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New report - same old assumptions?

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. – Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince.

In his famous book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn described two types of science: normal science, the everyday background work, where constant, steady but unspectacular advances occur in our knowledge, and revolutionary science, where fundamental assumptions and ways of conducting business are unalterably changed forever.  Kuhn called such a change a paradigm shift; a new paradigm (i.e., a framework of knowledge, including the assumptions, worldview, approaches and techniques to conduct business under a given set of circumstances) replaces the existing one and the new approaches and attitudes become the norm.

The paradigm model might also be applied to conducting business in other fields, in particular, the business of spaceflight.  Since it arose more than 50 years ago, the paradigm of spaceflight has largely remained unchanged.  In short, we conceive a mission (robotic or human), then design, build and launch a spacecraft to conduct that mission.  This satellite or spacecraft operates for a time in space—gathering information or providing a service—until it breaks down or becomes obsolete and is abandoned.  We then imagine the next mission—going back to the drawing board to design the next spacecraft—a process repeated continuously and a major cost of space exploration.

Is a paradigm shift – a “revolution” in space travel possible?  One would think that with 50 years of experience under our belts, we would have already exhausted all the possibilities.  Indeed, the imminent development of warp drive or “Cavorite” does not seem likely, but then, that’s the nature of truly revolutionary breakthroughs, isn’t it?  On the other hand, is there something missing – something that could be done right now using existing knowledge to change the rules of spaceflight and possibly spur additional breakthroughs?

As long as we’re chained to the existing spaceflight paradigm, we must continue hauling from Earth everything we need in space.  For human missions this includes all the air, water and other consumables needed for life support.  The cost to lift all this mass (which includes the weight of a massive amount of fuel needed to escape from Earth’s very deep gravity well) is budget busting.  So for “normal” space exploration, costs will never be lower except at the margins and we will always be mass-limited in space.  And when you are mass-limited, you are capability-limited as well.

I’ve argued here and elsewhere that there is a method that is already well understood in principle, but its practical application and viability is completely unknown.  If we could use what we find in space to create new capabilities, we would change the rules of spaceflight, thereby ushering in a true paradigm shift in space travel.

Such was the original intent of the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE).  The desire for fundamental change in perspective was behind the program’s specific direction to study and experiment with using the material and energy resources of the Moon.  From the moment it was announced, the true purpose of a lunar return was misunderstood, both inadvertently and deliberately.  Constellation is a rocket program; the VSE is not.

No one knows if using space resources is possible but we can find out by pursuing innovative technology.  In theory it works.  We’ve never attempted high-risk mining on the Moon and it may have significant practical difficulties but potentially, it could become a highly leveraging activity.

If we can extract and make rocket propellant on the Moon, we can create a completely reusable, refuelable transportation infrastructure in cislunar space.  If we can extract the oxygen and hydrogen, we can live in space.  Of course, such an outcome would change and transform the business model of space—something that fascinates and attracts many but repels others and hence, its mixed reception in aerospace circles.

This would truly be a revolution, a paradigm shift in the same sense as we understand it from Kuhn’s description of scientific progress; as a vast new expanse is opened to us and we are free to move about the universe, the world changes and things are never the same again.

In order to mitigate risk and to ensuring our economic and national security, government often steps in to develop technology that the private sector cannot or will not take on.  A government push to learn how to use the resources of space will break the cycle of launch and discard.  Instead of having a short “shelf-life,” our indispensable and unprotected systems in space become maintainable, reusable, extensible and affordable.

While reading the newly released Augustine report, keep in mind its background and its assumptions.  It is based solidly on the traditional models of conducting business in space – design, launch and abandon, along with the accompanying plea for more money to ensure a “robust” program of space exploration.

As long as such assumptions prevail, advances never will.

A cislunar transport system will revolutionize space travel (NASA artwork by Pat Rawlings)

Water is an extremely useful substance in space.  The recent finding of water on the Moon has generated considerable comment in the space community; a quick search on Google using the phrase “lunar water” returns over 7.66 million hits.  Lunar water’s significance lies not in its role as a medium for the presence of extraterrestrial life but rather in its potential to support terrestrial life—ours—as humanity moves beyond Earth.  The Moon is the port from where we will navigate—the safe harbor where we will learn how to live and work productively in space and from where we will set sail into our Solar System, thereby ensuring the survival of our species.

