason for going to an asteroid instead of the Moon was that it costs too much money to develop a lunar lander whereas asteroids, having extremely low surface gravity, don’t require one.  The administration embraced and supported this change in direction and since then, the agency has been studying possible NEO missions and how to conduct them.

On the surface, it might seem that NEO missions answer the requirements for future human destinations.  NEOs are beyond low Earth orbit, they require long transit times and so simulate the duration of future Mars missions, and (wait for it)… we’ve never visited one with people.  However, detailed consideration indicates that NEOs are not the best choice as our next destination in space.  In this post and two additional ones to come, I will consider some of the operational, scientific and resource utilization issues that arise in planning NEO missions and exploration activities and compare them to the lunar alternative.

Most asteroids reside not near the Earth but in a zone between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the asteroid belt.  The very strong gravity field of Jupiter will sometimes perturb the orbits of these rocky bodies and hurl them into the inner Solar System, where they usually hit the Sun or one of the inner planets.  Between those two events, they orbit the Sun, sometimes coming close to the Earth.  Such asteroids are called near-Earth objects and can be any of a variety of different types of asteroids.  Typically, they are small, on the order of tens of meters to a few kilometers in size.  As such, they do not have significant gravity fields of their own, so missions to them do not “land” on an alien world, but rather rendezvous and station-keep with it in deep space.  Think “formation flying” with the International Space Station (ISS) without the option to dock.

The moniker “near Earth” is a relative descriptor.  These objects orbit the Sun just as the Earth does and vary in distance to the Earth from a few million km to hundreds of millions of km, depending upon the time of year.  Getting to one has nothing to do with getting to another, so multiple NEO destinations in one trip are unlikely.  Because the distance to a NEO varies widely, we cannot just go to one whenever we choose – launch windows open at certain times of the year and because the NEO is in its own orbit, these windows occur infrequently and are of very short duration, usually a few days.  Moreover, due to the distances between Earth and the NEO, radio communications will not be instantaneous, with varying time-lags of tens of seconds to several minutes between transmission and reception.  Thus, the crew must be autonomous during operations.

Although there are several thousand NEOs, few of them are possible destinations for human missions.  This is a consequence of two factors.  First, space is very big and even several thousand rocks spread out over several billion cubic kilometers of empty space results in a very low density of objects.  Second, many of these objects are unreachable, requiring too much velocity change (“delta-v”) from an Earth departure stage; this can be a result of either too high of an orbital inclination (out of the plane of the Earth’s orbit) or an orbit that is too eccentric (all orbits are elliptical).  These factors result in reducing the field of possible destinations from thousands to a dozen or so at best.  Moreover, the few NEOs that can be reached are all very small, from a few meters to perhaps a km or two in size.  Not much exploratory area there, especially after a months-long trip in deep space.

That’s another consideration – transit time.  Not only are there few targets, it takes months to reach one of them.  Long transit time is sold as a benefit by asteroid advocates:  because a trip to Mars will take months, a NEO mission will allow us to test out the systems for Mars missions.  But such systems do not yet exist.  On a human mission to a NEO, the crew is beyond help from Earth, except for radioed instructions and sympathy.  A human NEO mission will have to be self-sufficient to a degree that does not now exist.  Parts on the ISS fail all the time, but because it is only 400 km above the Earth, it is relatively straightforward to send replacement parts up on the next supply mission (unless your supply fleet is grounded, as currently it has been).  On a NEO mission, a broken system must be both fixable and fixed by the crew.  Even seemingly annoying malfunctions can become critical.  As ISS astronaut Don Pettit puts it, “If your toilet breaks, you’re dead.”

Crew exposure is another consequence of long flight times, in this case to the radiation environment of interplanetary space.  This hazard comes in two flavors – solar flares and galactic cosmic rays.  Solar flares are massive eruptions of high-energy particles from the Sun, occurring at irregular intervals.  We must carry some type of high-mass shielding to protect the crew from this deadly radiation.  Because we cannot predict when a flare might occur, this massive solar “storm shelter” must be carried wherever we go in the Solar System (because Apollo missions were only a few days long, the crew simply accepted the risk of possible death from a solar flare).  Cosmic rays are much less intense, but constant.  The normal ones are relatively harmless, but high-energy versions (heavy nuclei from ancient supernovae) can cause serious tissue damage.  Although crew can be partly shielded from this hazard, they are never totally protected from it.  Astronauts in low Earth orbit are largely protected from radiation because they orbit beneath the van Allen radiation belts, which protect life on the Earth.  On the Moon, we can use regolith to shield crew but for now, such mass is not available to astronauts traveling in deep space.