The three principal uses for this water are life support, energy storage, and rocket propellant.

We can easily imagine drinking water.  We need about 2 liters of water per day under ordinary circumstances.  Water is also a constituent of food, both unprepared and preserved, adding at least another liter to that total.  In addition to consumed water, we can also use water to make oxygen, replenishing the air we bring with us to create a breathable atmosphere.  Water is over 85% oxygen by weight and the liquid is easily broken into its constituent gases by passing an electrical current through it.

Another way that water supports life is by offering shielding and protection against solar and galactic cosmic radiation.  Water harvested from the Moon can fill the outer jackets of surface habitats, protecting not only human life and technology within it, but also the plants that we will want to grow there, both for food supply and carbon dioxide scrubbing of the habitat air.  Thus, water supports life on the Moon as both a consumable and as a building material.

A second main use of water is less often considered.  We can break down water into its component gases using electricity, but the process can also be reversed – hydrogen and oxygen gas can be combined to generate electricity in a device called a fuel cell.  When these gases combine, they generate electrical energy and make water as a by-product.  This technique was used in the Apollo spacecraft for power and water production.  When combined with another technique to generate electrical power (e.g., arrays of solar cells or a nuclear reactor), we make a completely reversible, self-sustaining power and water system.  Thus, the water becomes a medium of energy storage – during lunar night, we combine hydrogen and oxygen to make water and electrical power while during the daytime, we reverse the process by using electrical power generated by sunlight to disassociate the water back into its constituent gases.  Such a rechargeable fuel cell system enables permanent, sustainable human presence on the Moon.

The third important use for lunar water is for the production of rocket fuel.  Liquid hydrogen and oxygen are the most powerful chemical rocket propellants known.  By manufacturing rocket propellant from lunar water, we make the Moon a refueling station and logistics depot in space.  The critical value of this ability is that such rocket fuel not only permits our routine access to and from the Moon, but also enables access to any other point in cislunar space (the volume of space between Earth and Moon.)

All satellites reside in cislunar space.  Numerous remote-sensing satellites are found in low Earth orbit.  GPS elements reside in moderately high (few hundred kilometer) orbits.  Communication satellites are found at geosynchronous orbit, 35,000 km above the Earth.  Other specialized satellites occur at different altitudes.  At present, we cannot access these satellites with either human or robotic spacecraft.  So we design, build and fly these space assets, use them for a time then abandon them, replacing them as needed with new satellites—at great cost.  The ability to reach valuable space assets routinely with people and machines allows us to change the way we conduct business in space.  Instead of the current “fly and throw away” template, we can build extensible, maintainable and upgradeable systems.

Very large, distributed space systems will enable new capabilities, such as global communications using hand held cell phone-sized equipment, anywhere in the world at any time.  New remote-sensing platforms can be built to look at any corner of the globe at any wavelength in unprecedented detail.  Telescopes built on the Moon’s far side, where they will be shielded from Earth’s radio noise, can scan the universe in new areas of the spectrum. These and many more capabilities are enabled by a cislunar transportation system and will vastly improve life on Earth.

By understanding and using the resources of our Moon, we can push out to the stars.  An abundance of water on the Moon fundamentally allows us to change the rules of exploration and spaceflight to our advantage.  We stand at the threshold of a new understanding of how the Moon evolved and works—and works to humanity’s advantage.

The more things change....

Over the long holiday weekend, Turner Classic Movies regaled us with a really obscure one – the 1960 biopic, I Aim at the Stars, starring Curd Jürgens.  This movie is a biography of Wernher von Braun, the German rocket scientist who built the V-2 for Hitler and the Saturn V for America.  Although no landmark in cinematic history, it was an interesting and reasonably well told story, even if it glossed over a few inconvenient facts about von Braun, like his nominal membership in Himmler’s SS.

What fascinated me in this movie (which I had not seen) was not von Braun, but the character played by James Daly, Major William Taggert (an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army who, having lost his family to a V-2 hitting London, hated von Braun and all of the Peenemunde rocket group).  After the war, Taggert follows the Germans as they relocate, first to White Sands and finally to Huntsville to continue their research into rocket flight.  Taggert becomes a reporter (his civilian occupation) who beats his media pulpit about the irrelevancy of space flight.  “All the money spent on space could build schools and hospitals instead!” he angrily harangues via television, a philosophical counterpoint to von Braun’s plea for an American satellite program.

Watching the movie, I was struck that this debate has been ongoing for the last 50 years.  Something about space exploration or human forays into new realms sticks in the craw of some people.  Although the context of the von Braun-Taggart argument was Sputnik and a possible American response, much has remained the same over these last 50 years.  The public still falls into two camps – those who believe that our survival depends on continued reach beyond Earth versus those who think it’s a waste of money or that the money could be better spent.  NASA spends most of its outreach efforts trying to win the hearts and minds of this latter group.

Case in point:  a NASA “white paper,” clearly a rough draft, leaked to the press, describing the post-Augustine space program.  Omitting the use of our Moon as the logical next step, “Generation Mars” is billed as the necessary pathway to keep NASA relevant, the public engaged and the required pipeline for sustainable product and group input cycles.  No more idiotic fooling around with, or distractions from, lunar bases.  The “exciting” destination is Mars – in about thirty years or so.  In the mean time, keep flying Shuttle so as not to upset the applecart.  Oh, and imagine, “use” the ISS for something (Just pull one or two studies—from the hundreds gathering dust—off the shelf of unfunded programs).

A key assumption here is that NASA’s survival revolves around an excited and engaged public.  The authors of this piece apparently think this will happen with Mars because the public doesn’t care about the Moon; that the Mars Generation can become “emotionally engaged because they will become contributors to the Mars goal and part of the maturation process in achieving it.”  Great stuff that – “emotional engagement,” not reason or logic.  The system of taking incremental steps using lunar resources to make space faring routine is abandoned for a multi-decadal agency program to take an “excited” public to Mars, a program “owned” by its contributors.  That’s a lot of time and work needed to engage, excite and own something.  It sounds like the description of an entitlement program, not a mission statement.

After 50 years of obvious benefits of space flight, many still are, at best, indifferent to it.  But even more significantly, few feel the need to be emotionally engaged with it.  People understand that along with our vast interstate road network, we have other vital economic infrastructure, such as railroad transportation, air traffic and more recently, a network of telecommunication satellites orbiting Earth.  We depend upon this infrastructure on a daily basis, but except for buffs, we do not get emotionally engaged in their day to day operations.

As no significant additional money is likely to materialize, we must strive for achievable goals and a paced rate of advancement.  A program that promises accomplishment thirty years in the future is not a program at all, but rather, an excuse to “study” the problem indefinitely.  In other words, it means another thirty years like the previous thirty years – lots of swell viewgraphs, color artwork of astronauts climbing the walls of Valles Marineris, and bureaucratic blither about exciting students.  But no actual spaceflight infrastructure.

I’ve touched on this issue before; no one votes for a candidate based on their position on the space program.  The net effect of this environment of public indifference is that NASA’s budget (which comes from an ever shrinking slice of the tax-funded, discretionary spending pie) will remain at existing levels for the foreseeable future.  What does this mean for NASA’s Mad Men advertising campaign for “Generation Mars?”  Basically it means that a space agency dependent upon public excitement to enrich its budget is one that is not likely to prosper.   With budgets devoured by countless cycles of viewgraphs, white papers and consensus management missives in the coming decades, what remains is an agency with no sustainable space exploration system.

To add space to our other national transportation networks, the kind that we take for granted but that contribute in so many ways to our prosperity and security, NASA needs to lay the groundwork for private industry to follow.  NASA needs to be the driver of private sector technology as it explores.  Without logical steps, NASA becomes the devourer of resources and not a technology driver.

As the next frontier is scouted, business will follow, as it always does.  Business is eager to follow.  NASA needs to finish laying the groundwork before moving on.   The Moon is the next destination in space.  Will America lead and  have a stake in this new land or will we stay behind and watch the movie?

The White House had a different view of the Vision for Space Exploration than NASA

Last week, the Augustine Commission held another public meeting in Washington DC and Dr. John Marburger testified. For those just joining our story in progress, Marburger was President Bush’s Science Advisor and the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the White House between 2001 and 2009. He was a key player in the development of the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) and his comments on the intent and reality of the VSE were interesting and insightful.