When the crew finally arrives at their destination, more difficulties await.  Most NEOs spin very rapidly, with rotation periods on the order of a few hours at most.  This means that the object is approachable only near its polar area.  But because these rocks are irregularly shaped, rotation is not the smooth, regular spin of a planet, but more like that of a wobbling toy top.  If material is disturbed on the surface, the rapid spin of the asteroid will launch the debris into space, creating a possible collision hazard to the human vehicle and crew.  The lack of gravity means that “walking” on the surface of the asteroid is not possible; crew will “float” above the surface of the object and just as occurs in Earth orbit, each touch of the object (action) will result in a propulsive maneuver away from the surface (reaction).

We need to learn how to work quickly at the asteroid because we don’t have much time there.  Loiter times near the asteroid for most opportunities are on the order of a few days.  Why so short?  Because the crew wants to be able to come home.  Both NEO and Earth continue to orbit the Sun and we need to make sure that the Earth is in the right place when we arrive back at its orbit.  So in effect, we will spend months traveling there, in a vehicle with the habitable volume of a large walk-in closet (OK, two walk-in closets maybe), a short time at the destination and then months for the trip home.  Is it worth it?  That will be the subject of my next post.

Destination:  Moon or Asteroid?

Part II:  Science Considerations

Part III: Resource Utilization Considerations

Former Presidential Science Advisor John H. Marburger

Recently deceased John H. Marburger, former Science Advisor to President George W. Bush and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, had a long and distinguished career as a scientist, an administrator and public servant.  I knew him through his advocacy and involvement in the development of the Vision for Space Exploration.  His passing is a loss for America.

The development of the VSE was a direct outgrowth of the devastating loss of the Shuttle Columbia and its crew of seven on February 1, 2003.  When questions arose over the need for a human space program, members of the Bush administration undertook a year-long internal study on the purpose and direction of America’s civil space effort.  Why do we send people into space?  What are our ultimate goals?  Many options were on the table during this period of soul-searching.

Post-Columbia, it was very apparent to those who knew and understood the numbers that regardless of direction, significant increases in NASA’s funding were not likely.  Any new mission would have to fit an essentially no-growth agency budget (with two wars raging and the explosive growth of entitlement spending, the federal budget could not be stretched enough to cover a doubling of the agency budget – which even if possible, was less in real dollars than Apollo had 40 years earlier).  Thus the question became: Given that additional new money would be extremely limited, how can we safely move beyond low Earth orbit?  The answer was to maximize our access to space by learning how to use what is available in space to create new capability.

A chemical-propulsion human mission to Mars might have a total mass in Earth orbit of some 500 tons; more than 80% of that mass is fuel for the journey.  There are two ways to lower the costs of such a mission:  1) significantly lower the costs of launch from Earth; 2) identify and make fuel from mining sites in space.  We’ve struggled off and on with the former but have never attempted the latter.  Moreover, learning how to use the resources of space is an essential skill to master for long term, sustainable human presence in space.

The Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) was unveiled at NASA headquarters by President Bush.  The January 2004 mission announcement was groundbreaking in that the President identified the use of lunar resources to help create and advance a sustainable human presence, specifically, the production of fuel from lunar materials for beyond LEO missions.  It was the first time such a concept had been mentioned in any policy declaration.  Subsequently, that part of Bush’s speech was proclaimed by many commenting on, or working for the space community, as meaning “building the Mars ship on the Moon.”  That characterization confused the clear message that had been sent – one of using what is in space (resources) to create new space faring capabilities (product) starting on the Moon.

Jack Marburger was deeply involved in the year-long space policy study and it was clear that his insight and vision were more acute than many others working in the White House and at NASA.  I remember meeting with him in his office at OSTP in mid-2004, some months after the VSE had been announced.  At that time, he was aware of the concept of using space resources and was still formulating the implications and possibilities of such an activity.  We discussed the idea of water as the “currency” of spaceflight, being useful for life-support consumables, energy storage and rocket fuel.  I described for him our then-current knowledge (which at the time was extremely meager but promising) of the presence of ice at the poles of the Moon and the likelihood that appreciable quantities of water might be harvested there.

In the spring of 2006, Jack gave a keynote address at the 44^th Goddard Space Symposium.  In his speech he pointedly asked, “Why do we have a space program?”  Rather than repeating the usual clichés about exploring the unknown or inspiring the next generation, Jack articulated a clear policy direction by saying, “questions about the Vision boil down to whether we want to incorporate the Solar System in our economic sphere, or not.”  He specifically noted that such a motivation is vastly different from the one that propelled America to the Moon in the 1960s, saying, “The Moon has unique significance for all space applications for a reason that to my amazement is hardly ever discussed in popular accounts of space policy.”  The Moon is the nearest, most accessible useful object beyond low Earth orbit and that is why it is the first step of the VSE.  We go to the Moon not to repeat Apollo but to create new capability.  Jack understood this clearly.

The speech Marburger gave at that symposium stands today as one of the clearest and most “visionary” articulations of a future in space ever given.  It was nothing less than the declaration of a new paradigm for spaceflight, one in which we go and do in space whatever jobs we can imagine or need.  This capability is created by learning to use what we find in space, reducing the need to launch (at such prohibitive cost) everything from the bottom of the deepest gravity well in the inner Solar System.  As long as we are held hostage to this old template, we will always be mass- and power-limited in space and thus limited in capability.

Jack Marburger understood the importance of and need for human exploration.   He sought innovative ways to create a sustainable and affordable space program.  Those of us who believe in this vision note his passing with sadness, but also with renewed determination to pursue this viable path.  We honor his memory and salute his contributions.

Other tributes:

Behind the Black

Space Politics

The probable current state of the Apollo American flags on the Moon: Symbolic?

Today is the 42^nd anniversary of man’s landing on the Moon.  The first step on the Moon – the step that “divided history” to use the words of the time – and the planting of the American flag there seems like a lifetime ago.  As a matter of fact, it was.

Tomorrow, the Space Shuttle Atlantis will land back at its launch site, ending that program’s 30-year tenure as the centerpiece of America’s space program.  That was not a lifetime ago, but a similar sense of loss is evident.

In both cases, the end of a mission series brought upheaval to the space program, as thousands of workers lost their jobs, sold their homes and moved on but not before helping to write an important chapter in America’s history.  The end of the Shuttle program and the dismantling of Shuttle infrastructure at Florida’s Cape parallels the dismantling of our national space program.

Ending this major U.S. space program is not like finishing a highway construction project or a bridge, where skilled workers go on to other construction projects.  The people that launched Saturn and Shuttle were highly trained – acquiring expert knowledge through years of experience.  They cannot be found on the street, but must be carefully assembled and made into a team, trained in their specific specialties, and tested in actual flight experience.

Unlike the end of Apollo, the end of Shuttle finds uncertainty in our national direction in space.  Despite the cawing of the flock of “new direction” supporters, a stunning realization is just now sinking in to a bewildered American public:  we’re discarding a national capability with no successor – no strategic direction, no vehicle, no path forward.  Not even a “flexible” one.

Seven years ago, a positive direction in space was articulated as the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE).  In short, it called for the gradual extension of human reach beyond low Earth orbit, starting with a return to the Moon, followed by trips to destinations beyond, including Mars.  Despite misinformation in the press, the Vision was not (and still is not) “unaffordable” – its affordability depends on its implementation.

The implementation of the VSE by NASA was predicated on the assumption that the Apollo approach was the best way to establish a new space faring capability.  Although such an assumption could be argued, it had the virtue of having an existence proof in that we had done it that way before.  A drawback to such an approach is that it opened the program to the criticism that lunar return under the VSE was merely a repeat of Apollo, a canard that wasn’t true then or now.

When Constellation ran into the developmental problems and extra costs that all new programs experience, national leaders became concerned.  This concern emanated not from the money being spent (the federal government spends more in 8 hours than NASA spends in a year); the concern was that this new effort appeared to be in support of a “repeat” of Apollo.  With few exceptions, most people had never heard the objective of using the Moon to create new space faring capability.  Instead, the public repeatedly heard the trite and dismissive “been there, done that” mantra and “We already have six American flags on the Moon,” to quote one notable.  And that mischaracterization of the Vision manifested our current direction, i.e., one of no direction.

We discarded both a working transportation system and a strategic path forward in space in exchange for promises of commercial space travel to LEO and dreams of human missions to an asteroid (with nebulous rationale and timetable).  Wishing new capabilities into existence without a clear step-by-step path forward would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic.  The administration came to a fork in the road, pondered the direction our national space program could go, and chose a path with no objective or productive program architecture that America could embrace to stay on top of her game.

Over the course of the Apollo program, our astronauts deployed six American flags on the Moon.  For forty-odd years, the flags have been exposed to the full fury of the Moon’s environment – alternating 14 days of searing sunlight and 100° C heat with 14 days of numbing-cold -150° C darkness.  But even more damaging is the intense ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the pure unfiltered sunlight on the cloth (modal) from which the Apollo flags were made.  Even on Earth, the colors of a cloth flag flown in bright sunlight for many years will eventually fade and need to be replaced.  So it is likely that these symbols of American achievement have been rendered blank, bleached white by the UV radiation of unfiltered sunlight on the lunar surface.  Some of them may even have begun to physically disintegrate under the intense flux.

America is left with no discernible space program while the Moon above us no longer flies a visible U.S. flag.  How ironic.

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.

President John F. Kennedy, May 25, 1961: “I believe that this nation should commit itself…..”