Marburger described a split between NASA and the White House during formulation of the Vision. NASA (led by former Administrator Sean O’Keefe, Chief Scientist John Grunsfeld and an internal study group within the agency) wanted a manned Mars mission (as it has for the last 50 years) while the White House (led by Marburger, his OSTP colleagues and some members of the National Security Council) called for a new direction and orientation of the space program. They favored a return to the Moon with the “mission” of radically changing the rules of spaceflight.

This latter course involved learning how to use the material and energy resources of the Moon to produce life support consumables, electrical power and rocket fuel, thereby creating new spaceflight capabilities. The White House group was informed by an abundance of detailed studies done over the past decade that demonstrated how the resources of the Moon could be tapped and utilized. Given the unlikelihood of significant new money for NASA, they believed that some kind of “game-changer” was needed – a way to step beyond low Earth orbit by incorporating innovative ways of conducting space business. A sustainable path, if you will.

Marburger’s biggest concern was that by inserting Mars as a goal (not by any means an “ultimate goal”) or even a date for lunar return, the path forward would become “burdened by deadlines and difficult budget issues.” He believed that a program composed of small, incremental steps would gradually but continuously expand human “reach” into space beyond low Earth orbit—with economy provided by a template of bootstrapping. The key was to use robotic missions as pathfinders to understand, access and acquire products derived from lunar and space resources.

As these differing threads were woven into a policy statement, NASA viewed the VSE as the next “large space program” for the agency. NASA’s traditional template dominated public discussion of the Vision, where gaps, arbitrary time scales and the long-desired human Mars mission as the “ultimate goal” became familiar talking points – not surprising, considering that the agency had sole custody of the VSE after it was crafted. Lunar return by 2020 was not meant as a deadline, but it is widely interpreted as such. Although the VSE is careful to mention trips to “Mars and other destinations,” the latter part of that phrase seldom appears in NASA charts.

The subsequent Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) is pure NASA. In classic agency fashion, “Apollo-on-steroids” (big giant booster, mega-capsule and gargantuan lander) was rolled out. The programmatic significance of Ares V in the architecture should not be overlooked – delivering 150 metric tones to LEO, it is a rocket designed for human Mars mission done in the Apollo-style, with everything needed for Mars dragged up from the deep gravity well of the Earth. It is overkill for almost any other space job, including missions to the Moon. Overkill can work, if you have the money (although it isn’t good practice even if you do have the money). But even with the most optimistic assumptions, the ESAS doesn’t fit into NASA’s current or projected budget.

Marburger’s concern is exactly what has happened. NASA thinks that its principal mission on the Moon is to conduct Apollo-style local site exploration and serve as a test-bed for the Mars flags-and-footprints extravaganza. The idea of building a spaceflight infrastructure using lunar resources was swept aside. An Apollo-like architecture was developed but with no political backing to pay for it. Now the agency finds itself subject to a protracted and embarrassing “public audit” of its mission and methods of doing business. The country is not disposed to a significant increase in spending on space, not just because of the poor state of the economy (although that doesn’t help) but because they think we are already spending the right amount. The comfortable, old shoe cannot be resoled; you cannot conduct space business today using the Apollo model, whereby technical difficulties are bludgeoned into submission by cash and long hard (and expensive) man-hours of work.

The way forward involves approaching the problem differently. Marburger’s take on the VSE is adaptable to any budgetary level. It makes continuous progress, using small steps when times are tough and larger ones when things are flush. It sets no deadlines but it does set strategic directions – incrementally beyond low Earth orbit, using what we find along the way to create new capabilities and possibilities. It has intermediate milestones that map progress and provide societal payback. It brings commercial enterprise along, with the aim of expanding our space economy and high-technology industrial base. In other words, it is sustainable. It is the antithesis of the conventional form of space exploration.

Given the dwindling amount of money for discretionary spending in the federal budget, perhaps the idea of using lunar resources to build a sustainable infrastructure in space should be embraced.

Target and Distraction: Which is which?

The Moon versus Mars controversy has reared its ugly head yet again. For the newcomers, this is the perennial “debate” among space buffs about what the next destination in space should be. I do not mean to suggest that all possibilities are encompassed by these two options; it just seems that most advocates fall into one or the other of these two camps.