Tomorrow is the 50^th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s special address to Congress – a request for supplemental appropriation for a variety of projects but most famously remembered for the announcement of his Man-Moon-Decade goal of Project Apollo.  That event, cited by space advocates and excerpted in space and history documentaries, is remembered as the pinnacle of American leadership in space policy.

When President Kennedy announced his Moon landing goal for America, no world power was capable of accomplishing such a feat.  By winning the “Moon race,” America would demonstrate to the non-aligned (and supposedly undecided) world that a free, democratic system could win against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ repressive, communist regime. The Soviet’s then-advantage in rocketry did not give them a leg up on a manned race to the Moon as both countries would have to develop and build a new system to deliver men to the lunar surface.  Congress and enthusiastic Americans accepted this audacious challenge, winning not only the race to the Moon (within the decade) but also developing a strong economy through technological and scientific breakthroughs.

The subsequent forty-year span since Apollo ended has seen space enthusiasts and policy makers searching for the “holy grail” of renewed greatness, believing (because of events following President Kennedy’s bold direction) that presidential statements can make it happen again.  The most recent articulation of this belief comes from one of the most insightful students of the JFK decision, Prof. John Logsdon, whose new book (John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon) focuses on the Apollo decision and its subsequent impact on space policy.  Logsdon places particular emphasis on a supposed change of heart by Kennedy after the Moon race was well underway.  In citing two occasions where Kennedy publicly proposed to the Soviets that we go to the Moon together, Logsdon believes that had he lived, Kennedy would have retooled the race away from a nationalistic competition to joined hands with the Soviets in a cosmic Kumbaya reach for the Moon.

Though Logsdon recognizes that the unique aspect of Apollo came about as a manifestation of Cold War competition (something he believes does not prevail today), he sees JFK’s later comments regarding cooperation as providing us with the “holy grail” of continued space exploration going forward.  “I kind of fall back on presidential leadership,” he said. “I doubt this is going to happen, but I would hope that on the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s own speech, next Wednesday, President Obama has something positive to say about working together internationally to find a global strategy for exploration… I would not hold my breath on that happening, but something like that needs to be done.”

After years of reminding space students that the Apollo decision is not a good historical guide for setting a space agenda, Logsdon wants President Obama to resurrect space using the force of a Kennedyesque pronouncement – not as a national challenge, but as he believes Apollo would have developed had Kennedy lived to redirect it:  an international project of cooperation that will financially support space exploration.  By passing the JFK space leadership “torch” to President Obama, Logsdon envisions the Apollo presidential challenge resurrected and revitalized (this time to Mars, the long-held and sought after dream of many space advocates).  But this vision rewrites history:  Apollo wasn’t about space, it was about war, where presidential leadership is needed and required.

The problem with applying Logsdon’s reasoning to the current U.S. space policy morass is that, as with our endless debate about heavy lift vs. other launch vehicle options, it confuses means with ends.  Whether we go into space with or without a bold presidential declaration is secondary to WHY we are doing it.  Because we have not stated what we are trying to achieve, arguments about how we go about it, whether in terms of rockets, destinations, declarations or participants, leave us still sitting on the launch pad (soon, only on a Russian launch pad).  Without an agreed upon national purpose, space has become a political toy, vulnerable to changes in direction with each new administration.

On the 50^th anniversary of Kennedy’s rightly famous speech, the real question before us remains unaddressed and in some respects, unasked.  I ask it now:  What are we trying to accomplish with our national civil space program?  By answering that question and establishing a realistic and reachable national goal, America will establish a lasting space industry and presence, one undeterred or hobbled by changing political winds.

I have my own answer to this question, which I have discussed here and elsewhere in detail.  Space development is an essential, irreplaceable part of everyday life in 21^st Century America; we have charted a course whereby we must learn the skills of creating more capability in space, including the building and maintenance of larger, more capable space assets (as well as protecting existing ones).  To proceed, we need a reusable and extensible Earth-Moon space transportation system.  I believe that one can be created through the production and use of the material and energy resources of the Moon.

Such a transportation system will extend human reach into the Solar System beyond low Earth orbit.  By demonstrating the viability of resource extraction off planet, individual and joint investments will materialize in many forms and from many sectors, spurring on a new and burgeoning space industry.  This template contrasts significantly with an elitist, academic exercise in scientific data collection wrapped in the worn out mantra of “exciting” the public.  Our national interests will be best served through cislunar development and space resource utilization.

If these are desirable goals, then how we go about achieving it can be the subject of legitimate debate.  Until we address the objective of a large-scale national expenditure for space, presidential announcements will never possess the power or the effect Kennedy’s words had in bringing about a great era of American productivity and pride. The United States is at a critical crossroads. Will we lead or will we be content to follow?