In part, this argument has arisen because the Augustine Commission, currently deliberating the future of NASA’s human spaceflight program, has resurrected the debate with an architectural option they call “Mars First” (a.k.a. Mars Direct, Direct to Mars, Apollo to Mars and Mars-in-MY-lifetime), beloved of the Mars Society and ex-astronauts everywhere. Briefly, this plan calls for sending people to Mars as soon as possible – no Moon, no asteroids, no L-points: do not pass “Go,” do not collect $200. In such a scenario, all pieces of the Mars mission are launched directly from the Earth; this roughly one-million-pound on-orbit mass includes all the propellant needed for the trip, which makes up about 85% of the mass of the spacecraft.

The Mars First option follows the “Apollo template.” In 1961, faced by the political necessity to get men to the Moon and back within a decade, Wernher von Braun designed the biggest rocket he could imagine – basically a scaled-up, clustered V-2 – to lift all of the parts he needed into space. This super heavy lift vehicle was actually a family of rockets (Saturn class), whose ultimate behemoth was the Nova, a vehicle with a lift-off weight exceeding 13 million pounds. Fortunately, the choice of lunar orbit rendezvous for the Apollo mission mode made Nova unnecessary and a self-contained mission was launched by a single, smaller (7 million pound) Saturn V.

The Apollo template makes use of maximum disposability. As the mission proceeds and each flight element is thrown away, unused and unusable, the vehicle gets smaller and lighter. For some items, such as fuel tanks and structural elements, this doesn’t introduce unwarranted penalties, but some parts of the vehicle are high in cost and value. Within the Apollo template, however, their loss is inevitable.

A significant part of the Apollo template is the lack of infrastructure legacy, i.e., the elements brought to a destination that are available for use by the next crew. We need to develop an architecture that leaves equipment in place for future use and expansion by subsequent visitors. This is one reason why sortie missions are inferior to establishing an outpost or a base; sortie missions spread surface assets over a large area where they cannot mutually support each other.

Much of the support for Mars First comes from the belief of its advocates that we will get “stuck” on the Moon or somewhere else, sort of like we have been “stuck” in low Earth orbit for the last 40 years. In their minds, Mars is THE destination. To hear the pitch, one might believe Mars has it all – atmosphere, water, a 24 hour day, and possible ancient fossil life. Adventure! Thrills! What else could a space cadet want?

Although the “Mars First” advocates vigorously present their position each and every time the direction of our space policy is debated, they have never won the argument. Why? Is it some evil conspiracy to keep them from their Mars dream? Is it just the stupidity of policy makers? Some simple facts suggest otherwise.

We do not now have the technology we need to support multi-month, self-sufficient human space travel. The International Space Station needs nearly constant servicing and re-supply from Earth. In fact, one of the missions of ISS is to learn how to live in space without such service and re-supply, closing the various life-support loops and thereby developing sustained human presence. This is experimental technology and not nearly mature enough upon which to rest the lives of a Mars mission crew. Regardless of claims, a Mars mission is at least one (and possibly two) order(s) of magnitude more costly than any alternative mission.

There isn’t the will in either the Congress or the Executive to significantly increase the amount of money allocated to our national space program. Spectacular claims about “exciting the public” with a human Mars mission, regardless of their veracity (which is doubtful), do not translate into higher budgets for NASA. To go to Mars using existing technology, with an Apollo-style business model, is both unachievable and unaffordable.

The Vision for Space Exploration makes Mars a goal – along with every other space destination – after we go to the Moon to learn how to live and work on another world. Moreover, the VSE implicitly states that such is to be accomplished under existing budgetary envelopes. In contrast to the Apollo template, time rather than money is to be the free variable. The Moon can be reached with existing launch assets; although NASA is currently bogged down in a debate about rocket development, the real issues are how you go back to the Moon and what you do there. The Moon offers the material and energy resources to develop the technology and skills necessary for sustained, long duration capability in space.

Mars First advocates worry about getting “stuck on the Moon.” In fact, it is their obsession for Mars that has kept us in low Earth orbit for the last 40 years. By relentlessly pushing for a space goal that is well out of our technical and fiscal reach, they have gotten an undesired (but not unexpected) result: stasis. There is no choice. You use the Moon or you get nothing. Right now, Mars is a bridge too far – we need the stepping-stone of our Moon to reach it.